Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
This is sort of contradictory to what you said earlier. How do you train someone for a specific job if they don't know if that is the job they want or the one they love? There is a catch-22 in vocational training as you want to invest your money in places where people are going to use those training opportunities to go on and have a career in that vocation.
What you're also missing is that training and education for "jobs" is specific to moments in time. This is the way business behaves. It takes time to train someone to do a specific job, and many times you can be trained to do a job that is on the verge of being replaced or is requires further training. A good example is training someone to code methods. You can train them to do one language, but if that language goes out of vogue, you have a retraining effort on your hands. Better to give someone the foundations where they understand the larger development cycle and how methods play into architecture, a much larger and more complex subject, where they can pivot more quickly and require less re-training. This is why a degree (foundational and timeless) coupled with a certification (technical and time specific) is the best way to provide long term educational opportunities for the majority of people, especially those unsure of what they want to do with their lives. With the foundation you can pivot much easier and still be more relevant to employers.
|
This is a major advantage of starting programs like vocational training early. High school students can enter a program where they get exposed to a variety of trades early, and can choose the one they like or perhaps not choose to continue at trades at all. Much better than having young adults flounder around at retail jobs until they happen to find a gig somewhere.
Basically, schooling takes a shift from constant "general studies" to actually exposing children and young adults to careers. The main difference is that education is used to explore actual career orientated interests and talents. As opposed, to just getting a not so useful degree and then using young adulthood to explore careers.
There's nothing contradictory about that at all. You can have vocational schools without locking someone into a single distinct career. In no way am I saying, be a carpenter at 15, and now you're stuck there. If we go back to the German model, the vocational schools teach a variety of career focused skills that become more focused over time. Even then, some students may decide that path isn't for them, and they can learn that at an early age.