Transitions: Schooling and Employment in Canada

Genevieve Cherwinski is a co-operative education teacher in St.
John’s, Newfoundland.

The last few years, characterized by high unemployment, have led to a
renewed interest in education, but education with a difference. The
emphasis now is on the efficient delivery of a marketable commodity that
will stimulate economic recovery. This book, comprising 11 papers
delivered at a 1991 conference by noted scholars and educators, examines
young people as they move from school to paid employment and also
grapples with the question of whether schools are producing competitive
graduates capable of increasing productivity.

Section 1 compare the attitudes and needs of youth from a variety of
perspectives, including gender, region, ethnocultural origin, and
socioeconomic background. Section 2 (Perspectives and Research
Methodologies) strives to find uniformity in a mixed bag of papers on
such diverse topics as a bibliographic survey of education and
employment in Quebec, and the problems of pursuing cross-cultural,
community-based research that is sensitive to the cultural concerns of
Natives. If the book is directed at policy-makers then the effort is
wasted due to a lack of clarity and direction. (In demonstrating the
complexity of the issues related to education and employment, the book
is amply successful.)

As is often the case with published conference proceedings, the papers
are uneven in quality and content; the book reflects a largely academic
perspective and offers little from educators and employers, both of whom
are essential components of the equation. More seriously, most of the
studies have a central-Canadian bias and thus pay only lip service to
the unique problems faced by those who are marginalized by geography and
forced to “[go] down the road” because education and local
employment have both failed them.