School to work
Advocates say it will help kids to make a smooth transition to a job. But one opponent calls it a federal power grab.
From Kentucky Citizen Digest, April, 1998

What is wrong with School to Work? Our local, well-meaning chamber of commerce folks, educators, journalists, and parents believe this federal push is merely about helping young people make a smooth transition to careers -- a benign upgrading of vocational education to the 21st Century, Information Age standards.

Unfortunately, the School to Work system is not at all about expanding individual career choices or educating students broadly so they can change jobs many times in a lifetime.

Let’s look at the illegal encroachment of the federal government, particularly the Labor and Education Departments, into the shaping of school curricula.

One of the governmental entities created under Goals 2000, the National Skill Standards Board (NSSB), is hard at work preparing to identify and eventually certify the skills necessary for every type of job in the country, from manure spreader to airline pilot.

Recently, the NSSB carved the economy into 16 sectors -- communications, manufacturing, retail sales, construction, etc. -- and will now prepare skill certifications for all the jobs in those sectors. That’s where School to Work comes in: It will teach those skills the government planners say children need to have in the Brave New Millenium. Furthermore, NSSB members have said, according to official board minutes, that they envision their skill certification plan eventually becoming compulsory.

Despite statutory prohibitions against federal dictation of school curricula, the STWOA calls for “all students” to participate in “high-quality work-based experiences” during the school day, to include apprenticeships. ALL students, mind you.

Now, some students might prize the opportunity to serve as apprentices in local industries. But shouldn’t that be optional, not a condition of universal education? And shouldn’t such work be done after school, so that precious class time is spent on learning the basics of language, literature, science and mathematics, and our heritage as Americans?

In Dresden, Ohio, high school students can use two class periods a day to learn basket weaving on the job at a local manufacturing company. The students receive academic credit. The company gets to sell the baskets for a profit.

At Milwaukee’s Hamilton High School, students must choose at grade eight the “career cluster” they will pursue. Thus, for example, a student in the Health and Human Services Cluster studies such profound subjects as food service, fashion and fabrics, parenthood education, and human diversity -- while not being required to take a foreign language. Core subjects like English are integrated into the vocational training.

Suppose by the 12th grade the youngster has decided he or she wishes to be a scientist or a doctor. That’s awfully late to get the credits needed for admission to a top-quality university. In some majority black and Hispanic districts in California, portions of high schools are being turned into hospitality academies or food service academies, and the like. There is a great potential for School to Work to have the most severe impact on minority youngsters, who will be taught that they should not aspire to loftier goals than cleaning tables or toting luggage for the elite.

In Ohio all students must finish their secondary education with a Career Passport (more commonly called a Certificate of Initial Mastery), without which they need not apply for a job. The system is to be geared to industry’s “labor market needs,” and will train students for jobs in accordance with “the state’s workforce development and economic development strategies ...”

School to Work’s infringement on the sovereignty of the family will become increasingly apparent as more and more children receive career counseling in elementary and middle schools. As STW attempts to steer children into slots deemed in the interest of regional labor market and economic development needs, it will become obvious how children are being cheated and deprived of a chance to realize their dreams and achieve their highest potential.

Computerized career inventories are being used in early grades to begin guiding children into career tracks. In Las Vegas, young Ashley Jensen, who has a 4.0-plus GPA, dreams of one day going to work for NASA; but her middle-school inventory says that her choices ought to be between sanitation worker and interior decorator. Another Nevada student aspires to be a veterinarian, but was told by her counselor she ought to become a bartender. Her Christian parents understandably felt that their rights had been trampled; they would not want their daughter to become a server of alcoholic drinks.

In the aftermath of his re-election, our President lectured us in an appearance in Northbrook, Illinois, that we must “no longer hide behind our love of local control of schools ...” It would be healthier for the nation, however, if he and the First Lady got over their love of socialist prescriptions for such services as education and health care. School to Work is going to rob many dreams, not to mention many pocketbooks, before the people finally catch up, rise up, and demand that this hushed takeover of American education be rolled back.

Let’s hope for the sake of our children that repeal comes sooner, not later.

Bob Holland is the editorials editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in Richmond, Virginia.

School to Work injects the federal government deeply and dangerously into shaping the curriculum of American schools. It puts the United States in the camp of regimes that decree what knowledge is “official,” and, even more than that, how that knowledge should be taught, and for what purpose.

School to Work locks students into career tracks much too early, chilling opportunity and killing youthful dreams.

School to Work drastically narrows the curriculum, making it less likely that schools will produce literate, well-rounded generalists who can cope with rapid change in civic life as well as in the workforce.

School to Work is about the servile arts, not the liberal arts. Vocational training can be liberating, but not compulsory training to meet state workforce quotas. That is a form of slavery.

School to Work infringes on the sovereignty of the individual and the family.

School to Work cuts local school boards and state legislators almost completely out of the decision-making loop.

School to Work is part of a managed economy and data-collecting network that poses grave dangers to the liberty and privacy of Americans.

Americans have rejected efforts throughout their history to have the government track their children into jobs satisfying the designs of economic planners. This has been, and remains, the land of boundless opportunity, and Americans like it that way.
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst