Consultant tells Palmer chamber vocational ed realities are replacing myths

PALMER — Defining vocational education and career training in the 21st century should be far removed from the myths of the past, which viewed the trades as substandard to a college education, a training consultant told the Palmer Chamber of Commerce Wednesday.

Kevin Worrell, a health and safety consultant with Northern Industrial Training, was the keynote speaker at the chamber’s weekly luncheon. NIT offers a range of vocational, safety and computer skills programs at its two locations in Palmer and Anchorage.

Worrell’s presentation, “Heed the Call: The Truth About Vocational Education,” covered the origins of the word itself, along with the U.S. policies created to foster development of skilled labor employment.

With its Latin root “vocare,” which means “a calling,” Worrell said the word vocation is all encompassing.

“If we reflect on that definition with what we have known about vocational education or work in the vocations, it starts to broaden our understanding on what this type of work could be,” Worrell said. “Truly, folks who find their work worthy of great dedication can be people who work with their hands, it can be people who work with their minds and voices or a combination of all those things.”

Worrell traced the early origins of vocational education to the Smith Hughes National Vocational Education Act of 1917. Designed to train farmers as well as meet the need of the country’s industrial advancement, Worrell said the act was designed as a way to educate the workforce properly, and “make for meaningful work.”

“At the time, secondary education was not nearly as common. Kids went to primary school, then followed their parents to the job site to learn their craft or trade,” Worrell said.

But as manufacturing evolved, facilities and plants became unsafe for children.

“These plants were not designed to train a child safely in the trades,” he said. “So no there became a surplus of children wondering what to do. Vocational education was designed to meet that need.”

Worrell said as the policies were developed, states set up separate boards to define the vocational curriculum.

“The separate boards (of education and vocation) were set up in part with the intention to keep the vocational funding separate — a good thing,” Worrell said. “But what occurred over time was an unintentional segregation of students in the vocational programs and students who were not.”

Vocational programs were structured differently with their academic and trade components, Worrell said, and tended to have more rural students funneled into the ranks.

“Thus we saw the two tracks begin to form,” he said, which began the myth of vocational education being for those “who couldn’t hack it in college.”

However, that system had unintended consequences.

“These programs had great successes in training the workforce,” he said, “but it created this divide that we wouldn’t see until later years.”

As manufacturing jobs began to shift overseas in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Worrell said a societal message of “everybody needs to go to college” became a rallying cry for those who felt a degree was essential to compete in the global workforce.

“It ended up creating a deeper divide in the college-vocational educational track,” Worrell said. “This is where that definition became more refined.”

Worrell said today’s view of vocational education should be better defined as a blended approach of academics and practical application.

“The truth that is replacing the myth of vocational education is for students who are heeding the call,” Worrell said. “The message for students of any age is that we should be heeding the call — whatever it is. If you are called to an academic purpose, then get yourself to college. But if you are called to your tools, then go and learn from the best. Get into a program where you can be your best.

“We are seeing programs that are combining both these days.”

In the chamber audience Wednesday was new Mat-Su Borough School District Superintendent Gene Stone, who briefly discussed the district’s varied options with regard to vocational and career education. A mention of the Mat-Su Career and Tech High School elicited a response from another audience member, Palmer resident Dr. Alex Hills — no stranger to technology or academia. A distinguished service professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Hills was part of the team that developed the first Wi-Fi network.

Hills said he was asked to speak at Career Tech, and liked what he saw.

“As a university professor, I was really impressed,” Hills said. “Those kids are disciplined, they are focused, smart and polite. They are doing a great job over there.”

Contact reporter Steven Merritt at 352-2269 or steven.merritt@frontiersman.com