An Overview of Workforce Education Programs in The U.S.
A Monograph Prepared by Students and Instructor in EVT 7267 Vocational-Technical Education Program Planning and Evaluation
University of South Florida
Department of Leadership Development
Fall 2000
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 The Role of Work In Contemporary Society 3
Anthony Hill
Chapter 2 The United States Economy: Jobs vs. Workers 16
Judy Hudson
Chapter 3 Special Population Workforce Education Considerations 29
Daryla R. Bungo
Chapter 4 Career and Work Awareness in Elementary Education 37
Diane W. Culpepper
Chapter 5 Workforce Education in the Middle Grades 52
Kimberly Clemons
Chapter 6 Workforce Education At The High School Level 61
William Blank
Chapter 7 Career Preparation at The Post-Secondary Level 96
Tom Loveland
Chapter 8 Workforce Education In Alternative Settings 109
Jeanette Phipps
Chapter 1
The Role of Work In Contemporary Society
Anthony Hill
Before exploring trends in the U.S. job market and examining programs in schools aimed at career development and preparation, we first need to examine the concept of work itself. This chapter will explore the meaning of work in contemporary society and examine how society’s concepts of work have influenced workforce education in the U.S. The linkages between community, family and the development of youth within this contemporary society will also be explored. The meaning of work will be analyzed through a historical context; what work has become over time including the family and community as both relate to youth development in contemporary society.
The Puritan Work Ethic In Historical Perspective
The Puritan Work Ethic might have been just an ideal that never really existed. The meaning of work in contemporary society must be framed in the correct perspective. The first half of this chapter will take a brief historical look at the meaning of work in North American culture. The second half will focus on work education, community, and family involvement in youth development from several view points.
From the very first colonial settlement, American labor has been recruited from abroad, from Great Britain, the European Continent, Africa, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from Asia and Latin America. The colonial era was the day of the handcraftsman and the fieldhand. To protect and advance their economic well being, white workers-both master and apprentice, mechanic, and common laborer-formed temporary associations (Morris, 1976, p.1).
American society at the time of the Revolution was based upon farming, fishing, maritime activities, and a sprinkling of small industries. Even as late as the last decade of the 1700’s America was a nation of farmers. The first census (1790) revealed that only 202,000 persons out of a population of 3,929,000 lived in towns of 2,500 or more persons. Recruitment of labor force was essential to satisfy the needs of farmers and to a lesser degree of the maritime trades, also the furnace and workshop industries and the highly skilled crafts (Morris, 1976, p.8).
England was convinced that the homeland was overpopulated and the government encouraged the emigration to America of the unemployed poor and “vagrant” class and also permitted skilled workers to go to the colonies. Free labor remained in short supply throughout the colonial period. As a solution, the English settlers innovated several forms of bound labor for white Europeans and adopted a long established coercive labor system for Black Africans. One form of bound labor, indentured servitude, included all persons bound to labor for periods of years as determined either by a written agreement or by the custom of the respective colony. The bulk of indentured servants comprised contract labor (Morris, 1976, p.11).
The laws of the colonies added another source to meet the large demand for labor. Persons committing larceny, a felony punishable by death in the mother country, were customarily sentenced in colonial courts to corporal punishment and multiple restitution. If unable to make restitution, the prisoner was normally bound out to service by the Court. A second substantial addition to the labor market came from the practice of the courts, which penalized absentee or runaway servants by requiring them to serve as many as ten days free labor for every day's unauthorized leave (Morris, 1976, p.13).
The debtor was an important source of bound labor in the American colonies. Unlike England, the colonies considered imprisonment a waste of labor. Laws were enacted, releasing the debtor from prison to serve the creditor for a period of time sufficient to satisfy the debt (Morris, 1976, p.14).
The apprenticeship program inherited from England, had the twofold objective of supplying the labor market and providing training in a trade. The apprenticing, or binding out, could be "voluntary", by consent of parents or guardians, or involuntary, where local officials did the binding out. According to the terms of apprenticeship, the master was obliged to teach the "mysteries" of the trade to the apprentice, who promised not to reveal the master's trade secrets. The common requirement of reading, writing, and ciphering required the master to provide the apprentice with schooling for at least the first three years. Under the emerging ethos of commercialism, masters preferred to send their apprentices to evening schools to get a general education rather than assume that burden themselves (Morris, 1976, p.p.14-15).
