By 1961, Ontario had acquired 66 schools which offered technical courses at the secondary level of education. With the signing of a federal provincial agreement for providing financial support for the building of vocational facilities, the number of schools offering technical education grew dramatically. By 1969 a total of 400 were involved with the program.
In 1962, the Ontario Department of Education, unhappy with an increasing "drop out rate" among high school students and an 80 percent enrolnment of students in the general course, which was university oriented, introduced the Reorganized Program of Studies to the school boards of the province. The timing could not have been better. School boards were able to take immediate advantage of the federal provincial agreement which was just beginning to function.
The Reorganized Program of Studies implied a shift in philosophy for technical education. Early courses placed great emphasis upon the development of skill learning. Upwards of 75 per cent of classroom time was devoted to practical work assignments which included a high proportion of repetitive operations. This approach was taken so that a grade 12 graduate would be able to qualify for a one or two year credit against his total time as an apprentice.
During the past few years, increasing emphasis has been placed upon the student's understanding of basic scientific principles and supporting mathematical concepts. The improvement of language skills as they relate to technical subjects is also being stressed.
In 1917, Alfred North Whitehead called for a fundamental change in attitude by educators toward education:
I lay it down as an educational axiom that in teaching you will come to grief as soon as you forget that your pupils have bodies. The connection between intellectual activity and the body, though diffused in every bodily feeling, is focused in the eyes, the ears, the voice and the hands. There is a co ordination of senses and thought, and also a reciprocal influence between brain activity and material creative activity. In this reaction, the hands are peculiarly important.
He denied that there was a fundamental opposition between technical education and academic education. He believed that there could be no education at all which did not include both.
H. B. Dean, while assistant general secretary of the OSSTE, gave an address which included the following statement:
I discriminate between education and training. Training is the development of a specific skill so that it may be accomplished with ease and precision. Education is concerned with the much broader development of the individual in mind and character. The vehicle for development is not of paramount importance. The basic principles of high frequency alternating currents are as sound today as when I learned them some 40 years ago. The applications have changed with the advent of radio, radar, television and microwave communications. New elements such as semiconductors have altered the technology but the basic principles remain.
Last week when I spent some time in one of our offset lithography shops, I found the students applying the principles of color separation and using solutions with different PH values, both old ideas applied to a technology. Both of these so called "practical" subjects can make a real contribution in the field of education for the individual, provided the emphasis is on the basic ideas of why things happen as they do, rather than on the development of a specific skill which may have a relatively short term value. I have known many secondary school pupils whose difficulties in the field of mathematics disappeared when the use of the micrometer solved the mystery of decimals or experience with a sine bar made trigonometry a living subject. I feel sure that many pupils who would have been "drop outs" are in the school today because of the imaginative revised program of studies and the widespread introduction of vocational education through the province.
Technical courses in today's typical non graded composite school vary in difficulty, in time allotments, and in objectives. These courses may be vocational in nature, exploratory, or narrow in scope, or pre engineering in content. The introduction of the "technologies" to the senior division in 1968 was a method of moulding two or three complementary technical subjects into one united whole.
These courses tend to bring into clear focus the interdependence of various technical disciplines. Teachers are required to work as a team in planning course content. Classroom work must also be coordinated on a daily and weekly basis. These courses meet three basic objectives of technical programs.
- They stress the interdependence of several disciplines such as English, mathematics and science.
- They provide a core of knowledge that is fundamental to further study of technology at the post secondary level.
- Graduates of these courses are finding ready acceptance by employers seeking grade 13 graduates with some technical competence.
Dwight Allen said that "our major priority is to confront the myths of education." If there ever was a myth of education, it is the 18th century philosophy that using the hands excludes the use of the mind, or at least is unworthy of the mind. According to all the evidence, nothing could be further from the truth.
Most people entertain a gross misconception of technical education in the secondary schools. They assume that technical subjects have only one purpose to teach and develop craft and trade skills. In the minds of many, the connotations of technical education are manual training, shop work, manipulative expertise and preparation for a specific job. This is just not so. The technical curriculum is versatile and vital. What makes it that way is technology, which may be defined as "the scientific use of energy and materials to create produce required by society."
Technology embraces technical skills as part of a broad educational base. There are many arguments for the study of technology in the secondary schools. They are not apologies in defense of, but positive reasons for, technical education. They range from "soft" cultural considerations to the "hard" immediacy of occupational competence. In other words, the study of technical subjects may be for a vocational reason, or for skill training leading to university, colleges of applied arts and technology or apprenticeship.
First, a vocational technical literacy has many aspects. It involves having sufficient technical information and intelligence to avoid being victimized by those who understand technology. It is an essential component in the education of the city dweller. He has little or no understanding of the hardware about him, with which he lives, works, and is frequently entertained. Moreover, he is likely to grossly misuse it.
Secondly, vocational or occupational, many students still leave secondary school and go directly into the work force. A study of secondary school technical graduates indicated that approximately half the number went on to some form of post secondary school education, or grade 13, and the other half went to work. Of the 50 per cent who went directly to work 20 entered apprenticeships. It is the 30 who went directly into a job without further training that we should be concerned about, because without any kind of skill they would have little to offer to an employer. The Work Study Department has proven many times that it is much more difficult to place students from the academic stream into positions than it is from any others.
