Put Vocation Back in Chicago Vocational High School!!!

Statistics indicate that only 66.9% of the 3.7 million graduating high school seniors attend college upon graduating. That immediately leaves 33.1% of graduating high school seniors, approximately 1,225,000 now young adults, to go out and make their way in the world without any job skills or working experience.

In Chicago, that picture is much bleaker, as only 44% of CPS graduating seniors attend a 4-year college. And of those that do attend 4-year college only 48% actually obtain their degree; most return home within the first year ladened with student loan debt. Of the 48% that do obtain their degrees, nearly a third of them wind up working in careers or positions that do not require a college diploma.

Citing these statistics is the long way of saying that not every high school graduate will go to college, and for various reasons, among which, either they have no finances to do so, or they simply have no interest in doing so.

Prior to 1997, when Paul Valles convinced the LSC to sign an agreement to remove vocational curriculum from Chicago Vocational H.S., a vocational curriculum had been offered for nearly 60 years. The school offered a full slate of vocational major subjects; such as Architectural Drafting, Aviation, Interior Design, Carpentry, Electronics, Electricity, Auto Mechanics, Auto Body and Fender, Graphic Arts, Arc Welding, Oxyacetylene Welding, Sheet Metal and the list goes on. Majoring subjects where you spent two years, as a junior and senior, four periods a day concentrating on that subject earning a 1200 Clock Hour Vocational Diploma.

So why was vocational curriculum removed from CVS, quite simply due to a flawed administrative ideology and the false premise that vocational education is inferior or second class and that the “Information and Technology” age was going to somehow swoop in and sweep away, forever, skilled trades. That every kid will now suddenly have the finances and desire to go to college. That everyone will simply now sit at a desk and push a button on a computer, and everything will be done, was and continues to be a fallacy. Take a walk onto any construction jobsite and there are no robots framing walls, pulling electrical wire, installing sheet-metal ductwork, or running plumbing lines. Drive into any auto shop and there’s no computer making repairs, changing an alternator, performing a tune-up, changing brakes or repairing the damaged fender on your vehicle. Or, visit an Architectural or Engineering firm and there’s no robot or computer that actually designs a road or bridge or creates a set of construction plans. But what you will find is a human, an operator that pushes the buttons on a computer, or drags a mouse to make technology go. The human touch. A hand. Skilled trades. It’s true that technology makes our lives a little easier, our task a little more efficient, but yet, it is simply a tool to aid man.

Skilled trades are the backbone of the American workforce and are still as viable today as they ever were. Having removed the skilled trade or vocational programs historically offered within the halls of Chicago Vocational H.S. has done a great disservice to this once proud and majestic institution of learning and even more so a disservice to the student community that once came from all over the city of Chicago to attend what was once consider the largest, most modern, best equipped trade school in the nation.

I’m calling for the reinstitution of vocational curriculum at the Chicago Vocational. The school was built for this very thing. I hope you will join me in this call by signing this petition.

Thank You

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."