Hull, G. (1992). "Their Chances? Slim and None":An Ethnographic Account of the Experiences of Low-Income People of Color in a Vocational Program and at Work (MDS-155). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.

INTRODUCTION

This paper describes ethnographic research in a community college Banking and Finance program. My colleagues and I studied this program for over three years, following students from the time they entered the program through the time they spent working at banks and at other jobs and beyond. Most students were African-American women. Some of them were older and returning to school in hopes of improving their skills and getting better jobs; others were younger single mothers who wanted to get off public assistance and find a better way to support their families. Virtually all students, men and women, were people of color; they were poor, and they were in desperate need of jobs.

I situate this report in the current furor over what employers want and what America needs in its workforce. Some believe America's workers are seriously deficient, possessing neither "basic" skills in reading, writing, and math, nor those "advanced" skills thought to be required in reorganized and technologically sophisticated workplaces--skills like "problem-solving" and "judgment" and what Zuboff (1988) calls "intellective" as opposed to "sentient" capabilities. On the heels of such concern is increasing pressure on educators, including vocational teachers and providers of basic skills and remedial training, to create relevant and accountable programs and curricula. Contrasting this position are the views of critical and social theorists who find the link that many assume between a poor economy and deficient workers to be weak, unconvincing, and harmful. According to this viewpoint, workers need to cultivate not just basic skills or job-related training, but what we might call "critical" skills--the ability to reflect on, assess, and ultimately alter society and one's place in it.

After reviewing these positions, I describe our research on students in the vocational program in Banking and Finance, presenting in turn the perspectives of the teacher, the employer, and the students. I then argue that, as far as the students in this study are concerned, proponents of basic skills surely miss the mark, given that such capabilities did not have much to do with whether workers were able to attain, perform, or keep their jobs. Indeed, in my view, the whole fabric of the skills argument, particularly the unquestioned connection between the acquisition and possession of basic skills and the opportunity to display and use them for advancement, is shot full of holes.

I go on to explain what I think the real problem, the larger issues, might be. I try to account for how and why African-American women from the Banking and Finance program were encouraged and helped to take low-level jobs in local banks that most would quickly lose. In so doing, I did not subscribe to deterministic structural theories of reproduction such as those of Bowles and Gintis (1974), for as many people have now pointed out (e.g., Willis, 1977), such theories leave no space for individual agency or the investigation of the process of reproduction. On the other hand, I did not assume that the students in my study would manifest resistance in just the same way as Willis's students. Rather, I attempted to investigate how students, teachers, and employers in this particular context together constructed a career path and a work identity for students in the program, paying attention to the interaction of race, class, and gender in this process. As Carnoy and Levin (1985) have usefully argued, both democratizing and reproductive forces are always present in our society. This paper illustrates the ongoing struggle between these forces, and shows, in this instance, reproductive forces winning out. "Their chances? Slim and none," said the teacher in the vocational program about the prospects of most young people in East Oakland, California. The same turned out to be true, unfortunately, for most of the students in my study.

Having suggested that the problem is not basic skills pure and simple, I examine again arguments for the centrality of critical skills in education, in this case vocational education. Although I am sometimes dissatisfied with the level of argument exemplified in critical theory, which can maintain an Olympian distance from the everyday concerns of the people whose interests it hopes to serve, I do see the need for an approach to literacy and education which foregrounds the development of critical capabilities. However, I believe that we must also take into account that people have to be able to survive, to satisfy fundamental human needs, even to get ahead and prosper. Critical skills need to offer and to be offered as more than an irrelevant luxury when people are desperate for jobs. We need as well to find ways to honor adult students' aspirations and their own definitions of success, understanding that their perspectives may differ, indeed, have every right to differ, from our own. I end the report with a summary and some implications for vocational education and work.

Hull, G. (1992). "Their Chances? Slim and None":An Ethnographic Account of the Experiences of Low-Income People of Color in a Vocational Program and at Work (MDS-155). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.