Social Democracy Through Vocational Education

Abstract

Tradition is important in the view that studying classical languages, literature, philosophy, mathematics, and science constitutes liberal education. Whether the liberalizing possibilities afforded by these fields when respect for their liberality developed, are still afforded, or are not afforded by other fields, are matters of too little attention. The late-medieval antecedents of present-day formal education developed at the secondary level; preliminary learning was not a school matter, Monastic schools developed for the vocational purpose of training monks, the intellectually elite of the time, whereas knowledge in fields of material production such as agriculture or craftsmanship, was gained by experience, or later through apprenticeships. Apprenticeships, however, remained more casual than did organized, formal education. After a community once had some kind of it was a short step to admit boys of prominent families, even though not studying for the clergy. The emerging bourgeoise, growing out of Renaissance trade and subsequent developments, stimulated the broadening of admissions to existing schools. Expanding enrollment, with slight variation in social composition of student body, was not accompanied by any marked change of curriculum. Thus formal education came to be looked upon as concerned with a limited curriculum, and with one which was becoming traditional. Since the socially elite pursued this curriculum, when they got an education, the practice and the curriculum gained prestige among groups who derived their social patterns from the elite, Going to school, and pursuing this curriculum, thus became things the lower classes wanted to do if possible. Liberal education and schooling for the masses.-Time and social change brought extension of education to the masses. Luther took reading from the homes of the elite and put it into schools for the masses. This, plus training in religious loyalty and civic obedience, constituted the forerunner of the elementary school. The masses came thus to have a formal as did the classes. Schools for the masses included only what the ruling classes put into them, but as time marched on the growth in industry, trade, etc., made it difficult to hold rigid limitations. Gradually, in America at least, secondary education sensed the pressures of size and heterogeneity of enrollment, without comparable curricular modifications. Society floundered temporarily, developing gaps between educational needs and offerings. Mechanical schools, commercial schools, etc., sprang up to fill the gaps. In America these fields are now largely incorpo-