Sunday, September 28, 2014

The Death Of Shop Class And America's Skilled Workforce

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?
Good question.

17 comments:

PO'd American said...

Someone here is under the misconception that we want to teach our school age children anything except how to go on welfare and vote dumocratic. Keep sending your kids to the feral giverment skools.

Anonymous said...

Two years after I graduated from high school (1988, in the Los Angeles area,) shop classes were eliminated. My metal- (and auto-)shop teacher was fond of saying how the shop classes taught kids how to create, vs. the "parroting" back of 'facts' learned in other classes.

I have attended college, but am still 20-some units shy of a BA.

That said, I'm earning some 70k a year, welding, fabricating, and machining: stuff I learned in high school metal shop.

DC Wright said...

That's a great question. I have worked on and fixed everything from helicopters in the Marine Corps to nuclear subs and aircraft carriers for the Navy to I.T. equipments of many sorts to home appliances, over some 45 years. My shop teachers in high school instilled the love of tools and making broken things working things many years ago. I LOVE working with my hands and I have had more tools in my life than most things I can think of. Full credit goes to my shop teachers.

I HOPE we can yet develop a generation that will also enjoy fixing things. We might survive longer that way!!!!

Anonymous said...

Ulike the corperate elite at where I work, they think that anyone off the street can do anything in the factory with minimal training,, we all know how wrong they are, yet the drain of skilled labor, toolroom, maintenance techs, continues when the elite continue to act ,like they don't exist anymore,and like the group I m with in the medical device industry, the high ups think they can just outsource anything and not pay a price, they will find out dearly when one of their outsourced types hook up waterlines to the wrong systems or open wrong valves that can cause contamination of implants and they end up with a recall on their name brand, just watch, it will become a everyday thing soon with all the incompetence out there up and down low, glad Im about out of the work force and able to quote retire

DAN III said...

Easy. Go to the CHICOMS like we have since May 2000 when a traitorous Republican-controled Congress handed Slick Willie HR 4444, Permanent Normal Trade Relations, with the Commie Chinese. Willie signed it gleefully and we've been in decline ever since.

Anonymous said...

Having spent a good portion of my professional life dependent upon the trade skills of my customers' staffs, I can attest to the decline in skill, particularly among the precision crafts, like machining and millwrights. A great many of my "warranty" calls ended up being resolved by correcting basic installation errors. >Jeff

Anonymous said...

Producing is dead, consuming lives on (for now).

Anonymous said...

I am a well paid ($2xxk) engineering consultant with 3 patents in very obscure areas of integrated circuit design. Though I don't get paid to work with my hands (other than typing or turning knobs on the $200k of electronic diagnostic equipment on my desk), having taken metal and wood shop has benefited me by illustrating that there is no substitute for diving in and trying things instead of reading and calculating.

My kids are homeschooling, of course, and they get a dose of welding and small engine repair in between calculus and chemistry.

Anonymous said...

An engrossing meditation on this topic
and others is Matthew Crawford's
Shop Class as Soul Craft

Anonymous said...

No it's not a good question. It's a false premise.
Union controlled schools just punt teaching "shop" to union controlled trades and they teach via what's called "apprentice school".

This is their way of ending non Union manufacturing - nobody can manufacture unless taught by union controlled thugs.

By delaying the skillset well into adult life - the unions have pushed possible entrepreneurs well into their forties.

Americans GOTTA realize the conspiracies run far deeper than they care to admit.

The commies were open about what they intended and how they intended to achieve their goals. And they are succeeding BECAUSE folks in this country don't WANT to believe the sinister plots playing out right before their eyes.

With commirs controlling the schools - they turn out idiots.... Unable to think or DO for themselves. They turn out generations now of people who must be directed and herded. Yup. Sheep.

Wake AMERICA - it us almost too late.

Anonymous said...

The Unions only run apprenticeships in the building trades. Tool & Die and Machining used to be run by individual companies. They stopped because of both CNC reducing the need for as many people as well as the costs involved plus once you got your papers there was a good risk of you leaving for a fortune 100 company paying better wages and benefits. Now if you want to learn these trades or auto mechanics ,you need to pay out of pocket for one of the community college or private school courses that may be in your region. As for those ptrained people needed now ... That is being filled by Easter Europeans on the guest worker program since they still teach those skills over there.

Anonymous said...

You can't build a new commie Amerika without destroying the old America. This is just part of that. Part of their plan. The plan that doesn't exist.

The one you can see not existing, everyday.

The one everyone knows exists but won't report on or talk about.

Anonymous said...

So they are going to import them from the southern border.....

Fits right into the plan I think.

Sean said...

When something goes on the blink at my house, I fix it. Shop class taught me that if something stops working, identify the problem, figure out how to fix it, then fix it and test it. The Army and afterwards were easy, because I learned that. Dad gave me on the job training at home, with whatever went wrong, and life is less of a mystery that way.

Anonymous said...

When I was 13, in small mining town, shop class that year involved learning how to operate both an arc welder and a gas torch, and then run a bead and join two pieces together. Can you imagine 13 yr old boys being shown this and then allowed to run them on their own now?

Of course, we have made progress since then......

Anonymous said...

Love tools! Loved shop classes. Know plenty of OLD skilled machinists, very few YOUNG machinists. The Carpenter's Union and skilled trade schools are taking up where HS's are leaving off.

HS's are teaching kids how to run their mouths without engaging their brains. Sad days. Most of them can barely change a flat tire; more comfortable crying to mommy & daddy they need a new more better car that doesn't get flat tires. Hell, few of them can even carry a basic English language conversation with anyone outside their peer group. No interest in the world. Live inside their heads with fantasy, disconnected from reality.

johnnyreb said...

You don't need shop class to sit around in your jammies and sip hot chocolate while extoling the virtues of modern progressivism.