A Framework for Vocational and Job Training in Education

• In Event: Vocationalism in U.S. Education: An Interdisciplinary Symposium

Abstract

One important goal of education is to prepare students to participate in the economy (Brighouse et al., 2018). It is expected that education provides students with the capacity to obtain a job and achieve a minimum threshold of economic well-being (Sperling, 2020). Although the term ‘vocational education’ is imprecise, it can be used to capture these aspects of education. In addition to vocational goals, education has civic and ethical goals, as well as goals focused on personal transformation and self-cultivation. Many of these areas can be broadly described using the term ‘liberal education’. Ideally, these various goals work in harmony to craft balanced, flourishing citizens. However, although they are not clearly distinct, the liberal and vocational aspects of education sometimes come into tension. Specifically, some types of vocational education can be antithetical to the pursuit of liberal goals, such as when narrow job training displaces an emphasis on the broad cultivation of knowledge. This raises a question--How do we include the economic ends of education in such a way that they don't detract from other liberal goals?

Using the philosophical method of conceptual analysis, this paper argues that one way to resolve this tension is through the cultivation of character virtues. But to begin, the question of what distinguishes problematic from acceptable forms of vocational education must be addressed. For this, the paper turns to the work of John Dewey (1997) and argues that in order to coalesce with liberal goals, vocational education should in most cases conform to two criteria. First, the vocational skills which are developed must be sufficiently transferable across potential occupations. The aim cannot be to train students for a role within a particular trade, but instead should be development which can be useful in a variety of contexts. Second, the vocational development in question must have the ability to contribute to a student's well-being in ways that are not strictly associated with economic outcomes.

It is the nature of character development that, even when undertaken for primarily vocational purposes, it is able to fulfill these two criteria. Certain character virtues can serve both a vocational and liberal purpose. For example, the development of virtues like curiosity and wonder is referenced as an aim of a liberal education, but both may also be thought of as capacities which will be valuable for a student in any number of future careers. In this way, this paper enlightens the argument that a liberal arts degree is what employers ‘really’ want (Finley, 2020).

This framework is not to argue that vocational education which violates these criteria is necessarily unethical. Rather, it is to illustrate the particular characteristics of vocational education which causes it to be different in kind to liberal education. This project is useful as a tool for evaluating governmental and philanthropic interventions into education which are aimed at vocational goals, as well as to better understand recent scholarship on issues of poverty, economic mobility, and education (like Chetty et. al., 2018; Jack, 2019; Morton, 2019; Tough, 2019).

Author

• Dustin Webster, University of Pennsylvania