Editorial Theme Issue: Education and the Labor Market In recent years there has been heightened criticism of the education/employment linkage in North America. The education system is said to be poorly articulated with demand in the labor market, there being an excess of aspirants for some jobs and a shortage for others. It is claimed that young people emerging from the school system are lacking in the basic skills of literacy and numeracy and are therefore of low employability. Another complaint is that their values and attitudes tend to be antagonistic to the organization and demands of the workplace and to the ethos of the business enterprise. Youth unemployment is a continuing concern; there are tendencies both to blame the school system and to look to it as a source of amelioration. It is also readily apparent that there is a changing relationship between education and employment. This is indicated by a variety of developments. For example, a university degree no longer guarantees professional status - - nor, indeed, employment. Over the past two decades,new institutions such as colleges of applied arts and technology have emerged in Canada to provide formal preparation for a range of technical and trade occupations and positions in commerce and the arts. Increasingly, graduation from secondary school is the minimum requirement for employment. Many secondary schools now have programs specifically concerned with teaching students how to obtain jobs when they leave school, but pressure remains for the reorganization of secondary education in order to make it more relevant to the employment needs of youth. The relationship between education and employment raises significant theoretical issues. At a general level there is the question of the limits and possibilities of schooling as an instrument of social policy. Recent problems of articulation between education and the labor market indicate the need for fundamental reappraisal of the linkage and for a clear specification of the goals which educational institutions can realistically be expected to achieve. It appears, too, that the relationship between education and social and economic mobility is problematic; that although educational attainment may be necessary, it is certainly not sufficient in itself, and its importance is contingent upon the existence of particular political, economic, demographic, and ideological conditions. The problems of unemployment, underemployment, and social disadvantage have maintained theoretical interest in the issue of income distribution and determination, and here the education/employment linkage is of central importance. There are also a number of substantive issues. Among them are: discrimination against women in the labor market - - its extent and institutional basis; "educated" underemployment and unemployment and the implications for worker satisfaction and industrial relations; dropouts from the educational system; the returns to society and the individual from investment in education; the role of formal education in specific job-skills development; the changing occupational structure and its requirements for trained manpower; and changing attitudes to work and employment. The policy relevance of the education/employment nexus is considerable. This is illustrated by the following questions. How can fulfillment be provided for the "educated" underemployed whose vocational expectations have been frustrated? How can skill imbalances in the labor force be overcome? Can 2

Interchange / Vol. l l , N o . 3 / 1980-81

occupational expectations be reoriented in order to rematch the realities of the labor market? What structural and functional changes in the educational system are necessary to cope with the problems of entry to the work force, career changes, and retraining? The papers in this special issue are not collectively intended to address a specific theme within the broad topic of education and the labor market, although there has been a concern to highlight, where possible, the changing nature of the relationship. The selection of articles has resulted from a general call for papers addressing any one or more of a range of issues within the general topic. The purposes are to gain some idea of new and worthwhile work being done and to disseminate it to researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Many issues are taken up in the papers. They include the shortage of skilled labor, rising youth unemployment, pressure for secondary school reorganization, difficulties in meeting manpower requirements in the militia, the transition to work as experienced by working class youth, the validity of the correspondence theory of the relationship between schooling and work, and the policy implications of the processes of work values and attitudes formation. But there are also commonalities and interconnections. Three papers address the difficult transition from school to work. King explores curricular and organizational changes introduced into Ontario secondary schools at the beginning of the 1970s and examines how these changes have affected the school careers and, consequently, the work prospects and experiences of a large proportion of school leavers. In the mid-1970s, the Ontario Career Action Program (OCAP) was introduced to provide youth with employment experience, job specific skills training, and orientation to effective career development. Sinclair reports an analysis and evaluation of this program within the framework of youth unemployment and of public policy in Ontario intended to ease school-to-work transition. While the transition problem as perceived by the public, by school systems and by politicians has been heavily documented and discussed, little has been done to find out how youth, themselves, interpret and manage the transition; Gaskell and Lazerson seek to remedy this shortcoming with a careful, sensitive and subtle analysis of what young people say just before, and not long after, they leave school. A significant finding is the existence of a pattern of "coping mechanisms." Two papers focus on problems of manpower supply. Harvey and McShane relate the likelihood of a continuing demand for skilled workers to the aging nature of the present supply, the drying-up of traditional sources, and a weak national training capability. Their approach is to explore ways in which employers can be persuaded to play a larger role. A matter rarely aired is the relationship between the education system and the military labor market. Cotton shows how recent demographic changes and developments in the education system have resulted in the disappearance of the traditional sources of supply of enlisted personnel. He explains policy solutions now under consideration to adjust demand to the changing nature of supply. A frequent criticism of the concurrent youth unemployment and job vacancies has been the demise of the work ethic traditionally rooted in North American society. Alvi discusses the nature and meaning of work from various perspectives and reviews research on the nature and significance of work values and attitudes, the policy implications for education, counseling, and the world of work. There is an important connection between the contributions from Apple

