CAREER EDUCATION AS IDEOLOGY: A PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHO-POLITICAL CRITIQUE

This critique of federal Career Education policy focuses upon two questions: (1) Is the program promoted in the defining documents under the title of "Career Education" better classified as education or indoctrination? (2) Is Career Education progressive or regressive in terms of its effect on reconciling social, political, and economic dualisms such as those identified by John Dewey and Russell Jacoby? As a basis for the analysis of Career Education in subsequent chapters, Chapter I briefly reviews both social and legislative antecedents to Career Education since the turn of the century and reviews federal documentation on Career Education since its advent in 1971. Chapter II reviews contemporary philosophical efforts to identify clear criteria to differentiate education from counterfeit activities, emphasizing: (1) the dualisms in educational thought and practice which, Dewey argues, stand in the way of democratizing both our schools and our society; (2) Bereiter's differentiation between education and schooling; (3) Peters' and Wilson's attempts to define practices and procedures appropriate to education; (4) McClellan's definition of the lucidity and pellucidity conditions of education; and (5) Flew's and McClellan's criteria for differentiating between education and indoctrination. Chapter III then addresses the relationship between ideology and education, highlighting the more profound influences ideology has had upon the individual in contemporary society. Chapter IV's critique of Career Education contends that, based on its failure to adhere to the lucidity condition of education at both the federal and local levels, Career Education is, in fact, indoctrination rather than education. In assessing its regressive as opposed to progressive social and educational influence, this critique argues that Career Education sustains rather than alleviates the dualisms identified by John Dewey and Russell Jacoby at great cost to both the individual psyche and the society-at-large.