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This article is a few years old, but Mike Rowe (from Dirty Jobs) is a big proponent of learning trades and trade schools. People in the trades that are our age are nearing retirement and there just aren't enough young people to take their places. Middle & high schools are doing a major disservice by making their curriculum all about college prep as not everyone is college material.
During my freshman year of high school I was required to take home economics and shop class where I learned basics skills in sewing, cooking, woodwork and metal work. Regrettably the cooking never made an impression, but I fondly remember learning along with a class full of boys and girls how to sew a pair of shorts, punch holes into metal to create a hook to hang my bathrobe, cut and bend metal to make a box that still holds my pens to this day and use a rotary saw to make a hot plate that was used on the kitchen table at home.
Twenty years later I can still recall that sense of pride when I finished the blue metal box with only minimal guidance from my shop teacher. I remember him fondly, he wore a dark blue lab coat, coke bottle glasses and was missing the tip of one finger. It astonished me how the noisy, formidable equipment permitted me to have a taste of what it must feel like to be an artist, as opposed to an envious seemingly untalented observer hanging outside art class watching the creative students' imaginations explode onto the canvas with every brush stroke. I have continued to use those skills throughout my life both professionally and when needed around the house.
Shop classes are being eliminated from California schools due to the University of California/California State 'a-g' requirements. 'The intent of the 'a-g' subject requirements is to ensure that students can participate fully in the first-year program at the University in a wide variety of fields of study.' (a) History/Social Science (b) English © Mathematics (d) Laboratory Science (e) Language other than English (f) Visual and Performing Arts (g) College Preparatory Elective Courses. High school administrators are graded on their effectiveness to administer those classes through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation. Shop class is not included in the requirements, thereby not valued and schools consider the class a burden to support. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with 660,000 students in K-12 has already eliminated 90% of shop classes and it looks like the rest will be gone by the end of the 2013.
The UC/CA State system focuses on theory and not applied skills; a belief that learning how to swing a hammer or understand the difference between a good joint from a bad joint is part of a by-gone era, and as a society these skills are not something to strive for - something people resort to when they are out of options. Looking at shop class in this light is short-sighted and detrimental to America's future.
From The Return of Shop to City Schools
[Shop] acquaints students with its ties to mathematics and the sciences. It could point toward possibilities in the arts, which arise in one degree or another from craftsmanship. Through discussions of its materials – wood, metal, rubber, plastic – it could point toward history classes, and through the materials those classes could draw the student into study of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, conquest of native peoples, systems of government, and on and on. The shop class could even give practical lessons in English; imagine, for example, an exercise in which a student is handed an incomplete specification for some required task and to complete it is made to write an RFI. On finishing the shop class a student should have some idea of how to answer the question, 'What use is x in my life?' – and we could substitute for x any of the litany of usually detested classes.
75% of the students in California are not going to attend university yet they are taking classes that will help them get into UC and CA State schools. Just like there are people who are not inclined to become welders or machinists, not everyone can be a rocket scientist or a football star.
Students take physical education class in elementary school and with that opportunity they discover their abilities and their like or dislike for various sports. The schools breed our pro football and basketball stars. What would it be like if as adults we didn't have exposure to sports in school? Would the NFL and NBA be as popular? What about the Olympics? With all the money that is poured into high school sports teams you would think that every kid was going to turn into a professional player. Without early exposure to shop class many kids are going to lose out on the opportunity to discover whether or not they like making things, and the inclination to pursue a career as a drafter, carpenter, welder or auto mechanic. Statistically speaking there is a greater chance that a kid will become employed as a tradesperson than ever becoming a professional sports player. Skilled laborers are essential and are not limited to stereotypical jobs as plumbers (although that is critical profession). Companies such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman are struggling to find skilled laborers and that trend is going to continue.
From A Critical Review of Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft
...the skilled trades are undervalued in America. They are undervalued in the American educational system that has systematically eliminated shop class. They are undervalued in the collective consciousness that views them as lowly, “blue collar”, dirty, unprofessional. But, the funny thing is that there is one place where they are actually not undervalued at all, and that is in the marketplace, which has seen a greater and greater demand for the skilled craftsman, be he a carpenter, electrician, machinist, mechanic, and so on. On account of his being in demand, the skilled tradesman has his choice of jobs, needs answer to no one, and earns a living wage, perks that are not to be scoffed at in this economic environment.
As shop teachers around California retire, high schools aren't replacing them and shop classes are closing. There is no training for teachers going through university to learn how to teach shop. This trend isn't limited to California, according to John Chocholak who has testified in front of California State Assembly and Congress on the subject of shop class, he is seeing shop class killed in Florida, Wisconsin, Texas and many other states. Shop class is dead and so are the potential trades people that would be born out of that early exposure to a tool or machine.
