Vocational School Quotes

While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.

When I was fourteen, I thought a lot about killing myself—it’s a hobby today, but at age fourteen it was a vocation. On a September morning, just after school started, I’d gotten Diane’s .44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. But I thought about Diane, and her coming home to my small torso and a red wall, and I couldn’t do it. It’s probably why I was so hateful to her, she kept me from what I wanted the most.

Daytime television, you can tell who’s watching by the three kinds of commercials. Either it’s clinics for drying out drunks. Or it’s law firms who want to settle injury suits. Or it’s schools offering mail-order vocational degrees to make you a bookkeeper. A private detective. Or a locksmith. If you’re watching daytime television, this is your new demographic. You’re a drunk. Or a cripple. Or an idiot.

She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor. Nothing meant anything. The rooms in the house on Friary Street belonged to her, she thought; when she moved in them she was really there. In the town, if she walked to the shop or to the Vocational School, the air, the light, the ground, it was all solid and part of her, even if she met no one familiar. Nothing here was part of her. It was false, empty, she thought. She closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had done so many times in her life, of something she was looking forward to, but there was nothing. Not the slightest thing. Not even Sunday. Nothing maybe except sleep, and she was not even certain she was looking forward to sleep. In any case, she could not sleep yet, since it was not yet nine o’clock. There was nothing she could do. It was as though she had been locked away.

The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages. As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment. Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive. Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either. School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics. Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements. The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla. Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection. But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation. Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

They're trying to breed a nation of techno-peasants. Educated just enough to keep things going, but not enough to ask tough questions. They encourage any meme that downplays thoughtful analysis or encourages docility or self indulgence or uniformity. In what other society do people use "smart" and "wise" as insults? We tell people "don't get smart." Those who try, those who really like to learn, we call "nerds." Look at television or the press or the trivia that passes for political debate. When a candidate DOES try to talk about the issues, the newspapers talk about his sex life. Look at Saturday morning cartoon shows. Peasants, whether they're tilling fields or stuffing circuit boards, are easier to manipulate. Don't question; just believe. Turn off your computer and Trust the Force. Or turn your computer on and treat it like the Oracle of Delphi. That's right. They've made education superficial and specialized. Science classes for art majors? Forget it! And how many business or engineering students get a really good grounding in the humanities? When did universities become little more than white collar vocational schools?

Dante subsumed everything, and so, in a sense, secularized nothing.

Law firms can create environments for abusive relationships. This is especially true if an attorney has no self-direction, has no independent means of financial support, and has massive student loan indebtedness. You've basically made yourself an indentured servant.

Change cannot and will not happen overnight. But the intent to evolve will produce opportunities for growth.

In the mid-1950s, there were 476,000 pupils in the primary education system, but just 83,000 in secondary and vocational schools, suggesting that more than 80 per cent dropped out of formal education at fourteen, the legal school leaving age.

Because this is an urban church in a downtown neighborhood, it is not so easy to avoid the presence of the poor. We see them. I wonder if that is not part of our vocation, to see the poor, to be the Lord's eyes - because the Lord sees the poor, and he loves the poor, and he sends his people to serve the poor. That is a message that pervades the Scriptures from end to end. There is something seriously out of balance in American Christianity. I am personally opposed to abortion, but there is nothing explicit in the Bible about abortion. There is nothing explicit in the Bible about prayer in the public schools; there is nothing explicit in the Bible about the American flag or the right to have a gun. There are, however, thousands of explicit words in the Bible about justice and compassion for the poor. There are thousands of words in the Bible about defending those who are defenseless.

Therefore, the job you have is your sacred vocation. If you are in school, that is your sacred vocation. One of the ways the enemy of your soul diminishes your imprint on eternity is by getting you to believe the lie that your job is secular and that church stuff is sacred. There is no such thing as the secular/sacred divide.

From first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take in all our clues about living from the people and powers around us.

The one thing that vocational education has always been good at is providing students with obsolete equipment on which they can learn the outmoded skills required for dying occupations. So

The most Christian way to think about our households is that they are little “schools of love,” places where we have one vocation, one calling: to form all who live here into lovers of God and neighbor.

She hasn't been back since, and we have a young per diem substitute who had taught shoes in a vocational high school on her last job. Though her license is English, she had been called to the Shoe Department, where she traced the history of shoes from Cinderella and Puss in Boots through Galsworthy and modern advertising. "Best shoe lesson they ever had," she told me cheerfully. "Until a cop came in, dangling handcuffs: 'Lady, that kid I gotta have.'" To her, Calvin Coolidge is Paradise.

Prior to my second stint in Perpignan, I was a fine diner and as I saw it, food was art. At vocational school, I was being taught how to cook, but I was frustrated by how basic the dishes were. I was like a kid who had grown up listening to Chopin, then showed up at music school, never having actually played an instrument. I mean, when you listen to Chopin all the time, you want to become Chopin. And then you go to music school and all you're doing is plunking out do...re... mi for hours at a time. It's boring as hell, and not why you enrolled. I was impatient to create great meals and not so excited about starting with the basics. Why were we spending hours learning how to hold a knife or mine a shallot when we could be making nouvelle cuisine? True, I didn't know how to cut a chicken in eight pieces or make a bechamel. But in the two- and three-start restaurants I had been to, they were way over the bechamel. Still, there I was, in school, making the most basic of dishes--salade Nicoise, potato-leek soup, an omelette.

All children everywhere will become more skilled in those pursuits that engage their interests and their efforts and that are valued by adults and peers in their environment. Skill develops not only in areas of vocation and avocation but also in the simple activities of living—telling stories, estimating large numbers, handling disputes, instructing a younger person. Which areas show the most improvement, and how rapidly the improvement occurs, will reflect the accidents of culture and individual, but a steady improvement, at least for a while, can be counted upon.

I believe that every one of us here tonight has as clear and vital a vocation as anyone in a religious order. We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher's excitement in leading young people into an expanding imagination. Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe, that we can help our children avoid by providing them with “explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.

He had been a boy who liked to draw, according to my friend, so he became an architect. Children who drew,I learned, became architects; I had thought they became painters. My friend explained that it was not proper to become a painter; it couldn’t be done. I resigned myself to architecture school and a long life of drawing buildings. It was a pity, for I disliked buildings, considering them only a stiffer and more ample form of clothing, and no more important.

