The Value of CTE

St. Louis recently hosted the Association of Career and Technical Education’s (ACTE) annual convention.

Technical educators from all over the country came to hear keynote speakers such as Sir Ken Robinson, author of “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative” and “The Element,” speak about the importance of the critical thinking skills that are learned in career and technical education (CTE) programs. Administrators and teachers listened to presentations about best practices, cutting edge technologies, establishing partnership programs with local business (including our own Ameren Skilled Craft Education program), and countless other topics.Skills USA students acted as guides, tech support, and were honored with awards and recognitions for their many achievements.

Sounds like a decent convention, right? It was! I presented for the third time this year, and every year I am so excited when I leave.

Here’s the only hitch…all of us who attend already know how fantastic CTE is for students. We already know that there are several pathways for students to pursue after they complete high school CTE programs. We already know that we do a great job helping them explore potential college majors. We already know we help engage kids and keep them in school. We already know that many of them will make incredibly valuable contributions to our society. We already know all of this!

We believe in it because we see the benefits every single day. We get it.

My point is this: the value of CTE is typically only known by those who work in CTE. Of course there are exceptions, but I believe most consider CTE to be the old fashioned “vocational” education reserved for those who can’t cut it academically. I hope at some point all of those who benefit from the results of CTE will value it as much as we do.

Sir Robinson told several entertaining stories during his opening speech, but one in particular sums up what I’m referencing. He spoke of a classroom of students who were approaching graduation being asked by a teacher to share their plans.  Several students talked about which colleges they were planning on attending and the majors they hoped to pursue. As one studious young man waited to give his answer, he thought of what he had always known he wanted to become: a firefighter. So he told his teacher he would be entering the fire academy after graduating. And his teacher told him he was too smart for that. Years later, this same young man saved his former teacher’s life after a serious car accident.

Let’s hope we all don’t have to go through a similar experience before we can appreciate the value of CTE.  Instead we could remember that our cars, planes, trains, fuel, bridges, roads, homes, schools, police officers, firefighters, electronics, networks, computers and countless other things we rely on daily are directly linked to CTE programs… and we would be in one sorry state without them.