They are effectively using vocational schools to give students reliable and well-paying jobs. “Countries offering more vocational options have higher graduation rates and score higher on international tests” and “many countries offer multiple paths to a high school diploma including career and technical programs.”(Graduation Rates... 1) Fundamentally, in foreign countries, an education from a vocational school is not looked down upon and is seen as equal to a person who gets an education from a college. What this creates is an environment in which a lot more students see technical skills as an appealing career. This is unlike the United States in which “a large majority of high school students have come to expect that they will earn bachelor's degrees or more, the fact that traditional vocational education has not been a path to college has made it less attractive to students and the parents.”(Stern 218) With this large separation between traditional education and vocational school students see vocational school as beneath them so much so that they would rather drop out than go into a technical …show more content…
This lack of basic skills of people, in general, affects almost every aspect in the United States. We can not expect real progress in our country if we do not fix our education system because it is the foundation given to people for the rest of their lives. “Civic competence has three key components, including the analytical skills necessary to reason about public issues, familiarity with government institutions, and participation in community affairs.”(Stern