Career Education and Education Reform: Time for a Rebirth

Abstract

Until we begin to view students and teachers as workers and classroom as a workplace, Mr. Hoyt points out, career education can never become a top priority for education reform. CAREER EDUCATION was first promoted as a proposal for education reform in early 1970s by Sidney Marland, Jr.1 It remained top federal proposal for education reform during entire decade of 1970s, with a total of $130 million appropriated for career education during that period.2 By end of that decade, Ben Brodinsky referred to career education as the decade's moderate success story.3 The Career Education Incentive Act was repealed in 1981 as one of a number of federal budget cuts. When National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk in 1983, career education was not even mentioned. Nor was it included among series of education reform proposals published by other agencies and organizations in 1980s partly in response to A Nation at Risk. The emergence of Information Age has made it clear that relationship between schooling and employment is growing closer than ever. Some kind of education reform that takes account of this change is obviously needed. What's more, even after 30 years, career education is still most widely demonstrated and best validated proposal for education reform. In this article I identify and briefly discuss key concepts of career education movement and their implications for education reform. The Concept of Work Work is clearly bedrock of career education. Unless and until we define and understand it, there is no easy way of defining and describing career education. In career education, word is defined as intentional effort, other than that whose primary purpose is either coping or relaxation, aimed at producing benefits for oneself or for oneself and others. It can be revealing to dissect this definition. The word intentional means that, ideally, activity is something an individual has chosen to do; it is not forced on him or her. The word effort means that some degree of difficulty is involved in activity; it can't just happen accidentally. The word producing means that some outcome is sought. The word benefits means someone must be better off in some way after has taken place; that is, worker seeks to be better off in some way, and, very often, others benefit as well. People value - be it paid or unpaid - for a variety of reasons. Work is a way of defining one's identity to oneself and others, a way of demonstrating how one can be helpful to others, a way in which one can make some part of world a better place, a way in which an individual can excel in something, a way of doing things of interest to worker, a way of finding and interacting with others who have similar interests, and a way of accumulating economic benefits. We might call these work values, and they are important because they provide workers with motivation to seek ways of improving both quantity and quality of their efforts. People also choose specific occupations for a variety of reasons: an interest in kinds of skills required for success, an aptitude for performing those skills, geographic convenience of jobs in chosen field, extent to which friends or family members have chosen occupation, good job security, opportunities for promotion, attractive fringe benefits, and high entry-level earnings. One's values can be applied, to some degree, in any activity - paid or unpaid. On other hand, one's occupational values pertain to particular occupation one chooses from all those available. The rapid pace of change in Information Age is likely to increase frequency with which people change occupations, and so may change occupational values. But such change may require little or no change in one's values. …