19th Century Roots to the American Vocational Movement.

Historical developments in the 18th and 19th centuries influenced the course of European and American education and the separate path of vocational education. The first of these developments was the emergence of schools as primary instruments for the transmission of knowledge and culture, as a result of the phenomenal growth of the American states during the 19th century and the needs of burgeoning industries for trained manpower. Another factor that affected the course of American education was the development of new models for the delivery of practical education in Europe and the changes that took place in these forms when they were transported to the United States. Some of these models included trade and technical schools, technical institutes, Lancastrian schools, manual labor institutes, mechanics institutes, and academies. In America, trade and technical schools were well endowed and became places of learning for elite upper-class architects, engineers, and other master builders, while the technical institutes, also private, trained the lower-level technicians. The academies originally offered both classical education and vocational education, but because of the influence of the New York State Board of Regents, these schools eventually became elite college preparatory schools. Taking a cue from these academies, middle class parents and educators pushed the public high schools of the late 1800s into the classical mode, shutting out the poor of the time while catering to only about 7 percent of the population. As a reaction to such elitism, the Smith-Hughes Act was passed in 1917, establishing vocational education as a separate entity, which it has often remained to the present. (KC)