SCHOLARS have identified various goals of education. These goals are never static; they keep changing with changes in society and societal needs. Meeting the demands of the world of work appears to be the most noticeable goal of education at the moment. This is what I call vocationalising education. Another name for this alignment between education and the job market is economisation of education.
Consciously or unconsciously, I have found myself confronting this neoliberal agenda in education. I would like to reflect on the nature of this encounter and explore how I have landed here.
I am currently supervising two PhD projects which address research problems in technical and vocational education and training, TVET. One project is located in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi PhD scholar is investigating social perceptions of TVET in his country. It is assumed that the prevalent negative social views work as barriers to the flourishing of this education. The second project is by a PhD scholar from Indonesia who is examining the question of language as a medium of instruction in the TVET sector.
While this article refers to TVET, I am more interested in exploring academic education which is increasingly being informed by TVET goals. This is vocationalising education.
Vocationalisation in Bangladesh has taken many forms. While the TVET sector runs parallel to mainstream education, vocational subjects are also included in the academic curriculum. Moreover, traditional academic subjects are often redefined to meet vocational goals. Approaches such as competency-based curriculum and outcome-based education are impregnated with the vocationalising agenda.
I am not arguing against using education for preparing graduates for jobs. We may no longer afford to indulge in the luxury of knowledge for the sake of knowledge in a bitterly competitive world. Even those devoted to the love of learning and knowledge for its own sake need to have food on the table for them and their families.
However, there is room for critically reflecting on such agenda as part of efforts towards finding best ways of providing technical and vocational education. I do this reflection with my own life as a starting point.
I went to a special residential school for impoverished children in a rural sub-district in Bangladesh鈥檚 North Bengal region. Education in this facility had two parallel streams. One is general education which taught a shorter, customised curriculum. The other is hands-on vocational training in such areas as baking, tailoring, weaving, carpentry and electrical work. The foreign donors of the facility were guided by the philosophy that these students should develop vocational skills which would help them to find work upon graduation from the institution.
I received my vocational training in electrical wiring when I was in Grades 7 and 8. As a teenager, I enjoyed this learning. However, I was more interested in general education. So, I decided to go to a high school in the locality when I left this residential facility. I didn鈥檛 want to choose the career path of an electrician.
My ambition was not in line with the philosophy of the facility. Some officials counselled me against my future dream of education. They explained that as a poor kid coming from a poor family, I wouldn鈥檛 be able to pursue education beyond the secondary level. They concluded that it would be better for me to start my career straightaway as an electrician and support myself and my poor parents. Only much later I discovered that educational choices in Bangladesh, and elsewhere, fell along social class lines.
I encountered vocationalising education when I was in Grades 9 and 10. As I progressed into Grade 9 in a new school, we were told one day that we would have to choose from one of the two vocational subjects. One was woodwork and the other geometry and technical design. I opted for woodwork, as I had a poor foundation in mathematics and geometry.
I don鈥檛 remember how many lessons we had in the woodwork class during the whole school year. However, I didn鈥檛 learn much. In fact, I would call it a waste of time, resources, and the curricular space. My learning was not comparable to my previous training as an electrician. As a Grades 9鈥�10 student, I casually worked as an electrician and earned my pocket money. The woodwork subject was nowhere near giving me a practical skill for earning.
Including vocational courses in the general curriculum has become a common strategy for vocationalising education. However, whether general schools have the infrastructure, teaching expertise and curricular space are questions that warrant serious thinking. Merely giving theoretical knowledge in a vocational course may not prepare students for a career in that field.
My next encounter with vocationalising education is more recent and is related to English language education. English as a global language has become a critical skill for employability. It is no longer viewed as a traditional subject. Examining the vocational potential of English is an important part of my research which falls into an emerging sub-field called the economics of language.
I had the opportunity to work with another Bangladeshi scholar who is currently working as an academic in Scotland. His PhD project examined English as a human capital in secondary education in Bangladesh. He investigated how the human capital agenda through English was transferred from public policy to education policy, curriculum and textbooks and how it was enacted in schools.
The study identified two challenges in vocationalising English in Bangladesh. The first is an educational question. The findings of the study suggested that although the human capital potential of English had a strong articulation in policy, there was limited consideration of how the policy can be translated into teaching practice. Part of the educational question is related to assessment. If English is treated as a human capital that can be invested in the job market, English learning can鈥檛 be assessed using traditional assessment format and criteria. However, these issues do not seem to have been considered in assessment. It can be concluded that English as a capital agenda is strong in policy but weak in implementation. Observers argue that this is a typical problem in the policy process in education and other sectors in Bangladesh.
The second problem is of sociological nature. In encouraging and preparing students for the world of work through English, textbooks have introduced various pedagogical strategies. For example, there are attempts at bringing real world jobs in the classroom. In a lesson in one of the English textbooks, two students share their relatives鈥� job-hunting experiences. It is reported that one relative was able to land a flight attendant鈥檚 job while the other didn鈥檛 succeed to be a receptionist. The textbook asserts that employment success and failure were attributable to the English language: High levels of English leading to success while low proficiency to failure.
However, problems emerge in enacting such lessons in the classroom. The PhD study found that students from upper and upper-middle class families were less interested in participating in such English-employment lessons. This is because their class ambition was higher and didn鈥檛 tally with the rank of flight attendants or receptionists. Therefore, the vocationalising agenda may not be isolated from the class question.
While the vocational goals of education cannot be ignored in a neoliberal world, such agenda need clear and multi-perspectival thinking and doing. Indiscriminate vocationalising may bring more harm than good for students, education and society in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
听
Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education and society in the developing world.
