Kurt Proctor

Date of Award

8-1990

Document Type

Independent Study

Degree Name

Master of Education (MEd)

Abstract

Teaching the youth of today is becoming an important issue. Alarming statistics prove that the problems of illiteracy and high dropout rates are not decreasing. If nothing is done to change the prospects of the 13 million school-aged children currently at serious risk of school failure, says a coalition of eleven education organizations, these children will grow up to become adults who will drain the economy in welfare and social service costs and seriously hamper the nations ability to compete internationally. L. B. Schorr (1988) states that in 1987,"the one million youngsters who leave high school without graduating will be marginally literate and virtually unemployable."(P.8)

So whether students quit of their own volition, are suspended, or stay and remain uneducated, youngsters by the tens of thousands leave school unable to read a package label, follow an instruction manual, fill out a form, read a newspaper, calculate a percentage, or write an understandable letter. Even when they do find jobs, they produce less and produce it less efficiently .

Aberdeen School in Winnipeg School Di vision #1 is located in the inner-city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. At Aberdeen School alternate approaches to educate junior high students are being tested and if successful are being promoted. The teachers at Aberdeen are currently involved with a content integration project. This project has a language focus that will meet the needs of the students as well as the staff. The administration wanted to take this language focus and integrate it with the technologies found within the practical arts areas in the school . The term practical arts is used because it involves teachers from the following areas: Textiles, Nutrition, Growing Plants, Woodworking, Metalworking, Graphic Communications and Plastics.

Integrating Language Arts fully with Technology Education is a major undertaking. Hammond (1988) states, "one of the gravest errors we made in education in the past was to separate vocational education from academic education. Two inefficiencies have followed from this partition. Fir-st academic people have been out of the technology which underlies our present society. By this I don't mean only the complicated technologies but rather everyday technology such as how to repair appliances ... or shelter. Second, vocational people have been somewhat cut off from the confidence that comes from being able to handle symbolic forms in which academic knowledge is embodied. This separation appears first at the junior high level therefore, the best point to begin

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