From Motors to Modems

In a computer lab at Dorsey High School, about 20 students click at terminals, learning the nuts and bolts of what may be their future jobs.

One reads a lesson headed: "What is a topology?"

A classmate beside him--two or three steps ahead--works at the question: "How much area can be covered by a simple star topology?"

No, they are not preparing to be gardeners. The topology in their lesson last week concerned the properties of geometric forms, a concept in building the computer networks that keep information zipping in the modern office.

These are the shop students of the 21st century.

Those who complete the four-semester course will be ready to take an examination for certification as a network manager, a credential that commands entry-level salaries of up to $30,000 a year in the nation's fastest-growing occupational field--computer sciences.

Their class, sponsored by a commercial supplier of computer networking devices, represents the only form of vocational training that has thrived in high schools through the decades of rapid change in education and the nation's economy.

As the era of the blue-collar workhorse wanes, the wrench-clanging, motor-whirring shop class--designed to teach manual skills to the non-college-bound--is becoming a thing of the past.

Over a 12-year period starting in 1983, while high school enrollment increased nearly 22%, the number of vocational education classes in Los Angeles County schools dropped from 16,622 to 11,113, according to the County Office of Education.

The number of classes in industrial and manufacturing arts, the staple vocational education of years past, has dropped 43%.

Even sharper declines have hit the person-to-person vocational fields of health and consumer and home economics.

Vocational training has partly been the victim of educational reform and the back-to-basics movement, said Pat Whitman, consultant in charge of career development and vocational education for the county office.

The perception that such classes lack academic rigor has discouraged the development of new teachers critical to continue them.

"We have so few programs at the university level to train people to be vocational teachers, we're having a difficult time," Whitman said. "When we lose a teacher, the program generally dies. I think it's really a disservice."

But Whitman sees some sign of hope in the growth of computer training classes.

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