Vocational education, now called Career Technical Education (CTE), emphasizing STEM, has always been important for students who are not college-bound or want skills outside of traditional coursework. Done well, this preparation can lead to vital, well-paying jobs that young people find exciting.
However, for some time, CTE has tracked K-12 students using school data. For years, much ado (primarily bogus) has been made about public education’s failure to adequately prepare students for the workforce and about the need for remaking high school.
This has pushed children to work earlier than ever, and public schools are being made to look like industry prep. For example, “Let’s Align High School to Workforce Needs.” Even though there’s uncertainty about what those jobs will be.
Why? Shouldn’t children and teens get to develop and enjoy learning while exploring many subjects (including CTE) to find their desired job, then or even later, at a community college or university? When did it become acceptable to push kids into the workforce early?
Becoming An Oliver Twist Nation
While not directly related to CTE, alarmingly, many states are loosening child labor laws, generating fears of companies exploiting children, and enabling adults to think it’s fine to let children get work experience in what are often age-inappropriate settings.
Federal regulations should monitor student safeguards, but the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) add concerns.
There were already serious problems, like 100 children cleaning a packing plant. Who could believe the death of Duvan Pérez, a 16-year-old pretending to be 32 to clean up a poultry factory? But some eagerly want young children to work. A Missouri Republican called kids lazy, claiming they should get jobs at age nine.
Florida Gov. DeSantis and Republicans have pushed to loosen child labor laws, making it easier for sixteen and seventeen-year-olds to work longer hours. Will students replace the hard labor the country has depended upon, now largely accomplished by the hardworking immigrants who, instead of being given an easier path to citizenship, are now deported and imprisoned without due process?
Will such loosened laws open the door to CTE cooperative school-to-work connections?
In 2023, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, which states that children under 16 don’t have to get the Division of Labor’s permission to be employed. The state also no longer must verify the age of those under 16 before they’re hired.
Check your state. Some leaders protect students, while others make it easier to put kids to work.
Future Work for Students
High school students and even kindergartners (See Matthew Stone’s Education Week’s Preparing for the Workforce Can Start as Early as 1st Grade. What It Looks Like) are propelled into job prep.
The idea of workforce-ready 5-year-olds is bizarre. Here’s an example of how this impacts our youngest learners. Here’s Amazon in kindergarten:
“What do you think Amazon does?” asks Andrew Fuller, a data center technician for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to kindergarten classes.
A teacher chimes in, highlighting the importance of the Internet: “Without the Internet, we wouldn’t be able to go on our learning platforms, such as Lexia or IXL, or watch a movie on Netflix or Disney+. All those things need the Internet, and the data centers give us that Internet.”
In general, are public schools shifting too far toward trade schools? This commenter on Reddit notes:
It all seems to be a relatively recent push, when I was in high school there were trade programs but we were still pushed towards college (and admittedly we were sold on an idealized version of a college degree). And I am always sort of side eyeing representatives from companies who come in and basically say “we need workers!”
Rhetoric focused on jobs, not students, abounds. Here’s how one high school administrator puts it:
You may think that high school students are too young to be making a decision about a career, but it is important to remember that your teens can expect to change jobs and careers many times as adults. With that in mind, helping your teens through the process of choosing a career that is a good match will be important in preparing them for that workplace reality. And while your teens may change their minds, the skills that they will learn while in a CTE Pathway, are transferable to other careers later on.
How reassuring is that? Neither are the job descriptions.
Recently, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on CBS’s Face the Nation that there’s going to be an “army of millions and millions of people screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones” in the U.S. as a result of Trump’s trade deals.
Also, what happened to college? Everyone knows students who want to go, and they’re capable. But even state universities are becoming unaffordable, except for the privileged few.
What about Youth Safety?
Cooperative education (co-op) permits high school students to participate in supervised work experiences. Local businesses might offer opportunities for CTE credit. Such programs allow students to obtain credit by working in the community. Could students be fulfilling a need for lesser-paid help? Students are paid, or they’re not.
Arrangements might involve safety regulations, but are they good enough, especially, as noted earlier, with the Trump administration’s job-cutting changes to OSHA?
Are safety rules clearly stated to avoid dire consequences?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2022, 96 young workers—under the age of 20—died as the result of work-related injuries in 2022. And 2022 is not an outlier year; an average of 92 of these young workers have died every year since 2018.
Note that teens have physical and cognitive limitations due to age, making them work differently from adults. They may also not speak up to express work-related concerns or ask questions.
A rising junior student lost their legs while working for a large construction company in southwestern Washington. This was part of a summer class credit school program.
Here’s a list of hazards on the job, examples of real stories of accidents, and resources.
Partnerships and Charter Schools
For years, students have been pushed into work early, while school administrators seek funding from partners, which often comes with a price.
When Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin took over, state public schools were rated high. Youngkin, whose education leader is from the Data Quality Campaign, couldn’t get charter schools passed by Democrats, so Virginia’s university system came on board. Now, lab schools (charters) drive industry and don’t appear to focus mainly on students’ hopes for their chosen career.
Additionally, a 2021 Salon report describes how Amazon, Ford, and Cisco moved into several Virginia high schools, changing curricula for their corporate needs, replacing teacher autonomy, and narrowing coursework offerings. Such corporate agendas also remove the democratic ownership of schools by the people.
“Community partnerships are essential to help CTE programs benefit local economies,” says how students fill corporate and local business needs when they can’t fill jobs. Some fear corporations use this playbook to keep costs low while controlling public education with workforce propaganda.
Are public schools now corporate worker-prep institutions that supply companies with cheap labor while privatizing public education?
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Providing CTE is critical for students as long as it is focused on their needs, safety, and what they want to do for their careers. It should be age-appropriate, and children shouldn’t be used for cheap labor in the guise of work-related experience. Strict labor laws are still necessary to protect America’s kids.
How will students find what career they like and are good at? What will the future hold for our youth? We should all be asking those questions.
Reference
Stone, M. (2024, Ocober 22). Preparing for the Workforce Can Start as Early as 1st Grade. What it Looks Like. Education Week, Retrieved From https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/preparing-for-the-workforce-can-start-as-early-as-1st-grade-what-it-looks-like/2024/10.
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