Schools reviving shop class
wsj.com
wsj.com
6th grade: industrial drawing, hand tools, shop safety, home maintenance: replacing windows, wiring bulbs, switches and outlets, faucet installations. Basic fabrication with plastic, hammered metal forming and band sawing wood.
7th & 8th grade: Metal: forge, lathe, welding (electric arc & acetylene), sheet metal (cutting, bending, punching, riveting, soldering) Wood: turning on lathe, table sawing, planing, routing, laminating, veneering, clamping, etc
In high school, all of the above plus architectural drawing, project management, metal machining, and fiberglass (mold design, making and part-making). Student projects included dune buggy car bodies, boats, water skis, furniture and all the usual (cutting boards, knife blocks, spice racks, etc.)
In today's world, parents (and lawyers) might find it unsafe for boys (very few girls elected to take these classes) but in seven years of shop, I only recall one serious accident involving the loss of a finger tip.
I went on to college major in Industrial Design and business then spent a career designing and producing projects for major consumer product company clients.
>Before hitting the switch on a power tool, slowly count to 10 under your breath to yourself on your fingers, visualizing all the forces involved and planning out the entirety of your movement and how you will be moving the stock/tool, and considering what might go wrong and the results thereof and what will protect you (all guards should be in place and all suitable PPE worn) or where you should be positioned so as to avoid any potential projectile, reminding yourself that you want to be able to repeat that count in the same way when the tool is switched off.
Sawstop wouldn't have a business model if all tablesaw accidents were tried by a jury of shop teachers.
Don’t pass up a chance to pee is the advice in question.
Which I’d equate to; Better safe than sorry
No one really regrets going to the bathroom when it isn't urgent.
Plenty of people regret waiting until it gets urgent.
Walk, don't run.
Never trust the public in a vehicle.
Always check the rigging yourself before rapelling down the embankment.
Sleep when you're tired.
Eat when you're hungry.
And never, I repeat, NEVER wait to pee.
When you live in a world where you may have to scramble at any moment, and you work 72 hour shifts, you can't take simple things for granted. We might go from chilling on base to not being back for 15+ hours.
I've also mentored younger colleagues. I think there's a problem with shop safety, which is related to computer programming: Some people are able to learn it, and others just aren't. There's a certain situational awareness that you have to develop -- a sixth sense for when something is unsafe, that goes beyond just remembering all of the rules. There's also an intuition that you develop, like in programming, of being able to "think like the machine."
Like it or not, there are people who shouldn't be in the shop.
I had a friend who could immediately see patterns in fighting games, after a few plays they'd immediately know how the CPU would react in certain situations. I could never.
I can see patterns in code, how it relates to other code and in the processes surrounding it, especially when I'm not taking my ADD meds. It's a superpower when shit's on fire and needs to be handled fast.
Similarly some people form this "sixth sense" situational awareness for physical tools and safety. They'll just look at a worksite and "feel" something is off. Or they pick up a tool and immediately know something is off - something in the balance or how it feels in the hand, or maybe it made a noise it's not supposed to.
A little bit of a ramble here:
Different mental models is kind of a fascinating thing for me. I don't always pick up on something as quickly as my peers when it comes to things like math and pattern recognition, but I've tended to make up for that with a hard work ethic and what I think of as rabid curiosity and a strong desire to constantly grow my work skill set and knowledge. I've grown a lot during my career as a result when colleagues who had much higher GPAs stagnated. It's interesting how wide and varied our brains are. Again, when doing any pattern recognition games (e.g. speed, set...etc) with my wife...I don't think I'm bad, but she is grasping things at a rate of 3-6x what I can and it was the same in any hard STEM classes that we took together. It's the opposite for things like history where she can't pick up as much of what is going on in a lecture or documentary or whatever. Physically speaking I'm not sure how the brain works differently between us, but I'm guessing the weights are just different if it's anything like the NN in computer science. We were playing dominoes the other day and I had to pause to check which had already been played and she got a little frustrated that I was taking too much time - like what do you mean you don't already know which ones have been played? So I guess it's a greater ability to recognize and retain patterns quickly.
In your case of the worker, I wonder if they were just dangerously clueless or just needed a little more time to build that mental model to grasp how the pieces all fit together. I also wonder how I would have faired.
(It was a graduate level real analysis course, and people who had been calculus whizzes were struggling with point set topology proofs.)
We assembled a plastic product with about 20 components of different shapes and sizes. There were slots to align and friction fit, there were things to click, wires to route, glue to dab etc.
The far extreme of "can think in 3D" were the people who could be shown the finished item, the kit of parts and pretty much just assemble it. They would miss some "trick" or "knack" we had developed and they might not quite get the alignment or placement of a part perfectly but the product would work.
The opposite end were the people who unless I was stood with them and helping to move the components in to alignment just simply couldn't "get" it. It was as if they didn't have a the ability to retain the finished view and movement through 3D space required to complete the movement. Could also have been a coordination, dexterity or proprioception issue.
Of course this was a spectrum and we had to make a judgement call (often in discussion with them) about how they would improve/get up to speed or if it was a lost cause. We built jigs and tools to help remove the finesse required in the assembly which helped a lot BUT, when you got someone who could just see it no amount of training or jigs could get everyone to that speed.
On quiet days we would have little competitions on certain stations to see if people could get a new record and it was those days when you could really see the people who just got it. The best example I can give was making the final cardboard packing boxes, this was an 8 movement process from flat box to assembled with lid open, the record was 2.7 sections, a sustainable pace (so the time that actually mattered) was around 7 seconds, people who just couldn't get it were over 30 seconds and usually with many quality issues as at those people were often fighting the box and material.
When then there is indeed something wrong, I have a hard time convincing mechanics and techs that there is an actual issue.
It’s a heck of a lot easier when it’s your professional domain, and you carry the acumen to back up your findings.
As in, I’ve many times stopped a friend who’s using a tool because I can tell the sound is off - almost always finding something amiss.
Or picked up a tool and felt that something was wrong.
Same with small engines, the sound and vibrations I’ve always found easy to tell if something is off.
On some level, I thought everyone had this if they spent a few moments around these items.
I realize that is such an ignorant take on my part!!
Conversely, I have almost zero talent for easily telling if code is off, or for fighting games, or numeric patterns beyond basic examples.
There are many people who can do the main activity (shoot down a range that is clear), but can't setup safely, or muzzle sweep folks when they're asked to step away. These are the really critical situations where you need to be ready to safely do the activity or safely transition to the next thing (which might have its own unique dangers.)
The term you're looking for is executive function and in a nutshell it's the brain watching and controlling the brain. There are deliberate, methodical tasks in which executive function is a great predictor of safety and success. Wood shop is one of them. There are also flowy, improvisational tasks where a lack of executive function allows one to be in the moment and respond quickly to changing conditions. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of a jazz drummer or an freestyle rapper, someone who has to move quickly and guess a lot without much assurance of the results of their actions.
I also wanna throw some support behind the idea of "thinking like the machine". Us coders have a lot of weird little quirks but one that's stuck out for me ever since I read it in the jargon file back in the 90s was the tendency of people who are good with computers to also anthropomorphize them. Most people speak in terms of what computers are programmed to do and what they require, but all the best coders I know speak in terms of what the machine is trying to do and what it needs. The anthropomorphization seems to engage empathy, and that empathy leads to a deeper understanding.
The guy owning the lathe made some short, sharp observations. But I also suspect he sweated blood later on. Explaining his role in this had I lost a finger or worse would have been nasty
Why is it synced like that? Seems dangerous, and I don't know much about lathes but lighting synchronization doesn't seem something that would affect the mechanical parts being processed :)
Synced to the AC mains or a multiple thereof.
In 9th grade I used a jointer and a band saw, built deep bookshelf out of poplar. In 10th grade I built a night stand (used shaper, Joiner, jointer, etc..)
The table saw was off limits in every class I remember, but most the other things were usable. With saw stops available, I think that reduces liability quite a bit.
Also in high school I did drafting and cad (2D and 3D).
Anyway, that was across 3 school districts in two states, and was as recent as 2003 - so it’s not like shop/industrial arts stopped being a thing 40 years ago.
Unfortunately, I live near two school districts - one in a major metropolitan area in the US - which have closed down shop classes in the name of preparing students for college instead of work in the trades. It is hard to undo those decisions.
Fortunately some local “industrial arts” departments continue to thrive.
I also remember that we were trusted to behave like adults in front of heavy machinery like routers, circular saws and lathes. No incidents whatsoever aside from minor cuts, which is normal. We were genuinely interested and behaved accordingly, nobody wanted to get hurt and / or get kicked out of the class
P.S. Not sure of how it works in the US, but we also had "shop classes for girls". The curriculum for those consisted of the basics of cooking, baking and working with fabrics (starting from sewing two pieces together in grade 5 and gradually evolving to designing and sewing clothing for yourself by grade 9). Though, in my opinion, those things shall be taught to everyone, not just girls
I'm still thankful because of all the stuff I can relatively easy cook, fix or make thanks to those few hours in school.
(I'd also say they made for extremely welcome breaks between boring stuff in other subjects and being bullied during breaks.)
They have "soft materials" (fabric, sewing, knitting) and "hard materials" (wood, metal working, 3d-printing etc).
In upper classes they have cooking and more of the same.
I bailed on my mechanical engineering major sophmore year and switched to computer engineering. I love building stuff with but just didn't enjoy statics class.
Bonus pic: our 2010 FRC robot "hanging out" after the match: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/uploads/default/original/3X/8/b/...
We used hand tools and small power tools (hand-held drills and sanders), and drill press and scroll saws. Only the teacher could use the table saw, planer, and jointer.
One kid made a muzzle-loading rifle as his project. Can only imagine the hue and cry that would cause today.
The next year, the classes were made co-educational, with students choosing which stream to take, but at least in that first year the gender divide remained sharp. I chose to take drafting for all of eighth grade; there was only one girl in the class.
I can’t say that what I learned in those classes paid off for me directly, but I did pick up knowledge and skills that I applied indirectly in my later careers: from printshop for writing and editing work, and from drafting for learning how to use drawing and graphics software.
It would been nice if I had learned how to sew and cook then, too.
In eighth grade we got to select two of the three, and they were each one semester. I took Industrial Arts and Home Economics because the Art teacher was a complete wacko who in the seventh grade class destroyed any interest I had in the subject.
I am pretty sure seventh grade Industrial Arts was co-ed and everyone took it. But maybe girls had another option, I don't quite remember. In eighth grade since it was an elective, it self-selected to almost entirely boys.
The "product design" class (which was really either woodworking or metalworking depending on which stream you ended up in) was definitely my favourite class, and I think the most useful for later life too.
Closest I got was building theatre sets. But they were some awesome sets, with huge moving parts counterweighted via airline cable and sandbags, and we conceived and designed it all from scratch under very little supervision. Come to think of it I'm sure it wouldn't fly these days (I remember a substitute teacher walking into the gym flabbergasted at one point when I was climbing in the rafters drilling anchor holes for pulleys... the regular guy knew well enough when to be present and when to stay away).
A lot of the danger can be ameliorated by using CNC machines instead of circular saws and hand lathes. Standing 3-6 feet away from the machine when something goes wrong is way better than being 3-6 inches away.
Gantry CNC machines are superior to table saws for almost all sheet goods, anyway.
Sure, the jointer is still kind of dangerous. However, it has a very specialized function and normally you can keep your hands safely away from the blades with various push mechanisms.
Further not to mention, I'm sitting next to two Appalachian dulcimers that were among the 100s he built in the 70s and 80s.
Maybe another aspect missing from schools lacking shop is the sense that you're trustworthy enough to put in front of a potentially lethal machine, a little bit of self worth goes a long way.
They run at high speeds, the workpiece is typically less secure, the material has a grain structure prone to catching the tool and digging into it, ventilation is required, and most importantly, the cutting tool is gripped in the operator's hands instead of being secured on a toolpost.
I'm not real comfortable around lathes.
I have the distinct memory of this thought crossing my mind during orientation in shop classes. The instructor gave us the rundown of how to be safe and then he actually let us use cool machines without hovering around us every second of the period! The trust involved in that exercise was immense, and even kids who were the class clowns in other classes rose to the occasion and were responsible in shop class.
I can only imagine how important this kind of experience would be for today's kids of the helicopter generation, many of whom would be receiving this type of trust to handle danger like an adult for perhaps the first time in their lives.
The router also terrifies me, because in shop class I hadn't tightened the chuck enough, and the bit came out and ate through the work and fell on the floor, then zinged off at high speed. It missed me completely.
The other thing I do not like are the oxy and acetelyne cylinders. The metal shop teacher showed how to blow the dust off by cracking the valves. OMG, 2000 psi. Nope nope nope nope.
For another example, don't use hardware store metal bolts and screws for things like holding your car's transmission in place. The quality of those bolts is erratic and they're poorly made. Tacoma Screw is my go-to place for quality fasteners.
P.S. I have an air compressor, they work great for certain tasks like cleaning the dirt out of my car (!). But the pressure vessel is dangerous. Don't buy used compressors, only get new ones. If there are any dents in the air chamber, get a new one.
Perhaps with stop-saw like inventions it could be safer, if the patents ever expire so schools could actually afford them.
I remember one clown kid in my class back in the days put a hottish drillbit to another's kid neck acting like a cool spy or something like that (we were 14 years old, luckily got only a mild burn which healed quickly). The teacher punched him in the face, probably not with full force but it was not a soft slap either, and banned him from the shop for some time. No incidents after that.
Incredible story for another generation.
Thank you for sharing!
This. It's all fun and games until one of your classmates shoots you in the face with an air compressor while you're using a bandsaw. I still have all my fingers but did end up in trouble because everybody only saw the immediate aftermath of me making it abundantly clear how much I didn't appreciate his antics (only verbally, of course).
>Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others.
https://rainfordrestorations.com/category/woodworking-techni...
I grew up in a town that had a community center where kids of my age played in bands, learned crocheting etc. School was boring, but it was short, and it was easy to meet with other kids from other schools, including other towns. Kids doing classical music have the same experience in general I think.
How much does the local library cost ? is it easy for kids to access ? is there a library in the first place ?
If the local library is thriving, a community center can be an extension of that. If it's dead, that city is in a pretty bad place from the start.
On the one hand, centralization makes a potentially low-interest or high-expense experience more viable. On the other hand, equity.
When is it appropriate to trade some equity for an experience that would otherwise be unfeasible in a every-school-does-it-themselves cause everyone's budget cutting?
A town with multiple underfunded schools is not going to have the resources to provide this anyway, or if they do it's because of specific values & policies that are incompatible with providing universal services to citizens.
But once you have decided to do this, and come up with some funding for it somehow: should you use the currently existing infrastructure in place to move children around, and the adults in place with experience working with them, and the bureaucratic apparatus in place to manage them etc etc or should you just build a completely new thing that will totally be better.
Every non-programmer sees the obvious answer immediately. There's no tradeoff here really, these classes belong in middle and high school.
The only reasonable alternative is libraries but they have the same funding issues. The problem is the choice we have made to underfund these institutions. If you're working within these constraints without being able to change the funding, public schools have the most of the apparatus in place already, compared to the alternatives.
I didn't think you wanted every single school kids to do woodworking. Woodworking is great, but what about potery ? What about gardening ? Film photography ? Robotics ?
It makes a lot more sense to me to have an independent entity offering curriculum that residents can express demand for and choose from, than a single activity every school maintains and pushes kids through to make up for the investment. In particular this means that you're not bound to specific age ranges and the same facilities can be used by adult beginners in late night spots for instance.
But I had just picked woodworking for an example but no. I want them to also have access to welding, sewing, cooking, gardening etc. Some of these can be offered very cheaply, some can't.
I still don't think it would usually make sense for them all to be centralized somewhere other than a school. In places with multiple schools, they may not all have every resource available, and students may have to be shifted around to get them to the tools and educators they need.
But this is already the case in a lot of the US! and esp at the high school level not every school has every program when talking about things like marching band, robotics, individual sports, rotc.
I actually teach an after school programming class at the local high school, interested students are bussed over from several other schools in the district immediately after the last class. There is a whole subfleet of buses to shift kids around so they end up at the correct other school for baseball practice or python class or whatever. So this is already a live problem with working solutions in some districts.
> independent entity offering curriculum that residents can express demand for and choose from
Kind of like a community college? That seems to be the most similar existing institution to what we're talking about. Or should high schools just work more like community colleges?
IDK. Again though I think the solution is just to adequately fund the education system we have rather than try to make a new, side-by-side, intentionally incomplete one. If there's no additional funding coming, then that won't work either and public schools are still the entity that is closest to being able to meet this need with the least additional resources.
If that could be solved, kids moving from school to their crafting courses isn't much an issue. On the management part, you need a dedicated teachers either way, they can be paid by the school or paid by the town, that doesn't make much difference for them (except perhaps a lower level of certification between a full blown school teacher and someone with a limited teaching license)
On the curriculum, if there is some certification given at the end of the courses I see how being part of a school helps, but if it's targeted at learning and/or enjoying the craft it's less impacting (in particular for things like cooking, gardening. etc)
This is the model most European cities take as far as I know.
A professor saying "And I'm great at doing the right thing" would be as out of place as them bragging about their fitness or wealth.
"here are various ways that people have tried to determine the right thing to do throughout time" would have been vastly preferable to "heres how private schools with private funding successfully managed to extort the government for even more funding"
Maybe you can consider the teacher to be good because I remember the (many, many) lessons on the topic.
Although if you were going to have something more concrete, like Engineering Ethics except somehow for high schoolers without a particular career chosen, a few weeks of philosophy would probably be good background.
also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage
Baking cookies and learning to sew was at least a nice break from studying books.
I went to a public US high school with a nursing magnet program and an automotive program.
Both saw you with a phlebotomist license or a technician certification respectively.
These were wildly popular programs despite having academic requirements (for the nursing track)
I think high schoolers care about practicality, actually.
> also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage
crazy thought, though.
Maybe pay teachers more? Make it a more attractive career? Vote in superintendents with more education experience than corporate.
Idk… anything but throw your hands up and say “well nobody wants to teach so idk”
I'm sure there are some corporate superintendents, but I've never seen one. It is almost always a teacher's union endorsed ex-teacher who was recently a principal in the district, or a superintendent from another district in the state.
Live near a big school district (major metropolitan area), then you will see the corporate and career political types in the CEO office.
I think things would be much better if they had been teachers, but the teachers are all either burnt out or still teaching.
Things like reading a Daily Mail article and identifying all the nonsense parts.
I don't know it out helps society. I suspect people don't think like this once the class is over.
Best advice is to go with a slower set time so you can go at the pace you feel comfortable.
Now good and fast that's the hard part.
> It was basically "home ec" is for girls, shop is for guys.
We didn't have too many girls in the shop classes, but we had a surprisingly large numbers of guys taking the clothing and textiles classes. It was regarded as one of the most relaxed and enjoyable electives, and there was an unofficial exemption to the uniform policy that you could wear things you'd produced in class, so it was nice to see the schoolyard brightened by students wearing strange and colorful clothing.
In my small country we have a website where random people can post suggestions for the government, and if it gets enough votes, some PR representative has to look at the suggestion and write a answer.... every few weeks there is a suggestion about how schools should teach kids stuff that their parents should teach them at home... even cooking, cleaning, etc. Have the parents really "failed in life" so much, that they can't even teach the kids to cook and clean and wash, etc.?
Shop class... somewhat understandable, power tools are not realy a thing parents living in apartments in large cities have, so yes, that's beneficial to kids... but other stuff?
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a roofer out to fix your roof? In my area if the job is less than $50k you can't find anyone who is interested. Not doing it yourself is an incredibly expensive luxury. Best know how to do it properly and safely.
I think the goal is to help boost the kids whose parents don't know some of the basics, like budgeting, balancing a checkbook, buying an appliance, typing, etc... The people who aren't doing well in modern society lack these skills, and teaching their kids is an opportunity to boost them out of potential poverty.
This is not the way. If some kids have lacking home life, intervene directly for those students. Don't take away responsibility from parents.
The reality is, in places this matters, parents already are failing to teach their kids, and where there are successful families, parents continue to teach their kids.
