Why I don't like vocational education

Education should improve people. Training to do particular things can be a part of that, but it isn't the whole thing. Vocational schools say, in effect: "You are a lost cause. We can't help you get any better as a person, but maybe we can train you to work a particular job at a business that may or may not exist by the time you graduate." Vocational schools represent an abdication of responsibility, an abandonment of education's central commitment to humanity. They reduce their students to machines. Schools can certainly have vocational components - but a vocational school barely deserves to be called a school at all.