Vocational Technical School
Professional Technical Schools (Russian: профессиона́льно-техни́ческое учи́лище) – "Professionalno-tehnicheskoye uchilishche" (acronym: PTU; ПТУ, пэ-тэ-у́) are vocational education facilities established in the former Soviet Union to train qualified industrial workers and servicemen. Such schools are widespread in all post-Soviet countries (usually in every city).
PTUs formed a government-funded USSR-wide system for school graduates who didn't intend to receive a university degree (see "Secondary education"). Instead, they were both educated generally and trained for non-academic occupations. There were PTUs specializing in almost all such professions, but the most common were construction and machinery positions. Specializations also included secretaries (girls only), cooks, waiters and even mosaic artists (needed drawing talents to apply). The usual entering age for students was 15 - after 8 years of ordinary school, with students coming from peasant backgrounds, the lower working class, orphanages and the like. Two or three years of learning were typical, though some students would enter after 10 years of ordinary school and learn during 1 year.
PTUs required no entering examination and provided students with free hostels and meals. Parents were also attracted by the 24-hour presence of "upbringers" - mentors tasked with preventing students from engaging in deviant behavior. Further employment was also guaranteed, as well as the possibility of continuing education at university level. PTUs played an important role in urbanizing rural communities and forming the Soviet working class (see Urbanization).
Read more about Vocational Technical School: History
Famous quotes containing the words vocational, technical and/or school:
“Nothing bad’s going to happen to us. If we get fired, it’s not failure; its a midlife vocational reassessment.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Woman is the future of man. That means that the world which was once formed in man’s image will now be transformed to the image of woman. The more technical and mechanical, cold and metallic it becomes, the more it will need the kind of warmth that only the woman can give it. If we want to save the world, we must adapt to the woman, let ourselves be led by the woman, let ourselves be penetrated by the Ewigweiblich, the eternally feminine!”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)