I do wonder though if some personal finance, consumer research, etc. skills won’t be taught as readily thanks to the smartphone, though. Having paper forms or a checkbook out makes it easier to start a conversation
There's no reason to make a list of school topics and keep it separate from parent topics (except perhaps in particularly sensitive cases, but that's now what's being discussed here).
As for trade skills, sure, no issue with that.
(I was one of those kids going "why the hell are we learning this" until I got to grad school and was able to put it together).
The retention rate for these classes are abysmal, which is why you have people propose they should be taught, despite they themselves actually sitting through these classes, simply because any memory of these classes have been erased from their memory.
Of course, I then went into software and haven’t used calculus since.
1. Basic cookery. Including how to use the stove top, induction range, microwave, air fryer, stand mixer, and oven. How to choose a refrigerator, dishwasher, and other big ticket appliances.
2. Basic economics and finance. What is taken out of your paycheck e.g., state and federal taxes, social security and Medicare taxes, health insurance premiums, and contributions to 401k etc. How do credit cards work, how do car loans work, and how do mortgages work. Understand the different interest rates they charge. How do medical, auto, and home insurance work. How to file a tax return.
3. Elementary engineering. Basic concepts of how things work and how not to get injured. How electric circuits work (avoid touching the hot wire to something other than the terminal). How the house electrical circuits work. What is the purpose of the breaker panel and the GFCI mini breaker. How fires start and how to put out an oil fire vs regular fire. How to start a wood fire including feather sticks, fire steel, and steel wool & a nine volt battery. How house plumbing work including where does the pee and poo go. How the HVAC, furnace, and mini split work.
4. Basic technology. How to stay safe online. What to do if your credit card or identity is stolen. Password managers, MFA, and passkeys. How to shop for a mobile phone and understand all the fees the carrier will charge. How to use a LLM and ChatGPT.
Abstractly, people's eyes glaze over on a spreadsheet.
Hands-on exposes kids to the vast inequalities out there, and that sounds terrifying without the right societal contextualization. What if the doctor's kid analyzes daddy's W2 and the other kid can only analyze their parent's 1099 uber returns. Or, a kid grasping the mathematics of compound interest doesn't necessarily mean that mean they can understand why their friends' parents have a 16% auto loan while theirs is only 4%.
Not saying we should protect The Children from the messy realities of the world -- our current approach of "they'll figure taxes out on their own" is about as effective as the "don't even mention sex" philosophy used until the mid 1900's -- I'm just saying to really understand these financial concepts requires guiding kids through a whole lot more ugliness of the world, and I'm not sure many schools know how to do that kind of integrated life learning. Hell, even most adults don't know how to think about such things.
I dunno... maybe the easiest thing here is to just go live in income-segregated neighborhoods so we never need to ask such difficult questions with our neighbor-friends.
I guess what I am saying is there is always a textbook/spreadsheet component of consumer finance. How else can you explain the effects of interest compounding on your credit card if you never pay off the balance? But you can also try to role place scenarios to show why you want to know this stuff. e.g., if you are low income but working there is a good chance that when you file your tax return you will get cash back due to the earned income tax credit.
It's the financial equivalent of not teaching what temperature water freezes at.
Save the other stuff for college. If you want to incentivize the population to take those classes, give credits or discounts on tuition or find some other mechanism.
I always dislike trying to stuff more classes in high school because you're still kids.
If you don't have all of your lifeskills in order by the time you're 18, what are you even doing.
What %age of Americans attending high school will take out loans in their lifetime?
Financial sense shouldn't be knowledge of the privileged class, we ~all have to deal with money/debt.
You will find no shortage of teachers confused about their own pensions.
Many learn better at a workbench than at a chalkboard. And even those that don’t often appreciate the chalkboard more when they can relate what they’re learning to what they are doing.
- my Nana always wore her hair up when in the kitchen, she had worked somewhere she saw a woman get scalped by having her long hair pulled into a mixer
- my Dad was wary of synthetic clothing after having seen people in fires have synthetics melt onto their skin (not sure if this was in the Army or growing up in St. Louis)
One might say and be very careful but then a kickback shows up and causes brown pants at best, a life changing injury or death at worst.
It really seems like having a good non-academic curriculum for life skills is broadly useful beyond folks who are going into the trades.