You might wonder why a waitress, bricklayer, or doctor—individuals neither born into a warrior heritage nor involved in the profession of arms—would want to think of themselves as warriors in today’s society. One could have asked Funakoshi the same question. If you recall, the warrior caste in Okinawa and Japan were abolished shortly after his birth. He no longer had any legal status as a warrior. In fact, he was a school teacher by occupation. But that didn’t change his identity. He was still a member of an elite part of society. Warriors are special people. Since they understand the concept of honor, they set their ethical standards above most of the rest of society. Since they pattern their lives around the pursuit of excellence, they tend to achieve in their chosen vocations. Why would people in today’s society want to think of themselves as warriors? Because warriorship is an extraordinary and powerful way to live!

Looking at the works of art that are considered worthy of preservation in our Museums, and that were once the common objects of the market place, I could not but realise that a society can only be considered truly civilised when it is possible for every man to earn his living by the very work he would rather be doing than anything else in the world, a condition that has only been attained in social orders integrated on the basis of vocation, "svadharma". At the same time I should like to emphasis that I have never built up a philosophy of my own or wished to establish a new school of thought. Perhaps the greatest thing I have learnt is never to think for myself; I fully agree with Andre Gide that "Toutes choses sont dites deja", and what I have sought is to understand what has been said, while taking no account of the "inferior philosophers". Holding with Heraclitus that the Word is common to all, and that Wisdom is to know the Will whereby all things are steered, I am convinced with Jeremias that the human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the spirit, that there is a "common universe of discourse" transcending the differences of tongues".

The boy, called Urbain, is now fourteen years old and wonderfully clever. He deserves to be given the best of educations, and in the neighborhood of Saintes the best education available is to be had at the Jesuit College of Bordeaux. This celebrated seat of learning comprised a high school for boys, a liberal arts college, a seminary, and a School of Advanced Studies for ordained postgraduates. Here the precociously brilliant Urbain Grandier spent more than ten years, first as schoolboy, and later as undergraduate, theological student and, after his ordination in 1615, as Jesuit novice. Not that he intended to enter the Company; for he felt no vocation to subject himself to so rigid a discipline. No, his career was to be made, not in a religious order, but as a secular priest.

Stanley Woodworth, my high school French teacher, once described the peculiar passion for his own vocation in the following terms: “The joy of teaching lies not in one’s own enthusiasm for the students, or even for the subject matter, but rather for the privilege of introducing the one to the other.” If this is true of French, chemistry, or history, how much more is it true of the pastor’s passion, which is not simply love of God or love of people, but rather the love of introducing the one (people) to the other (God)? The pastor’s special charge is to care for the people of God by speaking and showing and by being and doing God’s truth and love. Success in ministry is determined not by numbers (e.g., people, programs, dollars) but by the increase of people’s knowledge and love of God. This is the only way “to present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).

The student’s biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and- whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don’t whip me, I won’t work." He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him. This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civilization, "the system," is pulled by mules. This is a common, vocational, "location" point of view, but it’s not the Church attitude. The Church attitude is that civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. The purpose of abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man.

Vocational guidance officers speak about scores necessary to get into university, how to calculate them, what band might be needed to get into various institutions, what countries they can offer information on, what courses are available. The post-school future they outline is entirely about getting into a university. There is nothing on alternative futures. The parents around me seem fine with this. Presumably they have academically successful children and have bought into the notion that raising a child is primarily about getting them to pass exams to enable them to be an economically productive unit in society. All those claims of building better humans, of being the best you can be, of following your passion, of learning to be inclusive and that everyone has something to offer, are all lies. It is simply about being a banker, IT or human resource person, sales manager, accountant, or a supportive spouse.

How many times we hear or read of reflections upon the abnormal condition of women, and upon what they ought to be. But these are only vain words. The education of women results from the real and not imaginary view which the world entertains of women’s vocation. According to this view, the condition of women consists in procuring pleasure and it is to that end that her education is directed. From her infancy she is taught only those things that are calculated to increase her charm. Every young girl is accustomed to think only of that. As the serfs were brought up solely to please their masters, so woman is brought up to attract men. It cannot be otherwise. But you will say, perhaps, that that applies only to young girls who are badly brought up, but that there is another education, an education that is serious, in the schools, an education in the dead languages, an education in the institutions of midwifery, an education in medical courses, and in other courses. It is false. Every sort of feminine education has for its sole object the attraction of men.

My wife and I have had the joy of working with thousands of college students and have engaged in countless conversations with them about what they’re going to do as they approach graduation. Up to that point, they had felt safe and secure knowing they were simply coming back to campus for another year of school. But now that they were being kicked out of the nest, they felt a strong need to pray, get counsel, pursue options, and make decisions. As I chat with these twenty-one to twenty-five-year olds, I love to pose an unusual question. “If you could do anything with your life, what would you want to do? Just for a moment, free your mind from school loans or parents’ wishes or boyfriend pressure. Put no constraints or parameters on it. Write down what you would love to do with your life if you got to choose.” There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those! Most have never allowed their mind or heart to think that broadly or freely. They’ve been conditioned to operate under some set of exterior expectations or self-imposed limitations. A few have sat there so long staring at that blank sheet, I thought they might pass out! They finally get an inspirational thought, and begin enthusiastically scribbling something. They finish with a smile, pass it over to me, and I take a look. Nine out of ten times I pass it back to them, look deep into their eyes and quietly say, “Go do this.” There is a reason they feel so excited about the specific direction, cause, or vocation they wrote down. It’s because God is the One who put it in their heart. “Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). “Are you delighting yourself in the Lord?” I ask the graduating senior. “I am certainly seeking to,” they reply. “Well then,” I respond, “you’ve just written down the desires of your heart. So, go for it.” Too simplistic or idealistic? I probably do have a more “wide-open” view of helping a person discover God’s direction for their life, but I believe this exercise strikes at the core of understanding what each of us were designed to do.

