I’m currently taking a course on the history of Career and Technical Education (CTE) as part of a certification for my job. This is the third of four required courses that I need to become a certified CTE instructor in Idaho. For those unfamiliar with the term, CTE used to be called simply “vocational education,” but underwent a branding change to try to get around the perception that vocational training was lesser than a “true” higher education. For the most part, these classes have been a waste of my time, but I did find it interesting learning a bit about John Dewey and how he impacted American Education. It’s been quite a while since my last post, so I wanted to share a short essay I wrote for the class on how Dewey’s ideas influenced CTE. Not only do I think Dewey’s ideas shed some light on how American education got to where it is today, but also why CTE is a potential alternative to more traditional (and more highly compromised) pathways of higher education.
Side note: My next longer essay is a reflection on the physics lab courses I’ve taught through the years, and why we teach labs more generally. Stay tuned!
John Dewey and CTE in America
John Dewey is arguably the man most responsible for what is seen as America’s primary contribution to the subject of philosophy: Pragmatism. While Dewey does make contributions directly to philosophical thought, a great many of his ideas are expounded and applied through his philosophy of education. As a pragmatist, Dewey tends to be skeptical of, if not hostile to knowledge that is seen as entirely theoretical or abstract. For this reason, much of Dewey’s work found its way into the conversation surrounding vocational education, or what would become Career and Technical Education (CTE) in America.
Dewey’s Educational Philosophy
Dewey’s ideas about education are best summarized as being highly focused on experiential learning while being leery of anything that was purely cognitive (Hicks, 2010). Dewey’s emphasis on the practical had implications for both the purpose of education and the optimal practices for education. In essence, Dewey believed that education was a lifelong process (rather than a period of training) the purpose of which was to make oneself fit for democratic society. Being influenced by Karl Marx, Dewey believed that class struggle was the primary driving force behind the social ills of the world1, but unlike Marx, Dewey believed that this class struggle could be resolved through education rather than a class revolution. In The History and Growth of Career Technical Education in America, Gordon and Schulz argue that,
John Dewey (1916) argued that education should use a critical democratic approach to raise student consciousness about values, attitudes, and worker responsibilities2.
This sentiment of “consciousness raising” would be echoed in later Marxist thought—specifically in Antonio Gramsci’s conception of “cultural hegemony3” and Paulo Freire’s generative themes method of raising critical consciousness in education4. While it might be prudent to ask the question about which values, attitudes, and responsibilities would be raised in this model, the most easily inferred answer is simple: Dewey’s. A quote from Dewey demonstrates how he thought education should mold someone into the right kind of person:
[Proper Vocational Education] would react upon intelligence and interest so as to modify, in connection with legislation and administration, the socially obnoxious features of the present industrial and commercial order5.
With such “socially obnoxious features” naturally to be determined by Dewey and those who shared his ideas. For Dewey, the developmental focus of education is not cognitive ability, nor even the acquisition of employable skills (though he believed that both were elements of education), but on socialization—the process of converting a child into a citizen fit to live in a democratic society. What exactly this means is open to debate (even among Pragmatists), but it did lead to some very particular policy recommendations from Dewey when it came to vocational education in America.
Dewey’s Contributions to CTE
Dewey’s conception of education led him to be highly critical of the so-called “Dual System” approach to vocational education. The Dual System involved having education be compartmentalized into two separate and distinct tracks, one for academic or cognitive training, and one for vocational or skills-based training. While Dewey did argue that such a system would needlessly duplicate many elements such as facilities, classrooms, and equipment for each component, I believe that he primarily objected to the Dual System on the basis that it was at odds with his fundamental ideas about the purpose of education.
Writing in 1915, Dewey argued,
…that a separation of trade education and general education of youth has the inevitable tendency to make both kinds of training narrower, less significant and less effective the schooling in which the material of traditional education reorganized to utilize the industrial subjective matter – active, scientific and social—of the present day environment6.”
Later in the passage he indicates why he would not be in favor of such a separation of vocational and cognitive training:
The kind of vocational education in which I am interested is not one which will “adapt” workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that. It seems to me that the business of all who would not be educational time-servers is to resist every move in this direction, and to strive for a kind of vocational education which will first alter the existing industrial system, and ultimately transform it7.”
