OD 012 956 AUTHOR TITLE Strategies; Mass Control; *Social Vocational Education Ability to Adapt the Environment to His Appreciat
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 068 595 OD 012 956 AUTHOR Gordon, Edmund W. TITLE Broadening the Concept of CareerEducation. PUB DATE Sep 72 NOTE 15p. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29 DESCRIPTORS *Career Education; Communications;*Cultural Factors; Educational Development; EducationalNeeds; *Educational Objectives; EducationalPhilosophy; Educational Planning; EducationalStrategies; Mass Media; Secondary Education; SelfControl; *Social Change; *Technological Advancement;Vocational Education ABSTRACT The advanced technology of moderncommunications has created a condition in which thecontradictions of complex social orders, the atrocities ofinterpersonal, intertribal, and international conflicts, theinequities inherent in practicallyall of our social systems, as well asthe richness of our culturaland technical accomplishments constantlybombard the human spirit with relentless assault and stimulation.Human beings, accustomed to far simpler social environments, havereacted to these inputs with habituation or adaptation. As theseinputs increase in complexity and intensity, the process of habituationis likely to accelerate and the processes of adaptationmust become more complex. Undersuch capacities the survival of man willincreasingly depend on his capacity to use his intellectual powerto adapt to his changing environment as well as on hisability to adapt the environment tohis special needs. Such capacities arelikely to be the product of learning experiences designed tocultivate the mind and spirit of man in ways which combine competencein the use of knowledge, compassionate and empatheticappreciation of values, and masteryof selected skills. It is then thesethree which must comprise the dimensions of career education --education which prepares for continued progress in the life of a person.(Author/3M) FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO- OUCEO EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIG- INATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OR OPIN. IONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDU CATION POSITION OR POLICY. Broadening the Concept of Careereducation by Edmund W. Gordon Professor of Education Teachers College Columbia University New York, N. Y. September 1972 *4. I 1 In a paper which has reached much toolimited an audience, Mar land has made an eloquent plea for the expansion andenhancement of the comprehensive high school to insure that all youngpeople leave the secondary school with generic competence in general educationand specific mastery of some area of vocational education.The paper speaks primarily to the need forthe develop- ment of assessment instrumentsand procedures by which such competenceand mastery may be measured andrecorded. However, it is in this paper(written in about 1968) that Mar land used the term careerentry to refer to the transi- tion from the truly comprehensivehigh school to post high school studyand/or work. Implicit in that paper is a concernfor the achievement of a high degree of syrmnetry in the attention given tointellectual and vocational development. Both were seen as crucial elements inthe educational process but the latter had traditionally been given second class status.The oppor=tunities for the schools to reward wider varieties of talent, todevelop curricular that had greater relevance for a wider range ofpupils and at the same time to contri- bute to the nation's pool of trained laborwere given emphasis.It is out of this kind of thinking that the current concernwith Career Education, also introduced by Marland, has emerged. Three factors, however, have contributed to aprevailing view of career education which is too narrow.First, we have traditicr.ally considered all basic education which includes vocational skillmastery as a specific goal to be vocational education. Second, in aneffort at redressing the balance to give greater status to preparationfor work, the employability potential 2 2 of the products of career education hasbeen overemphasized.Third, the traditional reservations held by academiciansfor anything that smacks of vocational edUcation has enabled experts invocational education to preempt early developments in the emergenceof career education. In the review of much of the contemporarythink ing relative to career education, one finds a heavy emphasis given to concernfor vocational educa- tion and development. As recently as1971, in searching the Educational Index for references to career education, oneis referred to vocational education as if the terms are synonymous.In some discussions of the con- cept, career education takes on differentmeanings depending on the level of schooling at which it is introduced. Forexample, in the primary grades career education would involveintroduction to some of the categories of work experience available in the immediatecommunity; in the middle grades youngsters are likely to be exposed to guestswho are representatives of varieties of vocations.It is also at that level that some attentionmight be given to attitudes toward work and exposure to someof the tools and instru- ments associated with categories of work. Atthe high school level youngsters would be expected to master the skills of atleast one marketable occupation. There have been some efforts at broadening the concept so asto include college bound as well as non-college bound pupils.In this scheme it is pro- posed that effort be directed at the achievement ofcompetencies in the content of general education as well as mastery of amarketable skill.Graduates of such programs (very much like the comprehensivehigh school) could go on 3 5 of man's labor from idiosyncraticnuturance and crafting tohomogeneous and repetitious manipulation.Cybernetic era may not only completelychange the nature of man's work butcould eliminate work as anessential human education function.The implications of thesechanges will greatly influence and practically all other aspectsof our society. As societies become morecomplex and congested, political processes become more intricate and therequirement for politicalizationbecomes almost essential to survival.The growing political awarenessand social action of significant segmentsof the society is but a reflectionof this pheno- menon. As a result ofthis politicalization and other pressures,patterns of social organization are in aconsiderable state of flux with oldfoci and insti- tutions giving way to new andsometimes none. In addition,institutional ties are being severedand alienation is prevalent. Inthis period of increasingly rapid change, old values aresurrendering to new, contradictionsbetween professed and practical values arebecoming more obvious, and conflicts between values are more disruptive.Among the contradictions none is more obvious than the fact of hunger andpoverty in the midst of affluence.This discrepancy in the distribution ofsociety's wealth is maintained by ourtechno- 3 logical developments that havebroaght us to a point where ourpotential pro- ductivity is almost unlimited.Such conditions in Cle presence ofhigh economic potential could become the basis forradical changes in the political economy of the nation.Prediction of the direction of changeis difficult, but the existence of such circumstances makeobsolete many aspects of traditionalcultures as well as the current predominanttrend toward political and socialconservatism. 6 To enable our educational efforts to matchthe demands of these develop- ments, attention must be focused on remodelingthe concepts and structure of education so that schools of the future will not onlybe more appropriately aligned with the needs of that future society, but will alsobe a positive force in facilitating societal transition.The vast amount of knowledge available to man, together with the demands ofthe advanced technology by which our society moves will require of our student-future-citizensskill in the manage- ment of knowledge; just as changes in the politico-socialsphere will make more necessary than ever before competenciesand skill in intrapersonal management and interpersonal relations. A society which approaches education with these concerns might appro- priately give attention to five specific educational goals. 1. Mastery of basic communication skills: Education for all in our society must be built upon the mastery of basic skills in symbolic representa- tion and utilization.The survival tools of the cybernetic era are communica- tion skills including speech, reading, writing and arithmetic computation. 2.Problem solving: The movement from anxiety, confusion and disorder to problem formulation involves competence in the analysis of dataand exper- ience leading first to problem identification followed by competence in the synthesis of concepts and postulates to the end that strategic approaches to problem solution may be generated. 3.The management of knowledge; Knowledge of the physical, biological, and social sciences is so vast as to preclude complete content nasteryby any single person.Knowledge of the dimensions of these fields, mastery of 7 important. Al- priority.At another time, the roleof producer may be most though the assignment ofpermanent pre-eminence to any oneof these roles In must be avoided, temporaryemphasis on one or another maybe justified. that sense some concernwith vocational education maybe justified since the vocational role is one forwhich we must prepare (atleast in the immediate development may be inappropriatefor future).However, vocational skill long-term goal fulfillment.It