Bound laborers, White or Black, received no wages. Free laborers operated under a system of wage payments as today. An alternative to wage payments was a piece-wage system. Wage earners contracted for employment seasonally or annually. From the beginning, labor was a seller's market. All contemporary authorities agree on the relatively high wages prevailing in the colonies (Morris, 1976, p.17).
Defining Work
The definition of work, as the literature indicates, is subjective within the historical evolution and only some major trends can be mentioned and confined to historical developments in Western countries (Keyser, Quate, Wiepert, & Quintanilla, 1988, p.4).
In ancient Greece the findings discredited the notion of everyday work--especially physical work--which was perceived as a despicable chore mainly of slaves. Socially accepted were only work activities undertaken for the sake of themselves, provided they produce some lasting creation as a symbol of human achievement (Keyser, et al, 1988, p.4)
The Old Testament (Genesis 3:17-19), considers work as hardship imposed by God as a punishment for man's original sin. The redeeming value of work is only of secondary order through sharing the fruits of work with people in poverty and distress. It is through this instrumental characteristic of working that it receives a positive facet in that it contributes to induce God's blessing and benevolence (Keyser, et al, 1984, p.5)
The fundamental retributional character of work is upheld also in Christian traditions where work is conceived as a bonung arduum--a "difficult good" in Thomas Aquinas' teachings because of the challenge to transform and subjugate nature and thus enable man's self-realization according to God's image (Genesis 1:26-27). St. Benedict's order accepted work as a moral, that is an internalized obligation as opposed to an externally induced necessity. This ascetic view is secularized in the guilds of the Middle Ages where work is seen as a practical form of religious service. The Reformation emphasized work as an obligation of duty of particular value owing to its contribution to God's creation. Working was to build God's kingdom; working was good, hard working was even better (Drenth, 1983, p. 9, Keyser, et al., 1984, p.5).
The emergence of manufacturing industries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries imposed new constructs and demands on the proletarian working classes because of the need to organize on higher levels. External coercion, previously sufficient for control, needed to be replaced increasingly by internalized secondary virtues such as subordination, discipline, reliability, punctuality, and loyalty. The secularization of traditional work gets a new boost with the growth of organized labor which supports a new self-image of working man: work as a means to fulfill social and expressive needs and thus contributing to the formation of a new identity (Keyser, et al, 1984, p.5). This subjective interpretation redefinition of work is an unavoidable necessity into a source of positive self-esteem which enables workers to rekindle intrinsic work motivations even under poor working conditions according to Kearn and Schuman (1982).
Definitions and Concepts
As suggested earlier, defining work is a very difficult task because the term has been subjected to many interpretations. The starting point for understanding work is to understand how "work" is defined (Ransome, 1996, p.15). In defining work we consider the term both in terms of its linguistic origins, and in terms of how it has been used to distinguish between various categories of activities. Reference to the Oxford English Dictionary suggests the following definition of "work":
Something to be done, or something to do; occupation, business, task, function. Action involving effort or exertion directed to a definite end, especially as meanings or earning a livelihood, regular occupation or employment. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition pp. 2448-9).
Instantly, certain criteria of the definition can be distinguished. (1) This definition of work encompasses a number of alternative terms used to denote the performance of an activity. (2) This activity is associated with the notion of payment or income. (3) The basic assumption is made that this performance requires the discharge of physical and/or mental energy. (4) There is the expectation that work is some way useful or expedient (Ransome, 1996, pp.16-17).
