Word: vo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...combination of people without jobs and jobs without people to fill them has stirred new interest in the segment of U.S. public education that educated Americans know least about-vocational education. Vo-ed, as teachers call it, is dismally inadequate to meet the demands upon it. Most U.S. vocational high schools offer the youngsters so very little that on the average two-thirds of their students drop out before graduation, as against one-third in academic high schools...
City school officials tend to use vo-ed schools as dumping grounds for the dull and the delinquent. The teachers, equipment and training methods are often so far behind the times that, in effect, the schools teach students to be unemployable. Last year a report by the Taconic Foundation concluded that the usefulness of New York City's vocational schools is "extremely questionable." Frank Cassell, personnel director of Inland Steel Co., says that "vocational education in Illinois bears about the same relationship to the real needs of industry as the shovel and the pickax do to the equipment demands...
...Lunatic Pattern. The shortcomings are partly rooted in vo-ed's history. Under laws going back to 1917, almost half of the total federal outlays for vocational education are channeled into agriculture and home economics. Since state and local officials conform to the rules so as to get as much federal money as possible, the result is a lunatic pattern. Last year 26% of all vo-ed funds went into agricultural training, although fulltime farm workers comprise only 6% of the nation's labor force...
Lacking prestige in the pedagogic pecking order, vo-ed teachers stick together in the self-protective American Vocational Association, a strong anchor for the status quo in vo-ed teaching. According to Executive Secretary M. D. Mobley, who heads up the A.V.A.'s persistent Washington lobby, what the U.S. needs is plenty of home economics courses. "The most enduring nations of the world" he says, "are those that have maintained good homes...
...Vietnamese girl, began consorting with the Viet Minh revolutionists, who were plotting the overthrow of Indo-China's French masters. In 1949, he set off on a 40-day trek through the northern jungles to a rendezvous with the brilliant Viet Minh ex-schoolteacher and field commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Over a bottle of warm champagne, which Giap bragged had been "taken from the body of a dead Frenchman," Giap explained how guerrilla warfare worked...