Essentially, Dewey was saying that the Dual System would prevent education from making the kinds of social changes that he believed were essential.
Dewey’s Impact on Modern CTE
At a surface level, CTE in America seems to have accepted a portion of Dewey’s argument that a complete separation of vocational and academic education is not the best course of action. Today, we see many CTE programs as a part of larger universities and nearly all have a level of general education requirement for their students. The idea is that pursuing a vocational track should not cut students off from pursuing an academic path either during or after their vocational training.
However, I would argue that Dewey’s largest impact on CTE is not the ideas that were incorporated, but on those that were rejected. In the modern era of higher education, nearly every student has a sense that social activism is an essential element associated with colleges and universities. Whether as a participant, an observer, or an inconvenienced bystander, the majority of modern students of higher education have some kind of experience with campus protests, university policy advocacy, or student organizations pushing for some kind of social change. I believe that this incorporation of activist methods to transform society can be traced directly to Dewey’s influence (though I suspect that the form of such transformation agents is different from what Dewey would have expected).
While certainly not entirely absent within CTE, the advocacy for social causes tends to be significantly more temperate, and, where present, the role of such activism is subordinate to the acquisition of skills and preparation for employment that are the primary emphases of CTE. While there is certainly more investigation to be done into the why of this state of affairs, it does seem clear that CTE in America is not primarily interested in “transforming the world,” but in preparing students for the world.
Dewey’s Alignment with How I Teach
While it would be disingenuous for me to say that none of Dewey’s thinking has been incorporated into my teaching today (Dewey’s criticism of the Dual System is at least partially why Technical General Education programs, such as the one I teach in, exist), I do view Dewey’s ideas primarily as a cautionary tale for how a lack of fallibilism when implementing a philosophy of education can not only lead to unforeseen consequences, but can derail a system of education.
It is very unlikely that Dewey envisioned students occupying lecture halls and vandalizing property when he advocated for education to be reorganized into a form that would transform society. Essentially, Dewey saw things he didn’t like about the industrialized society of the early twentieth century and believed that the levers of education could be used to mold people into thinking the same way he did. Essentially, the goal of education for the individual student became an ideological outcome rather than the cognitive capacity and skills to thrive. The intended ideological outcome has changed since then, but the idea that this is the essential purpose of education is very much alive and well. In the last century of education, there has been a substantial shift focus towards “the transformation of society.” This has led to more and more graduates of higher education who not only care more about activism than they do about productive work but also lack the skills necessary to justify the debt they incurred for the experience.
I view this as an important warning to be cognizant of when I teach: it is not my purpose to turn my students into instruments who will shape society into the way I think it should be shaped. I find the idea that I can predict the unintended consequences of transforming society through social conditioning of children to be beyond hubristic, but more importantly, my role is to help my students become competent to make their own way. Of course, it is impossible for me to separate myself from my values while in my role as a teacher. But, I have to remember that the most important value for me to adhere to is that I should someone who raises competence in my students, not someone who raises consciousness.
Sikandar, A. (2016). John Dewey and his philosophy of Education. Journal of Education and Educational Development, 2(2), 191. https://doi.org/10.22555/joeed.v2i2.446
Gordon, H. R. D., & Schultz, D. (2020). The history and growth of career and technical education in America: Fifth Edition. Waveland Press.
Gottesman, I. (2016). The critical turn in education. In Routledge eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315769967
Freire, P. (2014). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. https://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Anniversary-Paulo-Freire-ebook/dp/B00M0FQHQO
Dewey, J.C. (1916). Democracy and Education, (p. 316). New York: Macmillan
Dewey, J.C. (1915). Splitting up the school system The New Republic; 28, 42.
ibid
Yes to this especially! "I view this as an important warning to be cognizant of when I teach: it is not my purpose to turn my students into instruments who will shape society into the way I think it should be shaped. . . . I have to remember that the most important value for me to adhere to is that I should someone who raises competence in my students, not someone who raises consciousness."