Vocational education during the Great Depression and World War II: Challenge, innovation and continuity

This study examines vocational education between 1933 and 1945. Its focus is on the federal program of vocational education. There were challenges and innovations in vocational education, but they had no long term effect on the development of federally assisted vocational education. The framework of vocational education established in 1917 by the Smith-Hughes Act had by 1933 become the philosophy of vocational education. Vocational educators viewed the Act as a permanent commitment to the states that could not be altered in any substantive way. Vocational educators were successful in expanding federal aid to vocational education during the depression, preventing any substantive changes in how vocational education was administered, and maintaining control of vocational education in the hands of professional educators.;President Roosevelt favored vocational education and training, but he was opposed to expanding federal aid or control over it. At the same time he approved tremendous federal expenditures for training programs. He was critical of vocational education for failing to meet the need for training unemployed workers, but he signed the George-Ellzey and George-Deen Acts which expanded the federal vocational education program. Roosevelt's inconsistent response to vocational education was due to his desire to have the unemployed trained, and because of strong support for vocational education in Congress.;Vocational educators responded to the critics of vocational education by seeking to expand the federal program of vocational education. They argued that better trained workers would be less likely to become unemployed in any future economic crisis. They defended their failure to meet the immediate need for training by pointing to the restrictions of the Smith-Hughes Act. Yet vocational educators opposed any change in the law that would allow increased training for unemployed workers. Vocational educators sought to control training sponsored by New Deal agencies.;Vocational educators gained control of defense and war production training by arguing that training should be conducted by teachers using established methods of training. Even though the defense and war production training programs were separate from the regular federal vocational programs, the key issue was control of these programs.