Academic drift and metabolic alienation in vocational education

Abstract

The article aims to initiate rereading the history of vocational education from the perspective of its contribution to the emergence of the planetary crisis. I hypothesise that this connection relates to the academisation of vocational education and the concurrent changes in the concepts of occupation, vocational education, and academic education. Drawing on studies in the history of vocational education and a few historical documents, I demonstrate my attempt by tracing shifts in the governance of vocational education in Finland from the early 19th century to recent years. In this article, my focus is on the sectoral aspect of this process. I argue it proceeded from the sectoral promotion of industries during primitive capital accumulation towards a comprehensive education cluster in fossil fuel-supported welfare capitalism. According to my preliminary interpretation, academisation connects during these periods with the increasing alienation of social metabolism from biophysical metabolism. Tackling alienation would require revisiting how it has been promoted through (vocational) education in industrial sectors and their global metabolic chains.