An earlier conversation about Vocational Education

 

“So one basic principle I have built in thing is any work you get and do if you have a core principle, that tool should be harder than the job (laughs)”

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What has been the nature of vocational education? How have people with a background in vocational education fared in the last few decades? How do they see themselves in the larger scheme of things, what is their role in development? Do they feel fulfilled in their work? 

Arendt proposes in her book ‘The Human Condition’ that there is a distinction between labour and work – ‘between working hands and a laboring body is somewhat reminiscent of the ancient Greek distinction between the cheirotechnes, the craftsman, to whom the German Handwerker corresponds, and those who, like “slaves and tame animals with their bodies minister to the necessities of life,” or in the Greek idiom, to somati ergazesthai, work with their bodies’

Is vocational education tending more towards skilled labour than towards skilled work?

The people I interviewed, Anand and Venkat, possibly did not go through the more accepted B.Tech education at that time because they were not conventionally good at academics. They are both curious and like to work with their hands. They were interested in how things work, possibly more than the why. It is also probable that they may have some disinclination to reading and writing which was never addressed at home or in school. 

There is a notion that vocational education is somehow less than professional education and I assumed that this would be felt by my interviewees.

But that was far from true. Both of them were extremely confident and saw themselves as useful and creative members of their work community. My reading of this is that working with your hands builds that confidence because it makes one independent, knowledge is complete because it is not second-hand, not everyone has it and it is valued in the community. When things go wrong, we prefer to call upon the doer rather than the thinker. 

The assumption that the doer is somehow less than the thinker is today being questioned more than ever. Making and doing are far more complex and the thinking that happens while doing is often more robust. Creative satisfaction comes intrinsically from the work and not always from external rewards. 

Can vocational education also be more varied and choice based rather than focussed on specific skills? The interviews showed me that people build on skills, they connect different kinds of skills and experiences, they continue learning and acquire different capabilities. Their learning is not static, but extremely dynamic. Knowing how to do one thing well seems to build the ability to learn and connect too.