Practical vs. Vocational Education

An important distinction came up yesterday when talking with David about education. He was advocating the value of a liberal arts education at a four-year university vs. vocational education at a community college. His example of a vocational degree -- studying to be a radiologist -- made me realize that when I speak of bring back vocational tech, I am interested in vocational training for what it teaches us about the material world and the tools at our disposal for interacting with it. But I am not interested in vocational tech in the narrow sense of being trained for a particular role in a particular industry with particular tools, and that's often what it is.

The value of an education in practical skills -- as opposed to vocational skills -- is the transferrable nature of what you learn. As an example, rather than learning how to assemble cabinets, you could learn about the essential properties of wood, and concepts and techniques in woodworking. When we reduce the value of a practical education to be training for a specific job, we are doing a disservice to the individual and society. Frankly, job training should happen on the job.

I believe we should all be competent or at least have the opportunity to be competent observing, understanding, and problem-solving in the material world. Vocational tech can teach this -- welding and fabrication skills gleaned in getting an A.S. in Aeronautical Technology, for example -- but it does not necessarily do so. A radiologist likely learns only how to use one technology in one place. This does not contribute nearly as much to the human capital of a society as a set of foundational skills would, in that this person is far less likely to take what they've learned and innovate with it.

David pointed out that we can't all learn everything. Excel and computer programming are also practical skills, no? But I wonder if we can. We take years and years to study history, and learn very little of it. What we should do is learn a small bit of history, intensively. We should learn how to study and think about historical events. We should bother very little with attempting a survey of human history. We have the rest of our lives to go more deeply into subjects that interest us. The best we can expect from an early-in-life foundation is to be on a good basic footing with most of them, and know where to start when we want to learn more.

We live in an information-rich age. Information is a click away, or a book away. What most needs to be fostered is critical thinking, and we can do this in any field, with any subject, at any time. We should do it at all times, whether that means critically analyzing an engineering problem to see it in a new light, critically re-assessing an employee hiring process, or critically considering the role of a cattle in a diversified small farm operation.

I suspect we could learn everything, if we reduced most subjects to their essence. We could study the world through the lens of time and human behavior (history), through the lens of the material world (practical skills and materials), the virtual world (computers and networks), the biological world, and so on. A broad survey and intro to techniques for each, followed by focused application in an in-depth project. I believe this would be an educational approach that would provide a solid start to life-long learning, self-directed learning, and societal innovation and growth.