Vocational education must provide students with life skills

Vocational education must provide students with life skills

A. Chaedar Alwasilah, Dean, Faculty of Language and Arts Education,
Indonesian University of Education (UPI), Bandung, West Java

The issue of teaching life skills has recently drawn the
attention of educators. The Kompas daily (Jan. 30), for example,
quoted the Director for Vocational Education Gatot Hari
Priowirjanto as saying that around 60 percent of high school
graduates need life skills, and funds have been allocated for
various programs teaching life skills.

This issue has been a major problem in our education. Many
school early-leavers and even high school graduates who do not go
on to college find themselves incompetent and unqualified to
secure a decent job. Obviously the schools -- even vocational
schools -- throughout the country have not provided students with
competitive life skills. It is high time for education planners
in this country to critically redefine vocational education in a
comprehensive way, given that labor and vocational problems are
now largely dependent on global forces. The thorny problem of
Indonesian workers who were forced to leave their livelihood in
Malaysia, for example, is one glaring example.

Scholars propose that "integrative life planning" bring
together many aspects of people's lives, their communities, and
the larger society. Thus, among others, pluralism, spirituality,
and the community at large are determining variables in defining
policies on vocational education and vocational training.

In the Indonesian context, vocational planning should first
accommodate the changing global context. Ours has now become a
global village, so that trainees and vocational school students
should be exposed to various jobs in the local and global
setting.

It is public knowledge that Indonesian workers in the Middle
East, for example, are unable to compete with, say those from the
Philippines. Less skilled, Indonesians are forced to do unskilled
work. Foreign language skills seem to be a major ability lacking
among Indonesian workers.

Considering the limited opportunities in the job market
available at home, the vocational school curricular should
incorporate skills to enable students to work overseas. This
belated global orientation is a must and should be translated
into school subjects and skills demanded in the global market --
such as midwifery and international communication services,
computer and language skills; specifically English and Arabic for
vocational purposes.

Second, vocational planning should weave lives into a
meaningful whole. Traditionally it is believed that people need
to work to live. However, work alone cannot provide us with all
that we want. Instead, we want a balance between work and other
life functions. Students should be advised to prioritize work
according to their unique individual, family, work, and community
needs and values.

The inborn aptitude for business and entrepreneurship of
people from Tasikmalaya, West Java and Padang, West Sumatra, for
example, has been overlooked. This should be reason enough to
establish high schools in the area for entrepreneurship. The same
thing should also apply to other regions in the country.

Third, vocational planning should connect family and work.
Much more attention should be paid to potential conflicts between
family and work. Career professionals need to be aware of these
conflicts. Some parents often have to agree with their children
being employed in a sector that would otherwise be avoided.

Getting a job is the beginning of work-family conflicts.
Modern vocational schools need to establish a database of
employment records of students' families.

Fourth, vocational planning should value pluralism and
inclusivity. As a nation with ethnic, racial, religious, and
geographic diversity, we need an education system that promotes
an understanding of differences.

Diverse training in vocational programs, multicultural
counseling courses in college, and political action for
democratization represent a constructive response to the fragile
and breakable interethnic and racial relations facing Indonesian
society.

It is heartening to know that many non-Muslim owned
supermarkets now employ promotion staff wearing the jilbab or
headscarves. Such an attitude should be developed in the early
stages of education among students by allowing students, for
example, to retain their religious and ethnic identities in
school.

Fifth, vocational planning should explore spirituality and
life purposes. Spirituality is central to human beings, an
aspect much neglected by experts in career development.

Under the New Order, attending to religious obligations during
office hours such as daily prayers for Muslims was tacitly
discouraged. Employees had to sneak around to observe the prayers
with a guilty feeling.

Expatriates and foreign business circles in Indonesia should
have an informed awareness of the sense of spirituality here.
Providing Muslim employees with a spacious corner, say 16 square
meters, to perform daily prayers will assure them that their
spiritual needs are attended to, and thus reinvigorate their
commitment to their work.

Sixth, vocational planning should manage personal transitions
and organizational changes. The most salient characteristic of
globalization is change. Employees should develop an informed
awareness of potential organizational change at the workplace and
thus should be taught how to manage the process. Knowing and
observing what is going on in other companies or non-business
institutions is a strategy to develop such awareness.

Organizational changes will also affect individual
relationships, career development, and values in general. Thus
employees in this global era should be trained to manage change
or, even better, to be an agent of change.

Hence, field trips to and apprenticeships at different
workplaces should be part of the curricular, especially in
vocational schools. Different companies develop their own company
culture, and students should be made familiar with those cultures
to prepare them to successfully manage organizational change.

The above guidelines are a translation of the modern approach
to career development. Vocational schooling and vocational
training for graduates need to be redefined in a comprehensive
and interdisciplinary way. Various dimensions of life are pieces
that when put together make a whole, and must be taken into
consideration.