Apprenticeship. (c1997)

Abstract

The technical and professional education agreement adopted by the UNESCO general conference in its twenty fifth session held in 1989, stipulated that technical and professional education concerns all forms and levels of the educational operation including, in addition to general knowledge, studying the related technologies and sciences and acquiring practical skills, expertise positions and knowledge pertaining to technical practices in economics and social fields. From this definition, the comprehensive and integral aspect of technical and professional education in school programs becomes clear, considering that it is complementary for general education and vocational preparation and an aspect of the continuous education. Considering that technical and professional education is relatively recent, as well as related methods and programs which depend on a group of variable factors due to the continuous changing in social, demographic, economic, scientific and cultural aspects because of the accelerated scientific and civilizational development, it becomes necessary and inevitable to reconsider and develop such methods and programs in such a manner that they become compatible with the latest developments, go along with technical progress, help assimilate modem technology and make it possible to individuals and societies to successfully and effectively prepare and execute economic development plans. When preparing and developing technical and professional education programs, specialists and interested parties try to answer the following questions: • Why do we develop technical and professional education programs? How important is that? • What are the bases and rules that govern the programs development operation? • How do we develop technical and professional education programs? How do we prepare and make plans for programs? • How is the program executed and applied? In other words what is the execution and application mechanism? • How could we know if programs fulfill the aims for which they were prepared? • How do we evaluate a program? In the light of general concepts of the technical and professional programs nature, it becomes necessary to have basic rules in order to prepare and develop such programs, and at the same time take into consideration the enormous, tremendous and accelerated technical changes which affect different social, economic, learning and emotional aspects. Therefore, when preparing technical and professional programs, the following must be taken into consideration: • National economy growth which goes along with international economy developments as to the modernization and development of economic systems and the required competences and qualifications, from the number and quality point of view. • Production and services are subject to modem methods and procedures III all industrial, agricultural and commercial fields in addition to various services. • The use of new partially or totally developed techniques and products requiring the existence of trained competent technical frames able to assimilate and apply modem technology. • The excess of unemployed academic graduates are looking for jobs in productive and services fields. Some of them become employers and craftsmen (auto employment). • The disappearance of some old previous jobs and the appearance of new developed and modem jobs. Therefore, the role of the technical and professional education programs becomes essential in the preparation and development of labor force so it can satisfY the society and local market needs and meet the requirements of literate or skilled individuals in various fields and domains. Currently, the Lebanese professional and technical education system is unable to supply the market with qualified labor due to the obsolence of the official curricula and the absence of coordination between technical schools and firms, a basic requirement for adapting the outdated technical education to continually changing market needs. In order to solve the pressing problems facing the professional and technical education, the Ministry of Technical and Professional education prepared in 1993 a plan that proposes solutions to the main problems facing academic education, namely the obsolence of curricula shortage in well trained technical teaching, and the outdated data base system on which the program is built. In light of the ongoing changes in the market needs and the need to develop a program that will prepare and develop a labor force that meets the requirement of the economic environment, the purpose of this research project is to evaluate the proposed plan in Lebanon after thorough analysis of the Lebanese technical and professional education system, with the German apprenticeship system, "the Dual system", as an inspiration to Lebanon.