We have a problem with education today, and it's not that our students don't score high enough on standardized tests. Rather, it's that beyond the lower grades, we don't know its purpose. Once children can read and do simple math and are reasonably socialized, i.e., know the behaviors society expects of them, all bets are off. Is the purpose of high school to develop independent thinkers, to make good citizens, prepare for college, or to get kids ready for reliable employment? All of these, naturally, but where's the emphasis?
As a nation we were clearer about this in the past. In 1917, in the Smith-Hughes Act, Congress, recognizing that kids come with a variety of life destinies and natural affinities, mandated funding to the states for secondary vocational training, leading to the establishment of vocational high schools. The anti-poverty Vocational Education Act in 1963 mandated additional funding.
But there's always been an aversion to segregated, career-directed training in the U.S. It has a stigma of lesser ability and lesser status. Thus, with the drive for fuller equality in American culture that began in the 1960s, vocational training languished, a stepsister to the main school curriculum.
Unlike the U.S., the European national systems have stuck with vocational education. Early on, students who wish to are able to put themselves on a directed career employment track and get vocational and technical training that allows them to certify in a particular trade. A great deal of dignity accompanies that certification, for most people would rather hire a specialist than a jack-of-all-trades who may not have proven to anyone who matters that they know what they're doing. Because of the dignity and the training, there's little or no stigma. And state-funded programs allow for those who change their career paths later on.
China, on the other hand, is locked in a system of test performance expectations that stifles creativity and innovation, a system that produces robots, not scientific Nobel laureates if they remain in the country.
College is another matter. Just now in the U.S. we're debating whether college is even worth the money and the effort since many young people without college are making more money than many of those with degrees. On the other hand, there's much more consensus today on the reason for college than ever before. Today college is for getting young people ready for reliable employment, since American high schools don't seem to be doing that very well.
Once, college meant training political, social and economic leaders, the national elite. Most students were upper class or aspired to places in "polite" society. Literature and the humanities were a major part of the curriculum because it was assumed they taught young people how to think and to know themselves. Then, in 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act, legislation funding state colleges for training in the "agricultural and mechanical arts," and Congress set land aside for their support. These are the "land grant" colleges; the University of Alaska is one. In most of the western states, they carry the label State University: Oregon State, Washington State, and the like. The act made clear that such training was not to be at the expense of scientific or classical studies, or military tactics. Thus began the tradition of the multiple-mission college.
By the 1970s, when most vocational high schools had disappeared, most land grant universities were virtually indistinguishable from other public universities, as non-land grant schools added engineering, business, nursing and other career-directed programs, and the land grant schools maintained programs in teacher training and the various liberal arts fields.
But today's public universities have shifted back to career-directed education. Boards of regents and administrators now genuflect to the notion that only career-directed programs can prepare students for reliable employment, and that without specific, job-related training, the students won't get a job. The notion that broad capacity in problem-solving -- what might be learned from literature, history and related study and might generate creativity -- has real value is seen as hopelessly quaint and impractical. The classics have long since been consigned to the dustbin of history, and the liberal arts and humanities are on a fast-track there. Today's universities are all about employability certificates, athletics and amenities, not humanities.
Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
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