ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes contemporary vocational education, in the process connecting it to the historical themes. It addresses the charges made by critics of American vocational education. The decline of Fordism, characterized by degenerating economic conditions and foreign competition, initiated a new wave of educational reform. Corporate officials and many political leaders criticized vocational education as the source of the failure of American schools to train a globally competitive army of workers and maintained that the only way to address such academic shortcomings was for government to align itself with corporate power. Bringing together a multitude of reports and recommendations, President Bill Clinton signed Goals 2000: Educate America Act in March 1994. In the tradition of federal vocational education legislation since the 1930s, the Perkins Act has attempted to move vocational education away from job-specific training toward a broader education that focuses on the integration of a variety of learning experiences.
