A Brief History of Career and Technical Education in the U.S.

A Conversation with Yavapai College President, Dr. Lisa B. Rhine

by Andrew Johnson-Schmit for TG Magazine

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin recognized Americans needed a new kind of education as early as 1749. He joined with other colonial leaders to create the Academy and College of Philadelphia in 1749.

The goal of the school was to teach useful and practical work skills. Previously, schools were based on the European model which emphasized Latin, Greek and religion. These early schools were finishing schools for gentlemen and church leaders.

As president of the Academy’s board of trustees, Franklin drew up a constitution that emphasized the sciences and languages needed for a frontier society. The new school turned out engineers, surveyors, doctors, and business leaders.

These graduates not only helped establish their trades in the New World, but they also gave back to the new Republic. Twenty-one members of the Continental Congress and nine signers of the Declaration of Independence were either alumni or trustees of the school.

Debate about the best way to educate students – whether to focus on classical or vocational subjects – has been an ongoing discussion for years.

During the Revolutionary War, the school split into two different ones, each emphasizing a different approach. Eventually, the two schools came back together and became the basis of the University of Pennsylvania.

As the new country went through its early growing pains, business leaders realized that the traditional British model of apprenticeships was not working. In Europe, a master craftsman

would take on one or more young workers and teach them his craft over several years. In the 1800s, a growing country needed more skills taught and needed them taught more consistently.

Today, it’s hard to remember how revolutionary the idea of universal education, or public school for all young citizens, was. One of the key issues driving that idea was the need to create a continuous stream of workers. Mechanic Institutes sprang up in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

In Maine, the Gardiner Lyceum offered a mix of training in the mechanic arts and liberal education including logic, modern trade languages, and public speaking. While that may sound like a regular community college to us, in 1823, it was a new and unusual approach to raising the amount of knowledge in a community.

The late 1800’s marked the emergence of vocational education, which would become the Career and Technical Education (CTE) we know today.

American factories, railroads, and farms were changing the way the world approached productivity. New methods, new markets, and new machinery called for trained manpower. This need was met by a new kind of education called The Manual Training Movement.

Prior to this movement, teaching trade skills was mostly taught in a “do as I do” approach with a master tradesman. In 1879, Victor Della Vos came up with the idea of breaking work down into tasks and sub-tasks. He suggested teaching the easiest tasks first and then increasingly difficult ones to build on the knowledge and success of earlier classes.

John D. Runkle, from the brand-new Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), thought this new approach could really speed up the teaching of tool work. He convinced MIT to create a combination of lectures and hands-on training. Soon MIT was turning out graduates who were educated in both the theoretical and practical aspects of the machines they worked on.

If this would work for people already in the workforce, Calvin M. Woodward at St. Louis’ Washington University thought, it might work even better for high school students preparing to go into the workplace. He created the Manual Training School of Washington University and started interviewing prospective students.

In 1880, factories were the cutting edge of technology in the workplace. The St. Louis Manual Training School was swamped with applications. Woodward and his teachers whittled their application list down to 50 of the best and brightest.

On September 16, 1880, this pioneering manual training school opened its doors. Students entered the building under a sign with the school’s motto that read, “Hail to the skillful cunning hand! Hail to the cultured mind! Contending for the World’s command, here let them be combined.”

These school’s first graduates came into their own as the nation geared up to enter World War I. Factories had to be built and manned at a pace never seen before. Fortunately, the Manual Training School graduates were used to picking up new job skills and building on old ones at a rapid pace. This was a work force ready for a dizzying array of new manufacturing methods.

The five decades after that might be considered the First Golden Age of Career and Technical Education. Between the world wars, educators built on the lessons of the wartime economy. Every manufacturing job was taken apart and studied to determine the easiest way to teach its skills. For the first time, schools were designed to transition students from one industry to another.

World War II caused a surge in CTE as even more technical skills were needed for defense purposes. When that war ended, there was a massive change as soldiers and sailors came home ready to get out of uniform and into work that paid better and challenged them in ways they hadn’t experienced previously. CTE programs exploded in popularity post-war. The GI Bill made CTE possible for people who’d never imagined they could complete an education past the high school level.

The popularity of CTE began to slow in the 1970’s as manufacturing began to change in America. Education funding began to shift from vocational programs to purely academic programs. Part of this was the shift of major manufacturing companies from local production to overseas production.

The educational theory of that time held that the only economic safety was in an academic degree because you can’t “offshore” knowledge or creativity. Also, several studies done in that time period seemed to show that people with Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BS) degrees made more money than people with two-year CTE degrees. However, studies began to show data that seemed to indicate the reverse.

People with CTE degrees finished school and entered their fields two or more years ahead of people getting BA/BS degrees.During those years when the person with aCTE degree was in the workplace and the person going for a BA/BS degree was still in the classroom, the person with a CTE degree was already making money and moving ahead in their field. This gave them a head start on their careers. And, people with CTE degrees emerged from school with significantly less student loan debt in a market with more job possibilities.

Technologies and industries shifted over time. It became apparent that people with CTE degrees could adapt and change better with new technology and work methods than people with only high school degrees and, in some cases, people without the classroom and hands-on model of education that is the core of CTE.

As it turns out, our communities are supported by many kinds of skilled trades that depend on workers who’ve either done lengthy apprenticeships or have completed a CTE program combined with real-world work experience. As skilled workers began to retire, communities began to depend more and more on younger workers coming out of CTE programs.

Many industries also began to develop factories in America that depended on workers who could work smarter and more flexibly. Rather than do the brute work of early factory workers, this workforce programmed and maintained robots, managed complicated logistics systems or created very individualized goods and services that depend on technological savvy.

Workers educated in CTE programs are open to these challenges in a unique way that has been true ever since Benjamin Franklin suggested the approach back in the 1700s. When it comes to connecting students with the knowledge that empowers them to get ahead, CTE is the right tool for the job.