Schooled to Work

In this trenchant interpretation of the rise of vocational education, Herbert M. Kliebard explains how Americans turned to public schools for answers to the problems of an increasingly urban, industrial society. Tracing the evolution of job training as an educational ideal, Kliebard analyzes the construction of vocationalism through three overlapping but distinctive stages. In the first stage, manual training is promoted as a pedagogical reform and moral corrective. In the second stage, vocational training for the new industrial workplace emerges as a major component of the American curriculum and contributes to its bifurcation. In the final stage, preparation to enter the workforce begins to eclipse other educational purposes. Concluding with a Deweyan critique of vocationalism, this book offers a much-needed perspective with which to view current debates about the meaning of public education and the transition from “school to work.”

Herbert M. Kliebard is a Professor in the Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“In this lucid and wisely critical book Herbert Kliebard shows what Americans have hoped to gain by vocationalizing public schools and what they have lost in the process. The controversies, the politics, and the people come alive. He has once again given us the gift of perspective.”
David Tyack, Vida Jacks Professor of Education and Professor of History, Stanford University

“This volume is certainly the most comprehensive account of vocationalism in American education, with all its accomplishments and disappointments. It traces the complex evolution since the late 19th century of vocationalism—not only the emergence of vocational education, but the deeper idea that the fundamental purpose of all education should be occupational preparation. All sides, from those promoting “the workforce of the 21st century” to those bemoaning the decline of political and intellectual goals, should understand this history as well as Kliebard’s Deweyan critique.”
W. Norton Grubb, David Gardener Chair in Higher Education, University of California--Berkeley

“The leading historian of curriculum of his generation, Herbert M. Kliebard deftly uses history to help us understand a host of enduring problems first raised in the nineteenth century, when markets and industry redefined the economic basis to American society….This book is the starting point for anyone curious about the perennial questions surrounding the nature of work and education in American culture.”
From the Foreword by William J. Reese