and from Gaskell and Lazerson. Both view the relationship between schooling and work, and the transition between the two, as linked with structured social inequalities and accompanying systems of domination and exploitation. This is more explicit in Apple's work. His fundamental concern is to bring about an understanding of the part played by schools in reproducing unequal social relations of production from one generation to the next. This explains his interest in the hidden curriculum, but he rejects a simplistic view that this merely mirrors norms and values required in the workplace. Instead, he points to the need for a recognition of elements of resistance among students and workers, and of contradictions both in classroom and workplace and between the two. Drawing on recent analyses of the nature of work relations in capitalist society, and of ethnographic studies in schools, he argues that both students and workers are able partly t o " see through" the structures of disadvantage and domination in which they are situated, and this penetration is expressed in their modes of resistance. The contradictory element lies in the fact that often the resistance is at once a threat to and a reinforcement of ideological hegemony. The link with Gaskell and Lazerson's paper is that they, too, find evidence of "seeing through" - - of partial penetration as they call it. Thus, two broad approaches are reflected in the selection of papers. One sees the relationship between schooling and work to be essentially political. The other sees the connection as essentially technical, a matter of matching qualities needed in the workplace with those being developed in the schooling system and elsewhere. Of course, social and other factors are recognized as often working against the effectiveness of this technical relationship. Harvey and McShane, for instance, point out that one reason for the lack of skilled workers is the belief that, in Canadian society, white collar jobs are more desirable and are attainable with enough formal education. King recognizes that any reorganization designed to bring education and the job market back into line will have to take into account a range of social and political constraints such as the demands of teacher organizations, attitudes in industry, and cost. Finally, all of the papers are of interest from the policy point of view. In particular, attention is drawn to the papers by Harvey and McShane and by King. The former underlines the gap which always exists between a policy problem and its translation into a research question or into specific issues to which existing knowledge can be applied. For Harvey and McShane, the policy problem concerns the shortage of skilled labor; the research question they have chosen is: what are the barriers to employer sponsored training? From their analysis, it is clear that important factors in making this choice are the way in which relevant variables can be manipulated and realized political possibilities. King's paper emphasizes the gap between knowledge and policy recommendation. His analysis reveals that changes in secondary school organization have resulted in its being out of phase with labor market realities. However, he shows clearly that one cannot jump straight to recommendations which seem to inhere in this finding. There is a need first to review a range of social, political, industrial and economic constraints on policy formulation. We hope that readers find these papers of interest and that they are of help in advancing ongoing work and in generating new projects. We also thank all of those people who responded so promptly to the call for papers, and express our appreciation of the encouragement provided by the Editorial Board of Interchange and by Edward Harvey. Agnes Calliste, Marguerite Cassin, and Gerald England/Department of Sociology, OISE 4