Since its creation by federal legislation in 1917, vocational education in U.S. high schools has enjoyed a high level of public support. Recently, an increasing number of studies have begun to question the degree to which vocational education in the United States has had an economic payoff for its students. The fact that vocational education continues to flourish while evidence of its shortcomings mounts is thus puzzling. One answer lies in the American belief system, which exerts powerful yet hidden influences on vocational education and thereby insulates it from social demands for change. From its beginning, vocational education has been a logical extension of the American dream of getting ahead by one's own hard work. Vocational education's promises of equality of opportunity, reaffirmation of individual effort and self-determination, and emphasis on hard work and material success have won it loyal support among Americans that persists despite research indicating that its job placement and wage rates are not as high as once thought. It thus appears that, although the country's fundamental belief in vocational education was originally instrumental in developing and popularizing it, today this same belief may actually be impeding the adaptation of vocational education to contemporary needs. As rigidity replaces innovation, programs become increasingly separate from the larger educational enterprise, and narrow skill training is substituted for general education for students who can least afford the costs of being ill prepared. (MN)