Career education

Pre-reading task

1. Do you think that Ukrainian school education must be less academic and more practical or vice versa?

2. What subjects in your opinion are most necessary in a secondary school and why?

Schools used to teach many subjects (for example, Latin and Greek) that, although interesting, were not really necessary for success in the real world. These days, many schools are developing programs that teach practical subjects and prepare students for jobs in the real world. In these programs, children go on trips to learn about different kinds of work and adults come to schools to speak about their jobs. This new approach is called "career education."

A new effort to help America's young people find and hold jobs is being made in the nation's schools. Faced with a generation of youngsters who have an increasingly difficult time getting hired, educators are testing new methods of preparing students for employment. Involved in what is known as career education is a wide variety of courses designed to show students how to find work and satisfy an employer. Computers, on-the-job visits, and acting out work situations in class are used to teach people skills from simple bookkeeping to taking job interviews. The method is midway between general school studies and vocational education, which provides training for a particular job. Much of the career education is included in normal classes that are taken by students starting with elementary school. “Vocational and back-to-basics courses are also growing rapidly, and that's fine with us," says Kenneth Hoyt, director of career education for the U.S. Office of Education in Washington, D.C. He observes, "What we're trying to do is show students how everything they learn is useful in the big world outside of class. This approach is interesting a lot of kids who used to see no point in school. To plan for an increased effort, 6,000 educators, business executives, and labor leaders met in Houston to discuss future changes in career education. Showing the urgency of the situation was a report that 19 percent of teenagers are unemployed at a time when more than a million jobs are unfilled. Another finding at the conference: more than half of a group of seventeen-year-olds studied were unable to write a job application satisfactorily. Among the most important projects going on in career education: Thousands of workers are going into schools, explaining what they do and how students can get into their fields. Employers are giving schools up-to-date information on job opportunities and qualifications to help young people prepare for careers. High schools and colleges are sending large numbers of pupils to work part time in offices, shops, garages, and community centers as paid employees or volunteers. Some projects are planned to make use of the real-life interests of young people. Animal-loving elementary school students, for example, in addition to learning about animals, are learning about selling by taking trips to pet stores. Elsewhere, children interested in machines are visited by a motorcycle mechanic who explains how he had to spend $400 for a bookkeeper to keep his accounts because he didn't learn enough mathematics in school. In some schools students are acting out working conditions. Classes from North Little Rock, Arkansas, to Scion, New York, practice economics and mathematics by operating small stores and banks in school, using play or even real money. These and other projects are being organized by career-education specialists in 9,200 of the nation's 16,700 school districts—often with help from teachers, business people, and local leaders. Says Mr. Hoyt, "This way of teaching is getting more and more popular with everyone—parents, kids, and teachers. It shows them the real-life purpose behind the things that are taught in school."

to face with - зіткнутися

to hire – наймати на роботу

vocational education - професійна освіта

approach – підхід

urgency – терміновість, актуальність

up-to-date – сучасний, модернізований

Discussion

1. What’s the best type of career education?

2. What do you feel about general school studies (subjects like history and literature that are not directly related to choosing a career)?

3. Which school subject is the most important and which one is the least important?

4. How is education today compared to what it was in the past?

5. Why is career education being introduced into schools?

6. If you could change your education how would you like it to have been different?

7. Are all the subjects that you have studied at school practical and useful?

Roleplaying.

1. A teacher who believes in career education is arguing with one who doesn’t.

2. A person who has a particular job is telling the class of students about his work.

3. An employer is interviewing someone for a particular job.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02