Rahm Emanuel is correct that vocational education has been reduced in recent years, creating a mismatch between the skills needed for available jobs and those that applicants present ("Chicago's Plan to Match Education With Jobs," op-ed, Dec. 19). However, as someone involved in education as a math teacher and supervisor over the past 40 years, I would say that vocational training should begin in high school, not at the community college level. When this country decided a number of years ago that everyone should be college bound, it tossed vocational education aside, thereby producing many students who accomplish little in an academic college-bound environment and who eventually drop out due to their frustration, not to mention the wasted cost of their education.
Today, if one is to become an auto mechanic or a welder there are many academic as well as vocational skills that are necessary. It is simply too late to begin training at the community-college level-two years of community college are not enough when so many academic deficits are already likely to have been accumulated in high school by such students. It is time to recreate and update the teaching of vocational skills in high school.
All USA
Rahm Emanuel is correct that vocational education has been reduced in recent years, creating a mismatch between the skills needed for available jobs and those that applicants present ("Chicago's Plan to Match Education With Jobs," op-ed, Dec. 19). However, as someone involved in education as a math teacher and supervisor over the past 40 years, I would say that vocational training should begin in high school, not at the community college level. When this country decided a number of years ago that everyone should be college bound, it tossed vocational education aside, thereby producing many students who accomplish little in an academic college-bound environment and who eventually drop out due to their frustration, not to mention the wasted cost of their education. Today, if one is to become an auto mechanic or a welder there are many academic as well as vocational skills that are necessary. It is simply too late to begin training at the community-college level-two years of community college are not enough when so many academic deficits are already likely to have been accumulated in high school by such students. It is time to recreate and update the teaching of vocational skills in high school.