Anderson, "The Historical Development of Black Vocational Education," Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on
Vocationalism in American Education, ed.
But we should be careful not to further push the already sharp
vocationalism that is driving so much of higher education right now, nor to further commoditize learning toward a "product comparison" model for students and their families.
The new
vocationalism lacked the grandeur of the mission set for the Common School, but it did address parents' primary concern: how to ensure their children ended up with a good income and a secure social position, ideally by landing a job in the upper ranks of the new occupational hierarchy.
For the 'left behind' urban towns of the North and the Midlands to prosper economically we must escape this mind-set and give the new
vocationalism the status it deserves.
Although the traditionalists' progressive opponents articulated similar reservations about the triumph of
vocationalism in American higher education, their hatred for the Great Books helps demonstrate that such thinkers had made their peace with Eliot's curricular capitalism.
(14.) See generally Richard Devlin & Jocelyn Downie, Teaching "Public Interest
Vocationalism": Law as a Case Study in Educating Professionals: Ethics and Judgment in a Changing Learning Environment (2015), available at https://www.hrpa.ca/Documents/Designations/Job-Ready-Program/Educating-Professionals-Ethics-and-Judgment-in-a-Changing- LearningEnvironment-May2015.pdf (last visited 7 Feb.
In rural education, there has historically been a tendency to conflate rurality and
vocationalism and Tasmania was a pioneer of what is now called work-integrated learning with the establishment of the Commonwealth's first area schools (Corbett, Hawkins and Brett, 2017).
Standards have caused administrators to consider history important, though their real appreciation for the discipline might still be related more to
vocationalism and the testing/accountability culture rather than a learning/assessment culture.
to the question of
vocationalism in schooling (to which Dewey, early in