What is America going to do without skilled workers who can build and fix things?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabr...americas-high-skilled-workforce/#2ea1ca12541f
During my freshman year of high school I was required to take home economics and shop class where I learned basics skills in sewing, cooking, woodwork and metal work. Regrettably the cooking never made an impression, but I fondly remember learning along with a class full of boys and girls how to sew a pair of shorts, punch holes into metal to create a hook to hang my bathrobe, cut and bend metal to make a box that still holds my pens to this day and use a rotary saw to make a hot plate that was used on the kitchen table at home.
Twenty years later I can still recall that sense of pride when I finished the blue metal box with only minimal guidance from my shop teacher. I remember him fondly, he wore a dark blue lab coat, coke bottle glasses and was missing the tip of one finger. It astonished me how the noisy, formidable equipment permitted me to have a taste of what it must feel like to be an artist, as opposed to an envious seemingly untalented observer hanging outside art class watching the creative students' imaginations explode onto the canvas with every brush stroke. I have continued to use those skills throughout my life both professionally and when needed around the house.
Shop classes are being eliminated from California schools due to the University of California/California State 'a-g' requirements. 'The intent of the 'a-g' subject requirements is to ensure that students can participate fully in the first-year program at the University in a wide variety of fields of study.' (a) History/Social Science (b) English © Mathematics (d) Laboratory Science (e) Language other than English (f) Visual and Performing Arts (g) College Preparatory Elective Courses. High school administrators are graded on their effectiveness to administer those classes through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation. Shop class is not included in the requirements, thereby not valued and schools consider the class a burden to support. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with 660,000 students in K-12 has already eliminated 90% of shop classes and it looks like the rest will be gone by the end of the 2013.
The UC/CA State system focuses on theory and not applied skills; a belief that learning how to swing a hammer or understand the difference between a good joint from a bad joint is part of a by-gone era, and as a society these skills are not something to strive for - something people resort to when they are out of options. Looking at shop class in this light is short-sighted and detrimental to America's future.
From The Return of Shop to City Schools
[Shop] acquaints students with its ties to mathematics and the sciences. It could point toward possibilities in the arts, which arise in one degree or another from craftsmanship. Through discussions of its materials – wood, metal, rubber, plastic – it could point toward history classes, and through the materials those classes could draw the student into study of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, conquest of native peoples, systems of government, and on and on. The shop class could even give practical lessons in English; imagine, for example, an exercise in which a student is handed an incomplete specification for some required task and to complete it is made to write an RFI. On finishing the shop class a student should have some idea of how to answer the question, 'What use is x in my life?' – and we could substitute for x any of the litany of usually detested classes.
75% of the students in California are not going to attend university yet they are taking classes that will help them get into UC and CA State schools. Just like there are people who are not inclined to become welders or machinists, not everyone can be a rocket scientist or a football star.
Students take physical education class in elementary school and with that opportunity they discover their abilities and their like or dislike for various sports. The schools breed our pro football and basketball stars. What would it be like if as adults we didn't have exposure to sports in school? Would the NFL and NBA be as popular? What about the Olympics? With all the money that is poured into high school sports teams you would think that every kid was going to turn into a professional player. Without early exposure to shop class many kids are going to lose out on the opportunity to discover whether or not they like making things, and the inclination to pursue a career as a drafter, carpenter, welder or auto mechanic. Statistically speaking there is a greater chance that a kid will become employed as a tradesperson than ever becoming a professional sports player. Skilled laborers are essential and are not limited to stereotypical jobs as plumbers (although that is critical profession). Companies such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman are struggling to find skilled laborers and that trend is going to continue.
From A Critical Review of Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft
...the skilled trades are undervalued in America. They are undervalued in the American educational system that has systematically eliminated shop class. They are undervalued in the collective consciousness that views them as lowly, “blue collar”, dirty, unprofessional. But, the funny thing is that there is one place where they are actually not undervalued at all, and that is in the marketplace, which has seen a greater and greater demand for the skilled craftsman, be he a carpenter, electrician, machinist, mechanic, and so on. On account of his being in demand, the skilled tradesman has his choice of jobs, needs answer to no one, and earns a living wage, perks that are not to be scoffed at in this economic environment.
As shop teachers around California retire, high schools aren't replacing them and shop classes are closing. There is no training for teachers going through university to learn how to teach shop. This trend isn't limited to California, according to John Chocholak who has testified in front of California State Assembly and Congress on the subject of shop class, he is seeing shop class killed in Florida, Wisconsin, Texas and many other states. Shop class is dead and so are the potential trades people that would be born out of that early exposure to a tool or machine.
What is America going to do without skilled workers who can build and fix things?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabr...americas-high-skilled-workforce/#2ea1ca12541f
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Because of the insurance companies and sue happy parents he won't have the same opportunity that I did.... good thing I have it all at home!
