Vocational/Technological Education: Some Second Thoughts

Shlomo Swirski is amongst the most vocal critics of educational tracking. He sees it as a tool for social exclusion and advocates an all-encompassing, integrative system that includes both academic and vocational courses of study with a voluntary choice of courses absent of tracking based on ethnicity, gender, or social status. Prof. Shavit critiques Swirski’s approach from several perspectives, and raises anew the question of the advantages and disadvantages of educational tracking in the education system.  In view of the fact that the rates of those reaching higher education are not likely to increase in the near future, Prof Shavit calls to renew the research into vocational training with the aim of identifying its effective aspects.

This paper is available in Hebrew only