Foundations of skill and subjectivity

This chapter examines the foundations of vocational pathways and their mobilisation by educational and social theory, analysing their significance for contemporary vocational education and training. It examines three key historical moments of change in education and skills transmission, moving from the formation of specialist skills in the earliest differentiated societies, through the elitist foundations of liberal education during struggles over Greek democracy, to the fragmentation of apprenticeship in the early modern period. Our examples illustrate the emergence of stable but stratifying patterns of educational practice, located for most of the population within productive activity. The context of skills is shown as becoming increasingly complex, moving from kinship through increasingly socialised forms, whilst increasingly bound up in wider struggles over who can be recognised as citizen or human subject. We explain the significance of these developments for vocational practice and educational inequality today, as well as for the theory that we describe in the following chapters.