Vocation: any continuous activity which engages one's own attributes, talents, and interests in accomplishing some result(s) of significance to the individual and also of some use or value to others--to one's community or society at large (adapted from Dewey). All of us engage in multiple vocations...not just the one we identify as our primary occupation ("I'm a teacher."), but those involved in family, physical fitness, community action, hobbies, and so on.
Dewey recognizes that an occupation balances what is distinctive about an individual with a contribution to social service (p. 249), that is, it should create this balance in a democratic society where the welfare of the community and society is inextricably intertwined with the highest and best accomplishment of its members. This is the objective in a democratic as opposed to an autocratic society in which the privileged objectives of the ruling class are more nakedly exposed.
This democratic objective cannot be achieved by efficiency in vocational training, that is, by directed preparation in behaviors and skills required for the routine operation of an occupation (routine in the sense of continuing the activity as it has previously been conducted). Rather, what is required is "an education which acknowledges the full intellectual and social meaning of a vocation" (p. 257). This kind of education involves less directed aims and a richer context in science, history, etc. "Above all, it would train power of readaptation to changing conditions so that future workers would not become blindly subject to a fate imposed upon them" (p. 257). It would prepare individuals for freedom, not in the sense of anarchy but in the sense of release to contribute to society.
This, of course, is the kind of education that springs most assuredly and most naturally from inquiry, which is why it comes under scrutiny. Dewey recognizes that "those who are entrenched in command of the industrial machinery...realize that such an educational system if made general would threaten their ability to use others for their own ends" (p. 257). Schools are key to the transformation in the model context they provide for those preparing themselves for their eventual, actual context. To become accustomed to inquiring and contributing is essential in a democracy, but nevertheless threatening to conservative interests in ways it cannot be by definition to progressive interests.
What Dewey describes raises two questions particularly germane in today's circumstances. The first has to do with social context. We hardly need to resort to someone like Maslow to establish that every person has some occupational needs related to survival--making a living, putting food on the table for self and others. To the extent that society's power structure can be engineered to increase the pressure of survival needs, it can correspondingly decrease the capacity for broader concerns. A particularly good example of this is the state of healthcare in the United States today. If my access to healthcare is enmeshed in my employment, it creates a situation that restricts my inclination and capacity to act in any way outside the current fate imposed upon me, to say nothing of an entire change in circumstances. What some call socialism in referring to national medicine, I believe Dewey would term the common good in the sense of creating a context in which everyone is that much more free to actualize individual interest and talent for the benefit of society as well as the self.
A second concern arises from the inevitable march of society towards increasing complexity. Today's educational landscape is focused on kids' being college-ready. I recognize that today's world requires more capacity than ever before. Nevertheless, I would suggest that we not take for granted that a college degree represents the greater capacity for what Dewey calls the "intellectual and social meaning of a vocation." Given the complexity of the occupational demands in today's world, we run the risk of turning college into yesterday's high school while simultaneously fooling ourselves into thinking it is something more. In other words, if the demands of today's workplace require more skills than ever before, if today's workplace requires different skills than before, if the skills required today are more akin to skills which used to be considered "advanced"...these are all circumstances which pave the way for a perception that we are providing a more liberal education for those who attend college, when in reality what we are providing is just a different kind of vocational training--one that is in fact just as limiting in relation to today's society. The term "higher" education should not be allowed by definition to support perceptions that it does not support in reality.
At the risk of venturing into an area for which I have no qualifications, I will also suggest that the aims of higher education for students are controlled to a greater extent than ever before by cost. The cost is such that it has become necessary to justify higher education with a direct line from diploma to occupation. Choosing a major is now a cost-benefit analysis rather than the kind of individual-social actualization that Dewey suggests. The very names bear this out as students now major in business rather than economics, for example. At the risk of over-statement, this again suggests a societal limitation on opportunity that has obvious benefit to existing, entrenched power interests. To the extent that college is a training ground for occupations--and students graduate with unprecedented college loan balances--their course in the critical years of finding their way into individual freedom and social responsibility is restricted by these outside forces.
All of this serves to emphasize the ongoing importance of our schools and of teachers in particular to stand (as they always have) for what Dewey calls "a change in the quality of mental disposition--an educative change...We may produce in schools a projection in type of the society we should like to realize" (p. 256)...which is to say a society in which individuals develop a kind of rapport with inquiry that provides for fulfillment in their future vocations--their own and that of their society.
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