Passionate classroom debates over Nietzsche and Proust are not every student's cup of tea. And for too long, those who struggled with such approaches to learning found their way to auto shop or wood shop, and abandoned math, science, and history along the way. But some schools are wising up and using vocational ed to reconnect students to higher-level learning. Salvador Vergara, for example, hated math and eventually dropped out of high school. Amps and ohms, not classroom math and chemistry, were his thing. Until he entered and won a recent SkillsUSA competition in Los Angeles--where students compete in such categories as plumbing, cosmetology, architectural drafting, web page design, and welding--by wowing the judges with his electrical schematic. Now he understands that amps and ohms and how they work rest on those classroom lessons in math and chemistry courses. "I wish I'd known about this in high school," he said. Luckily for Vergara, he eventually found the training that his high school lacked, and he's now on track to make $100,000 a year as an electrician. (He also finished high school and is going to use that money to go back to college and earn a degree in psychology.) Just goes to show--doesn't matter how you learn that core course material--so long as you learn it.
"Works skills winning new respect," by Bob Sipchen, Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2007