Punishment is not care, and poverty is not a crime. We need to create safe, supportive pathways for reentry into the community for all people and especially young people who are left out and act out. Interventions like decriminalizing youthful indiscretions for juvenile offenders and providing foster children and their families with targeted services and support would require significant investment and deliberate collaboration at the community, state, and federal levels, as well as a concerted commitment to dismantling our carceral state. These interventions happen automatically and privately for young offenders who are not poor, whose families can access treatment and hire help, and who have the privilege of living and making mistakes in neighborhoods that are not over-policed. We need to provide, not punish, and to foster belonging and self-sufficiency for our neighbors’ kids. More, funded YMCAs and community centers and summer jobs, for example, would help do this. These kinds of interventions would benefit all the Carloses, Wesleys, Haydens, Franks, and Leons, and would benefit our collective well-being. Only if we consider ourselves bound together can we reimagine our obligation to each other as community. When we consider ourselves bound together in community, the radically civil act of redistributing resources from tables with more to tables with less is not charity, it is responsibility; it is the beginning of reparation. Here is where I tell you that we can change this story, now. If we seek to repair systemic inequalities, we cannot do it with hope and prayers; we have to build beyond the systems and begin not with rehabilitation but prevention. We must reimagine our communities, redistribute our wealth, and give our neighbors access to what they need to live healthy, sustainable lives, too. This means more generous social benefits. This means access to affordable housing, well-resourced public schools, affordable healthcare, jobs, and a higher minimum wage, and, of course, plenty of good food. People ask me what educational policy reform I would suggest investing time and money in, if I had to pick only one. I am tempted to talk about curriculum and literacy, or teacher preparation and salary, to challenge whether police belong in schools, to push back on standardized testing, or maybe debate vocational education and reiterate that educational policy is housing policy and that we cannot consider one without the other. Instead, as a place to start, I say free breakfast and lunch. A singular reform that would benefit all students is the provision of good, free food at school. (Data show that this practice yields positive results; but do we need data to know this?) Imagine what would happen if, across our communities, people had enough to feel fed.

If marriage is the great mystery of the City, the image of the Coinherence - if we do indeed become members one of another in it - then there is obviously going to be a fundamental need in marriage for two people to be able to get along with each other and with themselves. And that is precisely what the rules of human behavior are about. They are concerned with the mortaring of the joints of the City, with the strengthening of the ligatures of the Body. The moral laws are not just a collection of arbitrary parking regulations invented by God to make life complicated; they are the only way for human nature to be natural. For example, I am told not to lie because in the long run lying destroys my own, and my neighbor's nature. And the same goes for murder and envy, obviously; for gluttony and sloth, not quite so obviously; and for lust and pride not very obviously at all, but just as truly. Marriage is natural, and it demands the fullness of nature if it is to be itself. But human nature. And human nature in one piece, not in twenty-three self-frustrating fragments. A man and a woman schooled in pride cannot simply sit down together and start caring. It takes humility to look wide-eyed at somebody else, to praise, to cherish, to honor. They will have to acquire some before they can succeed. For as long as it lasts, of course, the first throes of romantic love will usually exhort it from them, but when the initial wonder fades and familiarity begins to hobble biology, it's going to take virtue to bring it off. Again, a husband and a wife cannot long exist as one flesh, if they are habitually unkind, rude, or untruthful. Every sin breaks down the body of the Mystery, puts asunder what God and nature have joined. The marriage rite is aware of this; it binds us to loving, to honoring, to cherishing, for just that reason. This is all obvious in the extreme, but it needs saying loudly and often. The only available candidates for matrimony are, every last one of them, sinners. As sinners, they are in a fair way to wreck themselves and anyone else who gets within arm's length of them. Without virtue, therefore, no marriage will make it. The first of all vocations, the ground line of the walls of the New Jerusalem is made of stuff like truthfulness, patience, love and liberality; of prudence, justice, temperance and courage; and of all their adjuncts and circumstances: manners, consideration, fair speech and the ability to keep one's mouth shut and one's heart open, as needed. And since this is all so utterly necessary and so highly likely to be in short supply at the crucial moments, it isn't going to be enough to deliver earnest exhortations to uprightness and stalwartness. The parties to matrimony should be prepared for its being, on numerous occasions, no party at all; they should be instructed that they will need both forgiveness and forgivingness if they are to survive the festivities. Neither virtue, nor the ability to forgive the absence of virtue are about to force their presence on us, and therefore we ought to be loudly and frequently forewarned that only the grace of God is sufficient to keep nature from coming unstuck. Fallen man does not rise by his own efforts; there is no balm in Gilead. Our domestic ills demand an imported remedy.

The great irony for a man in my position is how little use I have for organized religion. I am essentially a member of the unchurched. Yet, since high school I’ve felt a strong sense of vocation, a paradoxical longing and belonging which somehow resulted in my becoming a nonreligious religious leader. I was on the very fringe of religion,

Grants to universities doubled, and a federal technical and vocational training program expanded schools and kept hundreds of thousands of students from an overcrowded labour market.

My days were filled with U.S. history and algebra. My nights were spent with history of movement and petite allegros. I might have been your average student during my typical school day, but after school, I was quickly becoming a master teacher. While my friends were looking for a future career in the guidance counselor’s office, I was proving to my colleagues that I had already found my true vocation.

In their early thirties, the most career-invested women and men in the Illinois Valedictorian Project are those who have found deep personal meaning in vocations. Those qualities and conditions that keep students centered on work are different than those that made them high school valedictorian.

Throughout my lifetime as an administrator, I have reached several conclusions regarding the divergence between mediocrity and excellence. One of the most significant differences is how one approaches the six years after graduating from high school. Those, who enhanced education and vocational knowledge during this time period, are more likely to obtain excellence than others who were stagnant. To rise requires self enhancement.

What was the difference between the As and the Cs? Terman ran through every conceivable explanation. He looked at their physical and mental health, their “masculinity-femininity scores,” and their hobbies and vocational interests. He compared the ages when they started walking and talking and what their precise IQ scores were in elementary and high school. In the end, only one thing mattered: family background.

