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What's Wrong With School to Work?
By Robert Holland
Columnist and Op-Ed Editor, Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch
Presentation
to Conference conducted by
Congressman Henry Hyde
February 12, 1997
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this
conference, and for your devotion to principle and hard work in bringing this serious
problem to the attention of your colleagues and the American people.
I also appreciate the title that you or a member of your staff assigned to my
presentation: "What's Wrong With School to Work?" That is, succinctly, the
question many of us will need to answer for our local, well-meaning, chamber of commerce
folks, educators, journalists, and parents, who believe this federal push is merely about
helping young people make a smooth transition into careers---a benign upgrading of
vocational education to the 21st Century, Information Age standards.
Unfortunately, the School to Work system---for it is that and not just another
program of federal aid---is not at all about expanding individual career choices or
educating students broadly so they can change jobs many times in a lifetime.
Let me answer the question "What Is Wrong With School to Work?" as concisely as
I can, and then go back and explain briefly:
NO. 1: School to Work, which is linked with Goals 2000, injects the
federal government deeply and dangerously into shaping the curriculum of American schools.
It puts the United States in the camp of regimes that decree what knowledge is
"official," and, even more than that, how that knowledge should be taught, and
for what purpose.
NO. 2: School to work locks students into career tracks much too early,
chilling opportunity and killing youthful dreams.
NO. 3: School to Work drastically narrows the curriculum, making it less
likely that schools will produce literate, well-rounded generalists who can cope with
rapid change in civic life as well as the workforce. School to Work is about the servile
arts, not the liberal arts. We should remember that the liberal arts derive from the
Latin, libera, which means freedom. Vocational training can be liberating, too,
but not compulsory training to meet state workforce quotas. That is a form of slavery.
NO. 4: School to Work infringes on the sovereignty of the individual and
the family.
NO. 5: School to Work, as part of the national human resource development
system, cuts local school boards and state legislators almost completely out of the
decision-making loop.
NO. 6: School to Work is part of a managed economy and data-collecting
network that poses grave dangers to Americans' liberty and their privacy.
And, finally, but not least...
NO. 7 Judging by the historical record, School to Work simply doesn't
work. Americans have rejected efforts throughout their history as a free people to have
the government track their children into jobs satisfying the designs of economic planners.
This has been, and remains, the land of boundless opportunity, and everyday folks who are
not drunk on the heady brew of government-subsidized think tanks, like it that way.
Furthermore, history is littered with the remains of regimes---such as the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany---that sought to create the New Economic Man and shape him to the
specifications of the all-powerful state.
How about some details to back up those points? Well, let's look at the illegal
encroachment of the federal government, particularly the labor and Education departments,
into the shaping of school curricula.
The language of the School to Work Opportunities Act, the companion to Goals 2000, both of
which were enacted in the spring of 1994, is amazingly blunt; there is nothing subtle
about it. Those who would understand what School to Work is about would be well-advised to
read it carefully. I would hope that would include current members of Congress---we could
only hope that they would all become as well-informed on the intricacies of the
"seamless web" as our host today, Chairman Hyde, is.
The section on congressional intent repeatedly refers to "all students" and
"all states," making evident its breathtaking sweep. The act stipulates that it
is to be a "national framework" within which "all states" are to
create STW systems as part of "comprehensive education reform." All STW plans
are to be "integrated with the systems developed" under Goals 2000, among them
the National Skill Standards Board, which is hard at work preparing to identify and
eventually certify the skills necessary for every type of job in the country, from manure
spreader to airline pilot.
Recently, the NSSB carved the economy into 16 sectors---i.e., communications,
manufacturing, retail sales, construction, etc.---and will now prepare skill certificates
for all the jobs in those sectors. The influential Education Week reported that
these certificates, though initially voluntary, are expected to influence profoundly what
is taught in America's schools. That's where School to Work comes in: It will teach those
skills the government planners say that children---whom they consider to be "human
capital"---need to have in the Brave New Millennium. Furthermore, NSSB members have
said, according to official board minutes, that they envision their skill certification
plan eventually becoming compulsory.
Despite statutory prohibitions against federal dictation of school curricula, the STWOA
declares as a federal purpose, "...integrating academic and occupational
learning," and "integrating school-based and work-based learning." It also
calls for "all students" to participate in "high-quality work-based
experiences" during the school day, to include apprenticeships. ALL students, mind
you.
Now, some students might prize the opportunity to serve as apprentices in local
industries. But shouldn't that be optional, not a condition of universal education? And
shouldn't such work be done after school, so that precious class time is spent on learning
the basics of language, literature, science and mathematics, and our heritage as
Americans?
In Dresden, Ohio, high school students can use two class periods a day to learn basket
weaving on the job at a local manufacturing company. The students receive academic credit.
The company gets to sell the baskets for a profit.
At Milwaukee's Hamilton High School, students must choose at Grade Eight the "career
cluster" they will pursue. Thus, for example, a student in the Health and Human
Services Cluster studies such profound subjects as food service, fashion and fabrics,
parenthood education, and human diversity---while not being required to take any foreign
language. Core subjects like English are integrated into the vocational training.
Suppose by the 12th grade the youngster has decided he or she wishes to be a scientist or
a doctor. That's awfully late to get the credits needed for admission to a top-quality
university. In some majority black and Hispanic districts in California, portions of high
schools are being turned into hospitality academies or food service academies, and the
like. There is a great potential for School to Work to have the most severe impact on
minority youngsters, who will be taught that they should not aspire to loftier goals than
cleaning tables or toting luggage for the elite.