Taking the four elements action, payment, exertion, and expedience, it will be useful to disentangle the various shades of meaning between 'work' and the related terms 'labor,' 'craft', 'housework', and 'job' and 'occupation' which are commonly used to denote working activity. Raymond Williams makes the argument that "work is the modern English form of the noun WE ORC (Old English) and the verb WYRCAN, (Old English), as our most general word for doing something and for something done (Williams, 1976, pp.281-1). Work in this general sense can be distinguished from the term 'labor', which implies arduousness or 'toil' in the literal sense of doing something laborious: "As a verb, labor had a common sense of ploughing or working the land, but was also extended to other kinds of manual work and to any kind of difficult effort. A laborer was primarily a manual worker." The notion of 'toil' or painful work derives from the Greek terms ponos, meaning pain, toil, trouble or distress, and eris meaning strife. Andre Gorz argues, the notion of labor-as-toil can be associated with the "need for man to produce his means of subsistence 'by the sweat of his brow.'" Thus labor can be defined as "work carried out in order to ensure survival." Gorz also makes the distinction between the realm of necessary activity and the activities of craftworkers:
Until the eighteenth century the term "labour" referred to the toil of serfs and day-laboures who produced consumer goods or services necessary for life which had to be recommenced day after day without ever producing any lasting results. Craftworkers ...did not 'labour' they produced "works," possibly using their "work" the "labour" of unskilled workers whose job it was to do menial tasks. Only day labourers were paid for their "labour". Craftworkers were paid for their "works" (Ransome, 1996, p.17).
In modern society, this notion of endlessly repeated labor or toil can be associated with domestic or reproductive chores understood as activities which individuals undertake in order to complete tasks of which they, or their families, are the sole beneficiaries (Ransome, 1996, p.18).
Firth argues that 'work' denotes the 'expenditure of energy,' but assumes that this expenditure does not give complete satisfaction itself--as recreation may be thought to do--but is the pursuit of some further end! Thus, one may speak of the satisfactions to be gained from work, but not so easily of satisfactions to be gained from labor (Firth, 1979, pp.178-9). A further important extension of the term labor emerged as part of the vocabulary of political economy during the nineteenth century, to encompass a more abstract or general category of socially necessary labor. Williams suggests:
Where labour in its most general sense, had meant all productive work, it now came to mean that element of production which combination with capital and materials produced commodities. (Ransome, 1996, p.18, Williams, 1976, p.146).
The emergence of the more recent terms 'job', 'occupation', 'employment', became part of the dialog. The former originally denoted a particular or specific piece of work in the sense of doing a 'job of work'. As Williams pointed out, the term has come to subsume other terms related to former employment such as situation, position, post, and appointment. What has happened is that a word formerly specifically reserved to limited and occasional employment (and surviving in this sense, as a price for the job...) has become the common word for regular and normal employment. The terms 'occupation' and 'employment' can be regarded as alternatives for 'job', denoting formal and regular paid work. Work has come to be defined as wage-work:
Work has not always existed in the way in which it is currently understood. It came into being at the same time as capitalists and proletarians. It means an activity carried out for someone else; in return for a wage; and for a purpose not chosen by the worker according to Gorz (Ransome, 1996, p.20).
The recent expansion of formal service-sector employment to encompass activities previously regarded as personal housework or unpaid domestic labor, clearly illustrates the increasing use of cash-payment criterion for distinguishing work from non-work. These activities may now be seen in terms of formal public employment rather than in terms of informal private-housework. These developments clearly imply that changes in the application of particular criterion, (in this case that being paid in cash for domestic labor results in a renewed recognition of the usefulness and expediency of this type of activity), can result in significant changes in both the perception of the activity itself, and of the status of those who perform it. This suggests that changes in the definition of work can occur without prior changes in the nature and substance of the activity itself; it is not the activity itself which has changed but the perception that its worth and value justify direct payment.
The payment criterion feeds two more characteristics to the concept of work in contemporary society: (1) Since the early eighteenth century, work has become associated with activities which are performed outside the home; work is public rather than private activity. In his analysis of the emergence of capitalist economic systems, Max Weber attaches great importance to this development as constituting a defining characteristic of “modern” or “rational” capitalism. The modern rational organization of the capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without the separation of business from the household, which completely dominates modern economic life (Weber, 1976, pp.21-2, Ransome, 1996, p.21). (2) Another characteristic of the contemporary definition of work is that within the public sphere, further distinctions are made between formal work in the “official economy” and informal work in the unofficial or “black-market economy.” The formal economy encompasses activities carried out under an agreed contractual arrangement, in a particular time and place, and which are “declared” for the purposes of taxation. The informal economy encompasses activities, which are performed without such arrangements, and are not declared (Ransome, 1996, p. 23).