Yes, it is,” Mrs. Gossett agrees. “I don’t know who you think you are. You have lived here for…what…two months? Three? If the students at this school are ever to rise above their upbringing, become productive members of society, they must do it by leaving the past behind. By being practical. By gaining vocational training in some sort of work they are capable of. Most of them are lucky if they can achieve the functional literacy skills needed to fill out a job application. And how dare you insinuate that our family is uncaring in this regard! We pay more taxes to this school district than anyone. We are the ones who employ these people, who make life in this town possible. Who work with the prisons to give them jobs

Everyone needs a skilled mechanic or plumber or electrician they can count on. Over in Germany, they respect blue-collar jobs and sixty percent of their high school graduates choose vocational training. But here in America, our public high schools continue to cut vocational training from curriculums. We look down on blue collar work and push every high school student toward college. One third of all college students drop out entirely without a degree and burdened with student loan debt. Yet there is a growing shortage of skilled labor and millions of jobs going unfilled. Who are you going to call if a pipe bursts in your house or your daughter’s car breaks down on the side of the road? That’s why I believe vocational training is important.

Banco Popular helped to finance a global network of so-called vocational schools that targeted young women, many of them still children, from poor backgrounds and coerced them into a life of servitude for Opus Dei. Many were trafficked around the world to meet the needs of the movement. Robert Wilkinson / Alamy

How is life a shaped? By parentage, siblings, calss and religion, by schooling, vocational choices, by friends, partnerships, children, by place and time, by illness and accident, and sometimes, but most rarely, by surprising choice.

Elizabeth succeeded at last with Record of a School because she was performing a literary version of what she was beginning to recognize as her vocation in life: to nurture and promote the men she admired, helping them to achieve a greater range of action than she could ever hope to attain as a woman. Elizabeth didn’t receive the same recognition from Record of a School that she would have if it had been her school, her theory. But the men whose minds she hoped to capture would not have paid attention to a woman’s book about a girls’ school. And she might never have had the self-assurance to write such a book about a school of her own. Playing the role of facilitator—or “Recorder,” as she referred to herself in later editions—freed Elizabeth first to produce and then to promote the book more vigorously than she ever had one of her own, without appearing unfeminine or immodest in character, an aspect of her reputation that she continued to care about even as she habitually disregarded the niceties of dress. To

Many school programs seem to offer either The Cultural Literacy Track or The Vocational Track. The Cultural Literacy programs are designed for the “smart kids” who are going to go on to ever-higher levels of both education and financial success. This track, with no pretense of being real world, includes classes on classics, foreign languages, and math theory (such as calculus). It is a curriculum based on “teach what has been taught.” The Vocational programs are for the “remedial kids” who are going to have only blue-collar futures if they are in high school (taking classes such as wood working) or inflexible paraprofessional paths if they are in college (such as degrees in physical therapy). This two-tier approach is an immoral sorting system with crippling consequences. Maybe worse, it also presents a false dichotomy. Instead, true wisdom comes from a synthesis of those two perspectives and more. The

Why do national reform priorities keep getting misinterpreted on the ground? The federal Department of Education has no power over state legislatures or education departments. There are no federal inspectors of local schools to make sure principals, superintendents, and school boards understand how to use complex new tools like value-added measurement of teachers. Unique among Western nations, our national government does not produce or select high-quality tests, textbooks, or reading lists for teachers to use. Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—we consistently expect teachers and schools to close achievement gaps and panic when they fail to do so. But we do not provide families with the full range of social supports children need to thrive academically, including living-wage employment and stable and affordable child care, housing, higher education, and vocational training, in addition to decent nutrition and health care.

...finding your vocation in life is discovering the place '...where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me." Peter Rommel USA-ret

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Behind “The Exciting Story of Cuba” It was on a rainy evening in January of 2013, after Captain Hank and his wife Ursula returned by ship from a cruise in the Mediterranean, that Captain Hank was pondering on how to market his book, Seawater One. Some years prior he had published the book “Suppressed I Rise.” But lacking a good marketing plan the book floundered. Locally it was well received and the newspapers gave it great reviews, but Ursula was battling allergies and, unfortunately, the timing was off, as was the economy. Captain Hank has the ability to see sunshine when it’s raining and he’s not one easily deterred. Perhaps the timing was off for a novel or a textbook, like the Scramble Book he wrote years before computers made the scene. The history of West Africa was an option, however such a book would have limited public interest and besides, he had written a section regarding this topic for the second Seawater book. No, what he was embarking on would have to be steeped in history and be intertwined with true-life adventures that people could identify with. Out of the blue, his friend Jorge suggested that he write about Cuba. “You were there prior to the Revolution when Fidel Castro was in jail,” he ventured. Laughing, Captain Hank told a story of Mardi Gras in Havana. “Half of the Miami Police Department was there and the Coca-Cola cost more than the rum. Havana was one hell of a place!” Hank said. “I’ll tell you what I could do. I could write a pamphlet about the history of the island. It doesn’t have to be very long… 25 to 30 pages would do it.” His idea was to test the waters for public interest and then later add it to his book Seawater One. Writing is a passion surpassed only by his love for telling stories. It is true that Captain Hank had visited Cuba prior to the Revolution, but back then he was interested more in the beauty of the Latino girls than the history or politics of the country. “You don’t have to be Greek to appreciate Greek history,” Hank once said. “History is not owned solely by historians. It is a part of everyone’s heritage.” And so it was that he started to write about Cuba. When asked about why he wasn’t footnoting his work, he replied that the pamphlet, which grew into a book over 600 pages long, was a book for the people. “I’m not writing this to be a history book or an academic paper. I’m writing this book, so that by knowing Cuba’s past, people would understand it’s present.” He added that unless you lived it, you got it from somewhere else anyway, and footnoting just identifies where it came from. Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me. The Exciting Story of Cuba has the exhilaration of a novel. It is packed full of interesting details and, with the normalizing of the United States and Cuba, it belongs on everyone’s bookshelf, or at least in the bathroom if that’s where you do your reading. Captain Hank is not someone you can hold down and after having read a Proof Copy I know that it will be universally received as the book to go to, if you want to know anything about Cuba! Excerpts from a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer Peter Rommel, USA Retired, Military Intelligence Corps, Winter of 2014.