Knowing the difference between a dishwasher and a hammer is something it seems like many of the engineers, designers, and product managers in the software business are completely incapable of.
Primary education should always include basic skills in craftsmanship, inclusive of at least shop class and cooking/home economics. Hopefully this marks a more general rebound of these long-neglected skillsets.
Another thing that's needed through is to make it easier for young people to buy land in remote areas and/or to access funding to start companies. It's insane how difficult it is to obtain funding for any venture dealing in the word of atoms. I hear stories of young people moving to China to access opportunities; in the west, it feels like entrepreneurship in the space has been regulated out of existence.
It's bad enough that you have to compete with China on price and quality, but regulations make it essentially impossible.
It is not one of my favorite classes when I took it, but what I learned, has been useful in a lot of situations, and still is.
So please bring it back.
Fast forward to the beginning of architecture school and we all had to draft by hand (which I had been doing in some capacity since 7th grade) and learn to and use the shop. We didn't learn to draft because it was a necessary skill anymore, but to learn 1. spatial thinking and in turn 2. how to turn ideas into real things you could communicate. Same with the making of physical models (even if you didn't use the shop).
These require the attention to detail and understanding of process necessary to break a sophisticated design idea down into individual actions (single lines, cuts, etc), and are of immense value even if you never touch a wood shop after undergraduate.
Even today, 25 years later and a time when we don't even necessarily teach 2d -CAD- drafting anymore we still require shop work, physical modeling, and hand drafting of ALL our students. So much that in a lot of places the first year of a 5 year professional Bachelor of Architecture doesn't even touch digital modeling of any sort.
If you want a foundational read that touches on deeper meanings around workmanship let me recommend David Pye's The Nature and Art of Workmanship[0].
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319901.The_Nature_and_Ar...
Uhh.. what? A CNC mill is, fundamentally, a mill. A CNC lathe is a lathe. You're not absolved from knowing how to use a manual lathe or a manual mill even if you use CNC machines all day long. Where do you develop an intuition for feeds, speeds, finishes, tolerances, etc if not by spending hours and hours doing it by hand?
couple of decades later I only use manual machines (with power feeds and DROs), and I'm really a lot faster and more consistent.
High school students can learn CNC with smaller machine tools. There are little desktop CNC machines in the US$1000 range. You can cut aluminum, brass, and plastics, but not steel. They talk the same G-code as the big machines. You design jobs for them the same way you do for the big machines. At that scale you can usually avoid coolant, oily rags, oily chip disposal, and the general mess of a real machine shop.
And everything, at some fundamental level, is hand built. Think about the building you're in right now, or the road you're driving on. Or whatever else. Even for things where processes can have some high degree of automation when they break or need customization - it's back to a guy and his tools. For that matter on the factory line those machines need regular maintenance and repair once again from a guy and his tools.
And no, tool boxes are prime time theft targets in highly urban areas - probably more so than rural. Thieves don't usually steal things to use them (with such skills they wouldn't be thieves in the first place!), they steal them to sell them. And tools, especially high quality, are relatively expensive and one of the most resellable things in existence because good tools last practically forever - many feature lifetime warranties in any case.
I can find some legislated minimums/guidelines around that… what’s the actual practice?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/n75w63/recess...
Got 60 minutes/day in Ontario Canada in elementary school, and I felt like it wasn’t enough but I guess I liked to run a lot. And that was in addition to 1-2x/week physical education “classes”.
I think that's a wonderful because both genders are forced to learn skills that can be helpful in life.
Home Economics taught me how to sew and embroider, which came in handy many times for small repairs like sewing a button on, but more importantly it helped teach me to cook, and as an adult I am a relatively accomplished home chef.
I was never going to make a career out of either, but it definitely helped round me out in a way that has helped me to become over time something of a Renaissance man.
My kids didn't get to do any of that which is a shame. There are obvious downsides like having the tools to make throwing stars from the metal off-cuts.
Materials are expensive, tools are expensive. $0 for a math class, $100 for a shop class. PER CLASS.
The danger of kids with tools getting stabby (and cutty).
Those remain unsolved. Shop will not be revived until they are.
