“Future plans instead of water cannons,” chanted young people in 1968. These young people—including those in vocational training – were referring to plans to purchase water cannons in the aftermath of the so-called “Globus riot”, the confrontation between young protesters and police in Zurich. A protest, in which VET youth were involved (Peter 2008; Eigenmann & Geiss 2016). My analysis examines how these young people – more precisely, apprentices in the postwar era (1945–1989) – imagined the future of vocational education and training (VET) to bring about a desired future or prevent an undesired one. Apprentices in Switzerland play a central role in shaping the societal future – three-quarters of young people who form future society complete VET (Kessler & Ruoss 2024). VET, furthermore, lies at the intersection of politics, economics, labor, technology, society, and education. Future imaginings of VET constitute and are constituted by the social imaginary, that is, the shared practices and widely accepted meanings that structure collective life (Taylor 2004, 24). Nevertheless, their marginalized voices have not been heard in contemporary debates, have seldom been traced, and have rarely been considered in historical research. Whether and how imaginings of future VET functioned as critical interventions with utopian potential or as stabilizing forces within this social imaginary remains unexplored. To address this, I investigate how apprentices imagined the future and the future social imaginary, and what role they assigned to VET in realizing their visions. Methodologically, I understand the formulation of future imaginings as a form of future-oriented action: although futures are by definition imagined, they guide perception and behavior in the present. In German-speaking Switzerland, “1968” is primarily associated with the aforementioned Globus riots in Zurich (Skenderovic & Späti 2012, 5). Zurich, therefore, represents the research area for this study. I define the postwar period (1945–1989) as the analytical frame, as the future became a central category of human action after 1945, with imagination playing an increasingly prominent role. Using Zurich’s VET youth as a case, I reconstruct and analyze apprentices’ future imaginaries from apprentice magazines, leaflets, and lecture transcripts. In doing so, I show that imaginings of the future constitute a form of social action, revealing VET not only as a training model but also as a site of social change. My contribution thus serves as an example of how VET can be analyzed as a space of social projection.

Eigenmann, P., & Geiss, M. (2016). There is no outside to the system: Paternalism and protest in Swiss vocational education and training, 1950–1980. Studies in Vocational and Continuing Education (Bern), (14), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0343-2354-3 Kessler, S., & Ruoss, T. (2024). Bildung, Beruf und Boom: Lehrvertragsstatistiken und die Expansion der Berufsbildung in der Schweiz, 1930–1970. Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik (ZBW). Franz Steiner Verlag. https://doi.org/10.25162/zbw-2024-0011 Peter, N. (2008). Halbstarke, Kellerpoeten, Studentinnen und Lehrlinge. In J. Scharloth & A. Linke (Eds.), Der Zürcher Sommer 1968: Zwischen Krawall, Utopie und Bürgersinn. NZZ Libro. Skenderovic, D., & Späti, C. (2012). Die 1968er-Jahre in der Schweiz: Aufbruch in Politik und Kultur. Hier + Jetzt. Taylor, C. (2004). Modern social imaginaries (3rd ed., Public Planet Books). Duke University Press.