As a nation we must understand that the future of our country depends on education. It has to be right up front and cannot be an afterthought. It is so important that it has to be available for everyone, not just available to those that can afford it. Our country never fared better than when the GI Bill paid for the education of our veterans. I’m not necessarily advocating a free lunch; however it should be affordable for everyone! For politicians to start handing out vouchers is just a gimmick that shifts funding from Public Schools to Charter Schools. The first thing that should be considered is “Equal Opportunity for All!” I recognize that not everyone is academically gifted or inspired to seek a degree, so a Vocational Technical education may be a viable option for some.

(We) fell out of love with life for having learnt too much of death. ("At School")

The Four Global Options Now that you grasp the BIG picture, which includes your life values, your career values, your T-Bar, and current market conditions, it’s time to consider the four global options. I call these global options because, in reality, these are the only four job or career options you have. Option #1: Same job–same industry. Choosing Option #1 means you enjoy both and, most likely, need only conduct a job transition campaign to seek out a new company or organization. For example, a fifth grade teacher who is teaching in a public school may seek the same job (teacher) in the same industry (public school system); this teacher only needs to look at a new school in the same school district or to apply for a teacher’s position in a new school district. Option #2: New job–same industry. Option #2 means you enjoy the industry but need to identify a new job within that industry. Using the fifth grade teacher as an example again, she might seek a new job as an assistant principal or librarian. Or maybe she wants to earn more money than she would make as a teacher, so she becomes a sales professional and sells textbooks to educational institutions. The job transition campaign will take place within education, but she will identify and pursue a new, more inspiring, and more rewarding job within that industry. Option #3: Same job–new industry. If you select Option #3, it means you enjoy your job or vocation, but you need to identify a new industry or environment to perform that job in. The fifth grade teacher might get a job teaching for a private school (new industry or venue) or a private learning center, or she might even start her own tutoring business. In this case, the job transition campaign will focus on teaching but in a new, more appealing industry or venue. Option #4: New job–new industry. This option means you are ready for a wholesale change. Oftentimes this option is the option of choice if there’s a career or job you’ve always dreamt about. Or possibly you have a nice severance package or the financial means to return to school and prepare for an entirely new career. Possibly the fifth grade teacher always had a passion for antiques. In this case, she might pursue a job as a manager or even an owner of an antique store. Perhaps she’ll make the decision to stay home and be a full-time mom. The job transition campaign will focus on an entirely new job or activity in an entirely new industry or venue.

Our culture is in need of a sea change in which it’s acceptable to encourage high school graduates to pursue more practical opportunities and vocations, without all the societal pressure to mortgage their youths for a piece of paper.

neighborhood. So the school, being unable to utilize this everyday experience, sets painfully to work, on another tack and by a variety of means, to arouse in the child an interest in school studies. (Dewey, 1959, pp. 76–77) During Dewey’s tenure at the University of Chicago, he and his colleagues created a model of an educational process that sought to immerse children in those fundamental community activities from which the contemporary academic disciplines have emerged. Using such perennial vocations as gardening, cooking, carpentry, and clothing manufacture, students at the Laboratory School were drawn into the forms of problem-solving and investigation that led to the invention of biology, mathematics, chemistry,

The quality of students wasn’t an issue; Tsinghua and nearby Peking University attracted the highest-scoring students from each year’s national examinations. But the SEM’s curriculum and teaching methods were dated, and new faculty members were needed. To be a world-class school required world-class professors, but many instructors, holdovers from a bygone era, knew little about markets or modern business practices. The school’s teaching was largely confined to economic theory, which wasn’t very practical. China needed corporate leaders, not Marxist theoreticians, and Tsinghua’s curriculum placed too little emphasis on such critical areas as finance, marketing, strategy, and organization. The way I see it, a business education should be as much vocational as academic. Teaching business is like teaching medicine: theory is important, but hands-on practice is essential. Medical students learn from cadavers and hospital rounds; business students learn from case studies—a method pioneered more than a century ago by Harvard Business School that engages students in analyzing complex real-life dilemmas faced by actual companies and executives. Tsinghua’s method of instruction, like too much of China’s educational system, relied on rote learning—lectures, memorization, and written tests—and did not foster innovative, interactive approaches to problem solving. Students needed to know how to work as part of a team—a critical lesson in China, where getting people to work collaboratively can be difficult. At Harvard Business School we weren’t told the “right” or “wrong” answers but were encouraged to think for ourselves and defend our ideas before our peers and our at-times-intimidating professors. This helped hone my analytical skills and confidence, and I believed a similar approach would help Chinese students.

If they are looking for a rewarding long term business with a plumber to perform tasks There are many companies who are working to decide what kind of vocational schools, replacement or installation of higher education institutions. For your education initiative must be the only option that is able to provide intensive plumber work relevant by the classic Nationwide Plumbing Code. After completing the program, each providing accreditation to another relevant effort and hard work as a plumber. The program includes training in the relevant programs to install and configure resources. It also includes mechanical design, troubleshooting, piping plans and key ingredients. Bacteriology and sanitation is also part of an important program for plumbers exercise. Although few plumbing works carried out in the classroom, the most important part of the class exercise is comfortable on the stage. The most important bands in principle were supposed to be a plumber in the direction of the company to do the exercises. It is organized in such a way that the student really easy, because you need a plumber's apprentice as an assistant purchasing palms running plumbing parts training. The student gets serious compensated despite the hour discovery replacement rate. He always takes four-year students to get the name of the certificate. In this position, the plumber will be held against the craftsman marketing consultant. When the full study plumbing, plumber charges may choose the next action plan for the office or a plumber, or may be may decide to acquire its own plumber in person in the office. System officeholder has more tasks and also includes all However, more flexibility. He came to power to decide employment opportunities for leadership simply do not want to take, and it can also maintain services in other management plumbers enough to have a lot less work if you need a cute hat.

