VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3825, 23 October 1936, Page 4

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

THE TERM EXPLAINED. “If you use such a term as ‘vocational education,’ ” said Sir William Beveridge, Diredtor of the London School of Economics, in a speech at Bournemouth, “some people begin looking down their noses as if training for a particular vocation was something vulgar, was not education at all, was certainly not the education of a gentleman, nor a thing that r a self-respecting university should undertake.. But, of course, the people who talk like that have themsdlves omitted among other things to pursue the highly respectable study of history and the history of v university in particular. Universities very largely began as training centres fdr particular vocations and have continued to be that ever since. There is nothing vulgar or narrow about training with a definite purpose in view. You do not make education liberal simply by making it useless—a thing in the air without regard to any future career. On the other hand, vocational training is narrow only if you choose to make it so. The; best man in any line of business is the man who knows that business, so let us train for each vocation by teaching men both what is inside the vocation and always something- outside it as well.”