High School Shop Classes

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WARNING: GROUCHY OLD KRAUT RANT

Our district has totally cut out all 'shop' classes'.

Problem is, those who could teach a class ( basic electricity, basic electronics, simple woodworking, simple metalworking......hell even 'remedial' Algebra or Geometry, those who could [ mainly 'retired guys, myself included}
CAN'T because we have no 'teaching certificate'.....REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE counts zip-nada-nyet; the teachers' unions have a Death Grip on their turf.

As if most of the teachers today are totally competent in what they 'teach' (when not too busy indoctrinating in the latest Hot Fad).
 
School reform is needed. Maybe instead of relying on a failed and corrupt school system. Start a local group of woodworkers, carpenters , welders, electricians,plumbers, mechanics and form a non profit and offer services and classes to community.
Small town changes will fix this county, starts at your home and branches out from there.

If you get big enough in your area you can then throw that power around to make changes.

Good luck either way and good for you for trying to make improvements.
 
I was just thinking about this a couple of days ago. My son attends a small private school, and the closest thing they have would be a robotics team. Not open to anyone except team members, with lots of weekend participation required.

I think a basic home skills class would be tremendous
 
I heard one time, whether or not it's true, Germany has a system where right around middle school you choose to go towards trade school type learning or go towards "white collar" type learning. I always thought it would be a good idea here. Again, not sure if it is true or not.
 
NTesla76 said:
I heard one time, whether or not it's true, Germany has a system where right around middle school you choose to go towards trade school type learning or go towards "white collar" type learning. I always thought it would be a good idea here. Again, not sure if it is true or not.
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I've heard the same, but can't remember if it was Germany.
 
AC\DC said:
Hell they need civic classes more than anything, most kids don’t know anything about how are government works. Could be they don’t want them to know.
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At my son's school they call it "Government"

The aim is not simply to teach our government structure and dealings, but also other forms. Learning from history. What a novel concept 😁

He failed first semester, so I get to teach him during the summer to make it up 🧐
 
James L said:
At my son's school they call it "Government"

The aim is not simply to teach our government structure and dealings, but also other forms. Learning from history. What a novel concept 😁

He failed first semester, so I get to teach him during the summer to make it up 🧐
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I had government when I was in school also. Same as your son teaches about a lot of different forms they need that.
Though more importantly they need to know the ins and outs of are own, they will vote someday, so they need to be properly trained in are system.
o well just my opinion. Time to work now
 
NTesla76 said:
I heard one time, whether or not it's true, Germany has a system where right around middle school you choose to go towards trade school type learning or go towards "white collar" type learning. I always thought it would be a good idea here. Again, not sure if it is true or not.
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I think that’s correct - Germany. But I think it’s a little older than that, more like our junior high school level.
I’m not convinced it’s a good thing. I know when I was that age, I had no idea what future education or career path I wanted or was capable of.
 
mtnelect said:
I am still working on my local school district to get more information.
We need to reestablish shop classes at all of our schools.
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I was blessed with parents that understood a trade and stressed not only a vocation but two of them.
Maybe it was their way of saying get a vocation was a good route by the way if you didn't like that one go get another one!

I always wanted the bumper sticker, " Be a free agent, get a Trade "

Good Luck with the School board!
 
retirede said:
... I’m not convinced it’s a good thing. I know when I was that age, I had no idea what future education or career path I wanted or was capable of.
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Hear here. When I was a freshman in college, struggling mightily with calculus, my $6/hr part-time job changing tires & batteries seemed like a lucrative career option.
 
My 12 year old niece from upstate NY was with us a few weeks ago. She was scrounging around through my wife's craft stuff and found some pieces of pine. She built a bird house that even I was impressed with.

She said she took wood shop last year. But this year they only have metal shop probably because they can't find shop teachers.

-Hal
 
There's the "get teachers" problem.
There's the push over the last 40+ years to aim students away from manual trades and towards college and a "career".
There's the "johnny might get hurt!!!" paranoia that someone would get badly hurt in a shop class so the machines have to come out.

All that and lots of schools had shops for wood/metal/auto/printing, but other than auto repair there are far fewer jobs in the other trades than there were back then (never mind that they would still teach good work habits and manual skills).

I don't recall high schools having shops for the building trades in my area (derisively, those were for dropouts to apprentice on), perhaps elsewhere.
 
In Junior High (early 80s) we had shop for 7 or 8th grades, and the same teacher taught drafting for 8th grade.

I took shop in 7th and drafting in 8th.

We could have an entry at the homes show each year. Lots of schools had entries. My drafting class entered a set of prints, a replica of the teacher's house, and we had honorable mention. Pretty cool back then.

When I was married back in the 90s, we'd go to (Roseland?) Nebraska to visit her family. Her parents bought a house which was built by the high school trades class.

My son had 3 class mates graduate last year who wanted to go to trade school. Could've had a leg up by getting started in H.S.
 
zbang said:
There's the "johnny might get hurt!!!" paranoia that someone would get badly hurt in a shop class so the machines have to come out. ...
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Several times I've helped judge a science fair at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with all of the city's public high schools represented. When I was a young kid I liked going to see that fair because they had interesting things like Tesla coils using a neon sign transformer and spark gap, Van de Graff generators, etc. But just as an example of how it has changed, one girl had some kind of experiment that involved a glass of water. However, she couldn't demonstrate the experiment because they weren't allowed to have anything made of glass because that would be too dangerous. :rolleyes:
 
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