In all Amish communities, students stop going to school in the ninth grade, at age fourteen. Ninth grade in our school consisted of vocational classes, so we did our work at home and then brought our homework to school

(from chapter 29, "Write in a Book What You See') "The phrase that gave us focus was 'a long obedience in the same direction.' (Nietzsche) ...Early on in my reading I came upon this sentence: 'The essential thing in heaven and earth is...that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run something that has made life worth living.' That struck me as a text I could live with. I saw myself assigned to give witness to the sheer liveability of the Christian life that everything in scripture and Jesus was here to be lived. In the mess of work and sin, of families and neighborhoods, my task was to pray and give direction and encourage that lived quality of the gospel - patiently, locally, and personally. Patiently: I would stay with those people; there are no quick or easy ways to do this. Locally: I would embrace the conditions of this place - economics, weather, culture, schools, whatever - so that there would be nothing abstract or piously idealized about what I was doing. Personally: I would know them, know their names, know their homes, know their families, know their work - but I would not pry. I would not treat them as a cause or a project. I would treat them with dignity. Preaching, of course, is part of it, teaching is part of it, administering a congregation as a community of faith is part of it. But the overall context of my particular assignment in the pastoral vocation, as much as I am able to do it, is to see to it that these men and women in my congregation become aware of the possibilities and the promise of living out in personal and local detail what is involved in following Jesus, and be companion to them as we do it together.

. . . Much was made of the fact that Yuri Gagarin was an ordinary citizen of the Soviet Union. He was born in the Gzhatsk District of Smolensk and entered secondary school in 1941. But his studies were interrupted by the German invasion. After World War Two Gagarin's family moved back to Gzhatsk, where Yuri resumed his studies. In 1951 he graduated with honours from a vocational school in the town of Lyubersy, near Moscow. He received a foundryman's certificate. He then studied at an industrial technical school in Saratov, on the Volga, from which he graduated with honours in 1955. It was while attending the industrial school that the man who would be the first to fly in space took his first steps in aviation, when he commenced a course of training at the Saratov Aero Club in 1955 . . .

It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two-to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged. That fact alone makes "listen to your life" difficult counsel to follow. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that from our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from the people and powers around us.

For high school, I begged her to let me go to a performing arts school, but she made me go to Westinghouse, a vocational/technical high school, to learn a trade, because that’s what my brother did.

My great worry is the problem of poverty…Instead of prisons, I would have schools, art and vocational academies, free trade, free love, the abolition of marriage and the substitution of private property for public property.

Aunt Maud was a schoolteacher during her working life. For forty years she taught in the white public schools in New Orleans. English was her subject, mainly, and in retirement, genealogy became her vocation. She was quiet and inward. Maud never married, she had no children. Our ancestors were her offspring.

Rhythm is evident everywhere in the world. In the Way of Noh dance, minstrels with their wind and string instruments all have their own harmonious, regular rhythms. In the Way of martial arts, releasing an arrow, firing a gun and even riding a horse have distinctive cadences. Rhythm must never be contravened in any of the arts. Rhythm is also present in things that are invisible. For the samurai, there is rhythm in how he succeeds in service or falls from grace. There is rhythm for harmony and rhythm for discord. In the Way of commerce, there is cadence in the accumulation of great wealth and a rhythm for losing it. Each Way has its own rhythm. Judge carefully the rhythms signifying prosperity and those that spell regression. There are myriad rhythms in strategy. First, the warrior must know the cadence of harmony and then learn that of discord. He must know the striking, interval and counter cadences that manifest among big and small, fast and slow rhythms [between attacks]. In combat, it is critical for success to know how to adopt the “counter rhythm.” You must calculate the cadences of various enemies and employ a rhythm that is unexpected to them. Use your wisdom to detect and strike concealed cadences to seize victory. I devote much explanation to the question of cadence in all the scrolls. Consider what I record and train assiduously. As written above, your spirit will naturally expand through training diligently from morning to night in the Way of my school’s combat strategy. I hereby convey to the world for the first time in writing my strategy for collective and individual combat in the five scrolls of Ground, Water, Fire, Wind and Ether. For those who care to learn my principles of combat strategy, follow these rules in observing the Way: 1. Think never to veer from the Way 2. Train unremittingly in the Way 3. Acquaint yourself with all arts 4. Know the Ways of all vocations 5. Discern the truth in all things 6. See the intrinsic worth in all things 7. Perceive and know what cannot be seen with the eyes 8. Pay attention even to trifles 9. Do not engage in superfluous activities Train in the Way of combat strategy keeping these basic principles in mind.

Rhythm is evident everywhere in the world. In the Way of Noh dance, minstrels with their wind and string instruments all have their own harmonious, regular rhythms. In the Way of martial arts, releasing an arrow, firing a gun and even riding a horse have distinctive cadences. Rhythm must never be contravened in any of the arts. Rhythm is also present in things that are invisible. For the samurai, there is rhythm in how he succeeds in service or falls from grace. There is rhythm for harmony and rhythm for discord. In the Way of commerce, there is cadence in the accumulation of great wealth and a rhythm for losing it. Each Way has its own rhythm. Judge carefully the rhythms signifying prosperity and those that spell regression. There are myriad rhythms in strategy. First, the warrior must know the cadence of harmony and then learn that of discord. He must know the striking, interval and counter cadences that manifest among big and small, fast and slow rhythms [between attacks]. In combat, it is critical for success to know how to adopt the “counter rhythm.” You must calculate the cadences of various enemies and employ a rhythm that is unexpected to them. Use your wisdom to detect and strike concealed cadences to seize victory. I devote much explanation to the question of cadence in all the scrolls. Consider what I record and train assiduously. As written above, your spirit will naturally expand through training diligently from morning to night in the Way of my school’s combat strategy. I hereby convey to the world for the first time in writing my strategy for collective and individual combat in the five scrolls of Ground, Water, Fire, Wind and Ether. For those who care to learn my principles of combat strategy, follow these rules in observing the Way: 1. Think never to veer from the Way 2. Train unremittingly in the Way 3. Acquaint yourself with all arts 4. Know the Ways of all vocations 5. Discern the truth in all things 6. See the intrinsic worth in all things 7. Perceive and know what cannot be seen with the eyes 8. Pay attention even to trifles 9. Do not engage in superfluous activities Train in the Way of combat strategy keeping these basic principles in mind. Particularly in this Way, inability to comprehensively see the most fundamental matters will make it difficult to excel. If you learn these principles successfully, however, you will not lose to twenty or even thirty foes. First, by dedicating your energies wholeheartedly to learning swordsmanship and practicing the “Direct Way,” you will defeat men through superior technique, and even beat them just by looking with your eyes. Your body will learn to move freely through the rigors of arduous training and you will also overcome your opponent physically. Furthermore, with your spirit attuned to the Way you will triumph over the enemy with your mind.

