The Midwest: Cradle of Vocational Education

Many important educational reforms were rooted in the Midwest, which, according to Susan Clark Studer, “played a defining role in the development of American educational institutions and ideas.” Reform movements “that furthered the development of industry, home arts, and the science of farming in elementary, secondary, and higher education” prospered, Studer asserts, due to the agrarian and egalitarian nature of midwestern states.¹ These reforms were central to a promise for more prosperous living and greatly contributed to the rise of what would become vocational education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.²

The Manual Labor Movement was the precursor to occupation-directed education. Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg created the first such school in Hofwyl, Switzerland, in 1805. Educational institutions influenced by Fellenberg offered students programs comprised of broad liberal arts courses that were balanced with manual labor in the school’s fields and shops. These programs were framed by a vision of holistic education: useful physical work that supported and complemented academic learning and provided students with means to offset schooling costs.³ Maine’s Gardiner Lyceum Manual Training School, founded in 1823, was the first institution in the United States to follow Fellenberg’s ideas. Two years later, the New Harmony, Indiana, Manual Training School became the first midwestern school of this type. Presbyterian minister John J. Shipherd founded two private liberal arts colleges in the Midwest offering academic work paired with physical labor: Ohio’s Oberlin College (which Shipherd cofounded with Philo P. Stewart in 1833) and Michigan’s Olivet College (1844). Both schools featured an inclusive admissions policy that welcomed women and students of color. Shipherd held that manual labor was a necessary element for a comprehensive education and essential to forming proper habits of the mind.⁴

The Manual Labor Movement slowed in the mid-1850s, giving rise to the Manual Training Movement. This next generation of occupationally directed schooling promoted the importance of hands-on learning within the general education program. Its intent was to broaden and enhance liberal arts learning through training in practical arts, rather than industrial skill specialization. By 1894, 15 manual training schools were offering instruction to 3,362 students; twenty years later, 16,770 manual training schools and their 183,571 students were involved with manual training. However, there were critics advocating for these schools to be framed by purely economic purposes. The Vocational Education Movement emerged, demanding that greater emphasis be given to employment-driven education designed to meet the needs of industry. The state of Minnesota provides excellent illustrations for many of these developments.⁵

Minnesota played an active role in moving manual training and vocational education into the nation’s public schools. Two outstanding examples are St. Paul’s Mechanics Arts High School (1896) and Minneapolis’s Girls Vocational School (1914).⁶ Dr. Charles Prosser (1879–1952), appointed director of Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis in 1915, guided the private institute to national prominence in vocational education over a thirty-one-year period.⁷ As noted by curriculum historian Herbert M. Kleibard, vocational education would prove to have more impact on public schooling than any other curriculum development in the twentieth century.⁸ The Dunwoody model, with Prosser’s brand placed squarely on it, later provided the outline for vocational education throughout the nation via the National Vocational Education Act, commonly known as the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.⁹ Its passage was the watershed event for vocational education in the U.S. and became known as the Magna Carta of Vocational Education. As vocational education gained acceptance as a necessary part of schooling, many vocationally directed programs, extracurricular organizations and clubs (such as 4-H and Future Farmers and Future Homemakers of America) emerged.¹⁰

Diverse motivations pushed various groups to advocate for this jobtraining legislation, such as satisfying work demands of the new industrial age, enhancing productivity, improving the lives of the poor, and encouraging students to remain in school. It is hard to ignore the self-interest demonstrated by some industrialists who demanded a well-trained workforce—at no personal cost to them—that would increase their profit margins. Leading [End...