I tried to build a steam engine in metal shop, but failed. I was able to build a working one in the metal shop in college.
I didn't make a boiler - just ran it on compressed air.
It vibrated ferociously, though, as I had paid no attention to balancing it.
I don't think it makes sense to teach students how to use metalworking lathes, but giving people basic proficiency with hand tools and less dangerous power tools would be great.
It can also be used to teach about power tool safety. I can't believe some of the dangerous stuff people do with angle grinders.
He never did say what occurred, but thinking back, I am hopeful that it was from trying to save some students from their own carelessness...
* Wood shop
* Metal shop
* Cooking
* Sewing
* Typing
I never saw an injury.
Learning to work with our hands safely was quite valuable.
I feel like I got the best what those classes were meant for: teaching people how to build many of the things they need in their lives rather than be dependent on the consumerist systems. Self reliance taught through a socialist public education system in the Rust Belt. Go figure.
I'm so lucky I had it because most such classes were cut in the following years as public school funding was cut back.
I still have one of the industrial art pieces I made back in 8th grade shop class - a cast aluminum Great Seal of America, mounted on a wooden plaque.
It has been very difficult over the years, including a time when we thought about pulling the team out of the schools and running a smaller team out of our home. The bureaucracy and ebbs and flows of support made is painful at times, almost terminal. Thankfully the team survived. Many of our team members went on to nice careers in science and engineering.
I've also had the experience of trying to start an RC model airplane club at our local schools. I was going to fully fund it myself, donate all tools and equipment and teach the course once a week. I was also going to have other engineers and acquaintances join in from time to time, including people who worked at SpaceX, designed the F117 stealth fighter, built cameras for space and the moon, designed a lunar lander, etc.
I met with the principals from five of our schools. They all said they were enthusiastic about it and wanted to do it. So, I got going with planning and got a curriculum and some demonstrations ready for the next meeting.
Long story short, they all ghosted me. And, on top of that, Los Angeles County demanded a $2 million dollar bond (or whatever it was) as a precondition. Just f-ing crazy. I walked away and never spoke to anyone at the school district about this or any other STEM ideas again. My kids are out of the system and I have zero interest in enduring that kind of torture again.
So, yeah, our system of education is broken beyond recognition at many levels. Not sure what it will take to fix it.
You just needed someone familiar with how this sort of bureaucracy works (I'm not agreeing with it, just pointing out that this is pretty standard). It really isn't hard and it is just box checking. They weren't asking you for $2-million in bonds, they were asking you to be insured or bonded for that amount of liability. I would be surprised if it cost more ~$200/year. Basically if you injure a kid when they stick their finger in an RC plane prop, they want to know that you are capable of making it right financially.
As far as principles ghosting you: yeah, they have a million issues that they are dealing with. They get a lot of people reaching out about various opportunities and programs, many of which will require more effort or time than they have available. People who do this work regularly understand that you have to be ready to show up with a turnkey program or do the admin work yourself, because admin is already under-resourced, and they don't really have time to explain to someone why they need to be insured or bonded, and why that is a pretty standard ask in today's world.
It sucks, but it is the nature of large scale organizations. Those organizations are organized around trying to meet their legal obligations to provide a basic education (based on criteria they have little input on) to every child in an area on a limited budget. They have precisely no organizational motive for an RC airplane club taught by an outsider. So when someone shows up and says that they want to teach an extracurricular course once a week, and then can't get his ducks in a row to get insurance, they rightfully deprioritise it. At then end of the day, the principal is balancing a fun extracurricular for 10-30 students against the needs of hundreds or thousands of students and dozens of staff.
My point is that, if I meet for two hours with five principals from our local schools with a proposal all of them say they are onboard, the system should not work against you.
If I have to do a bunch of work and hire someone to navigate the bureaucracy, I am going to walk away and focus that effort elsewhere. More importantly nobody else is going to want to navigate the maze. What should have happened was that the system should have the ability to facilitate and streamline execution. What they actually do is precisely the opposite.
> Hedge Against the AI Future
So robots are not going to do it?:)
This is a game of whackamole, there is no real hedge aside from demanding a policy change.
(Never went anywhere afaik over here.)
Me: Oh FFS