Rhythm must never be contravened in any of the arts. Rhythm is also present in things that are invisible. For the samurai, there is rhythm in how he succeeds in service or falls from grace. There is rhythm for harmony and rhythm for discord. In the Way of commerce, there is cadence in the accumulation of great wealth and a rhythm for losing it. Each Way has its own rhythm. Judge carefully the rhythms signifying prosperity and those that spell regression. There are myriad rhythms in strategy. First, the warrior must know the cadence of harmony and then learn that of discord. He must know the striking, interval and counter cadences that manifest among big and small, fast and slow rhythms [between attacks]. In combat, it is critical for success to know how to adopt the “counter rhythm.” You must calculate the cadences of various enemies and employ a rhythm that is unexpected to them. Use your wisdom to detect and strike concealed cadences to seize victory. I devote much explanation to the question of cadence in all the scrolls. Consider what I record and train assiduously. As written above, your spirit will naturally expand through training diligently from morning to night in the Way of my school’s combat strategy. I hereby convey to the world for the first time in writing my strategy for collective and individual combat in the five scrolls of Ground, Water, Fire, Wind and Ether. For those who care to learn my principles of combat strategy, follow these rules in observing the Way: 1. Think never to veer from the Way 2. Train unremittingly in the Way 3. Acquaint yourself with all arts 4. Know the Ways of all vocations 5. Discern the truth in all things 6. See the intrinsic worth in all things 7. Perceive and know what cannot be seen with the eyes 8. Pay attention even to trifles 9. Do not engage in superfluous activities Train in the Way of combat strategy keeping these basic principles in mind. Particularly in this Way, inability to comprehensively see the most fundamental matters will make it difficult to excel. If you learn these principles successfully, however, you will not lose to twenty or even thirty foes. First, by dedicating your energies wholeheartedly to learning swordsmanship and practicing the “Direct Way,” you will defeat men through superior technique, and even beat them just by looking with your eyes. Your body will learn to move freely through the rigors of arduous training and you will also overcome your opponent physically. Furthermore, with your spirit attuned to the Way you will triumph over the enemy with your mind. Having come so far, how can you be beaten by anyone? In the case of large-scale strategy [implemented by generals, victory is had in many forms]: win at having men of excellence, win at maneuvering large numbers of men [effectively], win at conducting oneself properly, win at governance, win at nourishing the people, and win at conducting the laws of the world the way they are meant to be.

For the sake of clarity, vocational education and training (VET) encompasses the cohort of students who do not pursue an academic tertiary education following completion of compulsory schooling but instead pursue trades and technical training.

Within liberal market economies like the United States, characterized by limited employment protections, this political struggle was particularly pronounced between craft unions and employers. This struggle impeded the development of vocational training for industrial work, and was an important reason that firms increasingly shifted their labor force away from craftworkers and took advantage of an abundance of school-educated women to fill new clerical positions.

Work matters. Quality work matters. It matters to God. Luther famously said that the angels smile when a father changes a dirty diaper. God wants clean rear ends! Of course he does. Why does God care about such small details? Because he loves, that's why. He wants children taught, and he uses principals, teachers, and parents to do it. Not to mention all the staff it takes to run a school. God wants people protected, and he uses firefighters, police officers, and a host of government officials to get the job done. God wants diseases controlled, and he uses doctors, nurses, and researchers to take on this monumental task. He cares deeply about the janitor's work, too, for the very same reason. God wants it all, and he wants it done well. He uses people to do it. He frees Christians from working for him so that they can work for their neighbors.

Sunday school classes, discipleship materials, and sermons too often address the heart and not the head, or focus on personal growth and piety and not on cultivating an intellectual love for God in my vocation.

Also, I'd like to send greetings to all the students who are reading my story – adult students, undergraduates, graduate students, part time students, life long learners, moms who are taking courses, students in trade and vocational programs, or schools of the arts, etc. Being a student can be challenging, but education is always worthwhile. It has been a long time since I was in graduate school, (I graduated from the University of Paris prior to Étienne Tempier's attempt to revise the curriculum), but my education was an investment in myself that no one can steal or repossess. And the same is true of your education. -SR

Prior to the Philippines' colonization, tribal tutors taught children informally and in an unstructured manner. Children were provided with vocational training by their parents... Interestingly, even without institutionalized schooling, literacy was very high!

What programs would a prison need to utilize in order to maximize the likelihood that the people sent to it would renounce violence as a behavioral strategy? To begin with, it would need to be an anti-prison. Beginning with its architecture, it would need to convey an entirely different message. Current prisons are modeled architecturally after zoos — or rather, after the kinds of zoos that used to exist, but that have been replaced with zoological parks because the animals' keepers began to realize that the old zoos, with concrete floors and walls and steel bars were too inhumane for animals to survive in. Yet we still keep our human animals in zoos that no humane society would permit for animals. And the architecture itself conveys that message to the prisoners: "You are an animal, for this is a zoo, and zoos are what animals are put in." And then we act surprised when the men and women we treat that way actually behave like animals, both when they are in this human zoo and after they return to the community. So we would need to build an anti-prison that would actually look as if it had been built for human beings rather than animals, i.e. that was as home-like and pleasant and civilized and human as possible. Once we had done that, we could offer those who had been sent there the opportunity to acquire as much education and/or vocational training as they had the ability and energy and interest to obtain. We would of course need to provide treatment for whatever medical, dental, psychiatric, or substance-abuse problems they had, and would want to incorporate many of the principles of a therapeutic community into the everyday routines of this residential school, with frequent group discussions with the other residents and staff members with training in psychotherapy. The goal would be to replace the "monster factories" that most prisons now are with therapeutic communities designed to enable people who are deeply damaged, and damaging, to recover their humanity or to gain a degree of humanity they had never been able to acquire; in short, to help them heal themselves and learn, in the process, how to heal others and even repair some of the damage they have done.

Language is a terrible, cold thing, I think. One may recount an event, calmly selecting the most suitable words, that to remember without benefit of ink is almost beyond bearing. We accept the counterfeit and are thankful, for it spares us the awful weight of our lives.

