By Brenda Preuss
Since the early 1980s, educational decision making has increasingly been taken out of the hands of educators and put into the hands of government and corporate bodies. This has led to the new vocationalism of the 1990s — a development that is destroying the traditional curriculum of schools and a sign that truly educational ends are to be disregarded in favour of economic ones.
Curriculum is more than just a collection of subjects to be covered. It also includes every aspect that influences schools, from the communities around them to teaching methodology.
The traditional curriculum is very rich and comprehensive. The classroom is a child-centred place where teaching and learning are based on the interests and needs of students. It is also a place where understanding replaces mere remembering, and individuality and creativity are encouraged and supported.
In addition, the arts and the social sciences share the timetable with more conventional areas of language, mathematics and science. Hence, the traditional curriculum provides students with a qualitatively broad range of experiences.
Vocationalism, on the other hand, has direct links with economic rhetoric. As Australia's economy flounders, industry, unions and governments have already united to influence educational policy-making, "often to the extent that education outcomes and corporatist philosophy become one and the same" (J. Sachs, Australian Journal of Education).
Generally, vocationalists emphasise the acquisition of broadly based skills which prepare students for a productive place in the workforce and provide for ease of movement between jobs. This very narrow view of education carries the strong possibility that any other skills or knowledge which are not seen as economically relevant will be devalued and perhaps disposed of altogether.
A highly skilled and trained workforce is said to be a necessity in an increasingly competitive and technological world. However, although a few more jobs will be created requiring higher levels of skill, the majority of new jobs will be in low skilled areas: the more sophisticated machines become, the less knowledge is required to operate them. Automation breaks work tasks down into smaller sub-tasks and leads to widespread deskilling.
The New Right vocationalists can see only the need for flexible, reliable, responsible, compliant and self-disciplined workers. The traditional curriculum goes much further, attaching great importance to developing the interpretive and critical ability to use skill and knowledge in an independent and measured way. The teaching profession will not escape deskilling either. As state and national control over the curriculum increases, there is a matching decrease in teacher responsibility. When teachers no longer have to employ such skills as planning and evaluating, these skills will atrophy.
Standardised testing will only intensify the problem. The tendency to "teach to the test", combined with deskilling, is likely to lead to teaching no longer being regarded as a professional occupation.
Within the traditional curriculum, there are quite a number of programs, initiatives and strategies aimed at improving opportunities for disadvantaged socio-cultural groups. However, the type of curriculum standardising advocated by vocationalists will inevitably undermine the opportunities afforded to children of non-elite groups. A standard curriculum does not acknowledge that children from different socio-cultural backgrounds have distinctive educational needs. Through the narrowing of education according to the interests of dominant groups, the existing social order is preserved.
One of the characteristics of democracy is an inclusive curriculum in which everyone has the opportunity to compete. Moves towards an economically determined education system are a serious infringement of this basic right. A commitment to democracy would mean positively responding to the broad range of backgrounds and needs in order to produce at least some measure of social mobility and quality of life.
A commitment to democracy would also mean that schools would have an equal say in matters of educational decision making, as was once the way when the traditional curriculum was still intact. The new vocationalism is undermining this manifestation of democracy too.
The new vocationalism is based upon economic relevance, productivity and competitiveness. It serves the immediate needs of industry, and makes competition, measurement and comparability of students central. It is about preparing students for employment; education is regarded simply as a means to an end.
In the traditional curriculum, knowledge is more of an end in itself, or the end is schooling that produces a critical awareness and understanding of society and one's place within it.
The humanities and social sciences are an important part of the traditional curriculum, but vocationalism pits maths and science against the humanities and does not leave much space in the timetable for the latter. What a great loss it would be if schools stopped turning out individuals with an appreciation of past events, the world as a whole and things like sport, leisure, the arts and literature. How well could such a narrowly educated society function in an increasingly complex world?
As vocationalism gains momentum, ideals of developing a more rational, just, productive, educative and democratic Australian society disappear. Egalitarian values are replaced by the interests of elite groups.
In the race to put the national interest first, the public interest and a better life for all have been neglected. Somewhere along the line, schooling priorities and practices have become misdirected. They now revolve around technological and economic relevance rather than social and ethical values. We are heading towards an education system that merely adapts to each new trend rather than one which identifies and even anticipates socio-cultural problems that require urgent attention — an education system that follows instead of leads.