Career and Technical Education
I left our last class meeting with the feeling that many misconceptions about Career and Technical Education remain. CTE is not training to be a plumber, electrician or carpenter. CTE is not the 'not college' alternative for students. CTE is for everyone.
South Carolina is rapidly moving towards Career Clusters in all public high schools. There are 16 career clusters, groups of occupations and broad industries based on commonalities. By the end of the 8th grade, every student will declare a career cluster that influences the classes each will take in High School. To further emphasize this point, even the students that know they are going on to college will be enrolled in a career cluster and take courses that will expose each to the opportunities available in that group of occupations or industries.
There are many benefits to this type of program in high school that include a lower drop out rate for students, a program of study that allows a student to take more classes in areas that interest the student, it provides a path for students that will not continue to a college education to have a path to becoming an economically successful citizen, and it provides a base of education for those students that will continue on to college education. These benefits have the potential to make an immense positive impact for many SC high school students. Dewey would surely approve of the experiential learning that goes on in these programs, even though the experiences are in the domain of one career cluster.
There is a detrimental consequence to this type of program, because it comes at the loss of a broad, liberal education for high school students. This is a serious matter, as none of the career clusters appears to include this type of educational experience as an option. Bloom would definitely have issues with this lack of opportunity for our students. I do not know how to remedy this aspect of high school education in SC.
Details about the career clusters can be found at http://www.careerclusters.org/ and on the SC Department of Education Institute for Career and Technology Education Administrators at http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cate/instituteinfo.html
1 comment:
Thanks for the clarification and links. This is an excellent post that will hopefully clear up any confusion people have.
I am not sure, however, Dewey would be so much in favor of these things. There's the devilish details, of course, that will have to be worked out to make sure the clusters are experiential and not narrow training (which brings up another question -- how does this impact teacher training and hiring? How much does a math teacher need to know about graphic design to teach the math class for the graphic arts cluster? Are graphic designers going to teach courses?).
But the bigger issue for Dewey (and, admittedly, myself) is the rationale for these things seems to be entirely economic. If you look at the "Goals" page (http://www.careerclusters.org/vision.php) there is nothing about preparing students for democratic citizenship, or moral development, or any goal not directly related to economic ends. Dewey would be pretty upset about that omission.
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