The buzzwords for this pervasive vocationalism are "curriculum integration"
(meaning the total merger of academics with vocational training) and "applied
learning," which owes much to John Dewey's progressive education doctrine that all
instruction should be socially relevant. (But influential as he was in the schools of
education of the '20s, Dewey could not have dreamed of having the money and power behind
him that his latter-day disciples possess.)
Under a Carl Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act grant from the U.S. Department
of Education, the California School Boards Association has prepared a manual intended to
bring all local school boards on board with curriculum integration. The manual stresses
the "critical role" of local school boards in bringing about this radical
change, and it defines "leverage points" to use in bringing others along. So
much for local autonomy, and variety of approach among the nation's 15,000 school
districts.
Career counseling, under the STWOA, is to begin "at the earliest possible age, but
not later than the 7th grade." All students must select a "career major" in
secondary school (and in practice many STW schools put students in a "career
pathway" in middle or even elementary school). Intriguingly, the act specifies that
curricula should "incorporate instruction...in all aspects of an industry,
appropriately tied to the career major of a participant."
Ohio has one of the most elaborate STW implementation plans to date. It contemplates
inculcating work skills in kindergarten, and requires that all students prepare a Career
Plan by the eighth grade. All must finish their secondary education with a Career Passport
(more commonly called a Certificate of Initial Mastery), without which they need not apply
for a job. The system is to be geared to industry's "labor market needs," and
will train students for jobs in accordance with "the state's workforce development
and economic development strategies..."
Essentially, STW envisions tracking children not only into a general career field, but,
when possible, into a specific industry. The law calls for a sequence of study providing
students "with strong experience in and understanding of all aspects of the industry
the students are planning to enter." This is vocationalism with a vengeance.
At a national STW conference in Orlando last November---a session sponsored by the
National Education Association---national STW officials stated repeatedly that
college-bound students should be required to follow this work-specific track as well.
"All means all," was the conference mantra.
School to Work's infringement on the sovereignty of the family will become increasingly
apparent as more and more children receive career counseling in elementary and middle
schools. As STW attempts to steer children into slots deemed in the interest of regional
labor market and economic development needs, it will become obvious how children are being
cheated and deprived of a chance to realize their dreams and achieve their highest
potential.
Computerized career inventories are being used in early grades to begin guiding children
into career tracks. In Las Vegas, young Ashley Jensen, who has a 4.0-plus GPA, dreams of
one day going to work for NASA; but her middle-school inventory says that her choices
ought to be between sanitation worker and interior decorator. Another Nevada student
aspires to be a veterinarian, but was told by her counselor she ought to become a
bartender. Her Christian parents understandably felt that their rights had been trampled;
they would not want their daughter to become a server of alcoholic drinks.
Finally, a disturbing feature of the School to Work system is the use of sophisticated
technology to sort out and track students. This is happening even without the Labor Market
Information System, the national databank that would have been set up by the workforce
development legislation that expired with the last Congress (but that may be revived in
the current one).
At last spring's National Education Summit, which was exclusively for corporate CEOs and
governors, IBM showed off electronic portfolios bearing assessments of students'
social/workforce skills. Most state STW implementation plans make heavy use of the SCANS
reports, those infamous Labor Department documents that called on schools to keep
electronic resumes of students' personal qualities and workforce skills. And at the
education Summit, governors and CEOs approvingly reviewed the first scanable workforce
Smart Cards, which students in some places (like Nevada) already must present when
applying for a job. These uses of technology are horrendous invasions of personal privacy.
It is hard to believe that all this is happening in free America. In the aftermath of his
re-election, our President lectured us in an appearance at Northbrook, Illinois, that we
must "no longer hide behind our love of local control of schools..." It would be
healthier for the nation, however, if he and the First Lady got over their love of
socialist prescriptions for such services as education and health care. School to Work is
going to rob many dreams, not to mention many pocketbooks, before the people finally catch
on, rise up, and demand that this hushed takeover of American education be rolled back.
Let's hope for the sake of our children that repeal comes sooner, not later.
Thank you very much.
Click here to send
comments or questions to Robert Holland.
National Education Conference
"What Goals 2000 Means to the States"
February 12th from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Judiciary Committee Hearing Room, 2141 Rayburn, Washington, DC
The Marc Tucker "Seamless Web" Plan: U.S.
Rep. Henry Hyde
What's Wrong With School-to-Work: Robert Holland; Richmond Times-Dispatch
How Foundations Leverage Taxpayers' Money: Kent Masterson Brown, Kentucky
The Medicalization of Schools: Pennsylvania State Rep. Sam Rohrer
Let's Assess School Assessments: California State Rep. Steve Baldwin
Why Alabama Rejected Goals 2000: Dick Brubaker, for Alabama Gov. Fob James
Certificates of Mastery vs. Diplomas: Oregon State Rep. Ron Sunseri
What School to Work Means at the Local Level: Michigan State Rep. Harold Voorhees
How Goals 2000 Plays in the States: Arkansas State Sen. Peggy Jeffries
Parents Don't Want Goals 2000: South Carolina Rep. Lindsay Graham
Keep the Feds Out of the Classroom: Florida Rep. Joe Scarborough
What's Marc Tucker Up To Now? Virginia Miller, Pennsylvania
Other Invited Guests: Governor George Allen, Virginia; Senate Minority Leader Steve
Ehlman, Missouri; Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri; Linda Bowles, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
To obtain a video after the conference, call 202-544-0353
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