The G.I. Bill, formally known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, provided many benefits for the returning World War II veterans. These benefits included cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend a university, high school or vocational education school, provided low-cost mortgages, and supplied low-interest loans to start a business, as well as one year of unemployment compensation. About 2.2 million returning, honorably discharged veterans used the G.I. Bill in order to attend colleges or universities, and another 5.6 million used the G.I. Bill for other kinds of training programs. This program helped make the United States the best educated country and the exceptional leader of the world, for years to come. It was an exciting time in America and I had a center aisle seat to witness it.” I and many other veterans used the G.I. Bill to help pay for my education. In my case it allowed me to attend Central Connecticut State College (now a State University) to do my graduate work in education. The fact that so many people could afford to go back to school made the United States the best educated country in the years following World War II. Unfortunately during the past five years the United States has dropped by 11 points in our educational standing worldwide and now scores 17th among the 34 OECD countries. To make matters worse is that we are below average in math and science when the world depends more than ever on technology. A good part of the reason is that young people cannot afford the cost of a college education! The defense used by many of the less educated is that college is for egg heads and being a deplorable is worn as a badge of honor. If something doesn’t happen soon we will become a third world country but that opens up another topic for another day!

Art and music, for example, are not "academic" unless we sever their connection from performance—from doing. Then we can have what's now called academic art. But why is "doing" nonacademic? And why is art worthier of school time when it's academic than when it's not? And why is science at least four times more important than even academic art? I once figured out that there are more jobs in New York City for people with advanced musical or artistic skills than for those with advanced calculus. But, see! I've fallen into the trap of assuming school is vocational. Okay, which do more citizens get pleasure from? Which leads them into improved habits of citizenship? I'd be hard put to claim calculus the winner over art or music on any such measure of real-life utility.

Under this system—which amounted to institutionalized child labour—students were in class for half the day and in what was supposed to be vocational training for the other half. Often, as many students, teachers, and inspectors observed, the time allocated for vocational training was actually spent in highly repetitive labour that provided little in the way of training. Rather, it served to maintain the school operations.

President Lyndon Johnson's Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and launched the “War on Poverty.” In the Pacific Northwest, OEO community development grants helped establish a host of organizations to address employment, health, housing, education and various legal needs. Beginning in 1965, the Yakima Valley Council for Community Action YVCCA opened centers to meet the farmworkers' health and social service needs. A year later they expanded to educational and legal services, offering adult basic education, English as a second language, high school equivalency programs, vocational training, health clinics, and day care. Volunteer attorneys helped workers address conflicts with immigration authorities and social service agencies.

Ведь что такое "я"? Куриная косточка, застрявшая в горле. На письме я могла стать кем угодно. Потому что заикание, как и писательство – любительская форма некромантии. Ибо этот физический закон действует в обе стороны: чтобы прозвучала речь, нужно время; чтобы запустить время, нужна речь. Что если смерть – всего лишь пауза, позволяющая лучше присмотреться к миру? Смерть – тихая гавань, прочный сук, на который садится воробей, цветущий луг для жука и влажная земля для червя, а для кита – глубины, куда не достанет гарпун. Истиной считается то, с чем почти все согласны; нам кажется, что раз большинство подтверждают что-то, это и есть истина.

There is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective MASKS and self-serving fictions, and my true self. It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two - to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged. That fact alone makes "listen to your life" difficult counsel to follow. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that from our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from people and powers around us.

It was over 50 years ago that I had the privilege of being the Class Advisor to the class of 1969 at what was then called Henry Abbott Regional Vocational Technical School. It was another era and a time when we as a nation stood tall. It was the year when Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins lifted off from Cape Kennedy, for the first manned landing on the Moon. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a time when we felt proud to be Americans! Fifty years ago the 4 Beatles got together in a recording studio for the last time, where they cut “Abbey Road.” In 1969 alone they published 13 songs including “Yellow Submarine.” John Lennon claimed that the best song he ever did was “Come Together” and that was in 1969. Although it wasn’t possible for me to attend the class reunion I did however connect with them by telephone and a speaker system. I had the opportunity to wish them well and share some thoughts with my former students who are now looking forward to their senior years that I always thought of as “The Youth of Old Age.” Having just celebrated my 85th birthday, 69 years old does seem quite youthful in comparison. Earlier in the week Dave Coelho, the class Vice President read to me the list of graduates that are no longer with us. I was stunned by the number, but at the time the United States was at war, regardless of what it was called. In 1968, the year before the class graduated, our country had a peak of 549,000 of our young people serving in Viet Nam. During the year of the Tet Offensive alone, 543 were killed and 2547 were wounded, and that is what the class of 1969 faced upon their graduation! It was a war in which 57,939 of our young people were killed or went missing! It was nice to talk to the class president LaBarbera and I enjoyed the feeling of guilt when one former student told me that he still has a problem with addition. To this I gladly accepted the blame but reminded him that this would not be of much help, if he had to face the IRS when his taxes didn’t compute. Look for part 2, the conclusion

Erik is the director of the Permaculture Skills Center, a vocational training school that offers advanced education in ecological design, landscaping, farming, and land stewardship. He is also the founder and principal at Permaculture Artisans, a fully licensed contracting firm that specializes in the design and installation of ecological landscapes and farms throughout California.

The public education system—the one found in schools all across the Earth—is broken. The brightest are held back, while those needing extra support are left behind. Teachers have given up, and have stopped believing in the value of their vocation.” She sighed. “This is what we need to change. While they have the relevant qualifications to be able to teach, many of the candidates have come from the public education systems around the world. Their mindset is what we need to retrain. We need to help them rediscover the reason they chose to teach in the first place, before the system knocked their ideals and enthusiasm out of them.

Why does he need to produce more? Production has become an important part of the school curriculum. Learn more, produce more and do it in less or equal time. It is as if the school is now a factory

A government-backed dual labor market continued after the war’s end. In 1944, the G.I. Bill was adopted to support returning servicemen. The VA not only denied African Americans the mortgage subsidies to which they were entitled but frequently restricted education and training to lower-level jobs for African Americans who were qualified to acquire greater skills. In some cases, local benefit administrators refused to process applications to four-year colleges for African Americans, directing them to vocational schools instead.

That’s the way it typically happens: although people occasionally have those explosive epiphanies, more commonly a vocation crystallizes slowly, almost without us realizing it.93