Education for Social Class and Vocation
Education for Social Class and Vocation
What special education serves
- Specialties tied to social class.
- Specialties tied to a vocational group.
- Both at once.
Education for social class
- Trains the young of a group in the outlook and conduct of privileged adults.
- Can produce a dual education system, one track for an elite and one for the public.
- Even with a single ladder, the upper step can reflect a privileged origin.
Education for vocation
- Correlated with the needs of a particular socio-economic level.
- Not always class education: an open-door system lets anyone gain the knowledge and skills.
Special education trains people for the specialties of a culture, but specialties come tied to two things: a social class, a vocational group, or both. The kind of special education a society runs reveals a great deal about how open or closed that society is.
Education for social class
In a society with a social elite, education can be focused on training the immature members of that group in the special points of view and patterns of conduct of its privileged adults. The aim is to reproduce the class: to make the next generation share the outlook, manners, and behaviour the class wishes to maintain.
Private schools are often evidence of this. Their existence can signal an elite class with a particular outlook, polite manners, and behavioural patterns it wants to pass on intact. Where this happens, it can lead to a dual education system: one track for the elite class and another for the general public.
Even societies that lean democratic, with a single educational ladder for everyone, are not free of this. In such systems the curriculum of the upper step can still reflect a privileged origin. The ladder is shared, but its higher rungs may carry the marks of the class that shaped them.
Train a group’s young in the outlook and conduct of its privileged adults
It reproduces the class across generations. Its clearest evidence is a dual education system, though even a single ladder can have an upper step that reflects a privileged origin.
Education for vocation
The second kind of special education is for vocational or professional purposes. It is correlated with the needs of people at a particular socio-economic level, preparing learners for the work that level involves. Sometimes it is hard to tell apart from education designed to fit a person into a particular social position, because work and class often run together.
An example shows the overlap. Where the children of an upper class attend particular schools and are trained for upper-class vocations, the education prepares them for senior government posts, diplomatic service, and high industrial or bureaucratic positions. Here vocational education and class education are nearly the same thing.
But the two are not always one. All vocational education is not class education. A social system with an open-door policy for all occupations offers every individual, regardless of race, belief, or social background, the chance to acquire the knowledge and skills they want. In an open system, vocational education becomes a ladder anyone can climb rather than a wall that keeps classes in place.
No. An open-door system keeps vocation separate from class
Vocational education tied to an elite’s positions blurs into class education. But where any individual can acquire the knowledge and skills regardless of background, vocation becomes a ladder open to all.
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