A More Inspiring Way to Talk about Vocational Education
And not make students cogs in a machine
“I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.”
A better way for Betsy DeVos and other proponens of training programs to talk about vocational education- or Career and Technical Education- would be to focus less on the need for it, less on the economic beenfits of it, and less on the efficiency, practicality, and pragmetism of it; instead, it might be more inspiring to a 17-year-old who may not yet see themselves (nor should they) as cogs in a machine, to say:
We live in incredible times. And as long as there’s still on person one the planet who doesn’t believe this, there’s still work to be done. — Hugh MacLeod
This quote hangs in my office, next to an exerpt from the famous Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford. It is a constant reminder that to go about life in a state of anything other than sheer amazement is a catastrophe. I see my job as a counselor not to counsel students on the safest, surest paths, but to show them how to live a life that keeps their wonderment and curiosity in tact.
After quoting the cartoonist, we might follow up with the John Quincy Adams quote above, or any number of alternate quotes like it. The point is for young people to really understand this:
We are in an evolved place in the evolution of the universe, after years of suffering, toiling, working tirelessly for others, and living an existence based on lack; how lucky are we to be the sons and daughters of warriors and merchants so that we might be poets.
What’s more: how lucky are we to be able to CHOOSE to be merchants, or even warriors (just not the killing kind), if that suits you. The box of opportuntiies has simply grown; the vocations of old are largely still there, but that is not all we are limited to pursuing.
We must get beyond the kind of coaching and counseling that is based on filling economic demands, looking at high-growth sectors, and satisfying big-business labor requirements alone; we can do so much more for our economies — and the individual humans that determine these economies — by focusing first on the passionate and creative expression of the individual.
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who come alive. — Dr. Howard Thurman, Theologian and Civil Rights Leader
In one of my favorite articles, Why I Teach Plato To Plumbers, community college professor, Scott Samuelson, shares why he sees philosophy as not merely a leisurely pursuit of the elite, but an essential pursuit for nurses’ aides, soldiers, ex-cons, preschool music teachers, janitors, Sudanese refugees, prospective wind-turbine technicians, and any number of other students who feel like they need a diploma as an entry ticket to our economic carnival.” Similar to what Du Dubois argued on the topic of education for freed slaves, Samuelson advocates for an education that liberates those currently disenfranchised in society.
When I spoke to students in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, many of whom were bused in from rural areas, where technical, economy-driven training dominates and “liberal” education has taken a back seat, I shared these key ideas, which I encourage you to share with the young people in your life:
- Give up the old idea that learning for learning’s sake is an elitist notion
- The best way to prepare for a secure future is by preparing for an insecure future
- Know that while a liberal education is your right to pursue at any time in your life, you don’t have to, if you don’t want to
- Your goal should be career “pivotability” not career certainty
And before you respond with a statement about how the pursuit of “luxury” topics like art, poetry, and philosophy are only for those with money — for the elite — let’s remember that Henry David Thoreau said a “liberal” education was meant to liberate. If W.E.B Du Bois believed that the best education for freed slaves was a liberal education — not merely a technical one — because only this kind of education would really elevate them to equal status in society, then I think today, in the year 2018, we can give all of our students, regardless of socio-economic status, permission to become poets, believe we live in incredible times, and become people who come alive in this world that desperately needs these kinds of people across all sectors and in every nation.
