Technical Education to Career Opportunities

Technical education is not the same today it was years ago, “in the past vocational education was frequently seen as a placement for the students who could not make the grade in academic courses,”(1) or vocational education was thought only to be for students that are not going to college, possible dropouts, or students that have special needs. Today, this negative opinion is starting to change. Among high school students, nearly all will take some vocational courses, “80 percent take at least one occupationally specific vocational course, and one in eight academic students actually take more vocational courses than vocational students do.”(3)

On the job training and the vocational education system in America started as far back as colonial times. In 1647 was “the first education law passed in America, the Old Deluder Satan Act of the Massachusetts Bay Colony”(2,5); what this law means is that if a township has 50 or more homes they are required to provide a teacher to teach reading and writing for children, if there are more homes than they have to provide a grammar school to prepare the youth for university studies. It also stated that if the towns ignored this order for more than one year, the towns would pay 5 pounds to the next school till they carry out the command. By the Civil War era, during reconstruction, a need developed for a new type of school that could prepare people for employment. In 1868, the first trade school was organized and in 1881; the New York Trade School was the first to give specific training and additional studies that was linked to each trade. In 1891, another trade school was founded in Philadelphia, taking the place of apprenticeship training.(4)

Fast forward to the twentieth century, American...

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...pared students for good-paying jobs, 92 percent agreed or strongly agreed that vocational education can lead students to go to college, only 4 percent agreed that vocational education led to low-skill jobs, 98 percent said that internships or apprenticeships in different career fields were appropriate for high school juniors and seniors, 90 percent said that real work-based problems or career-related projects were a good way to teach subjects like math and English.”(3) Maybe with today’s decline in the economy and the way technology is on the rise, people are looking to have a vocational education because they maybe more likely to have a job when entering the job force, verses a college degree and that won’t guarantee a job in that field. The survey results and changing positive attitudes demonstrate that technical education is not the same today it was years ago.