The Death Of Shop Class And America's Skilled Workforce

[steve from staten island]

No foreign car/truck is superior to a 1972 3/4 ton GM truck. You could make four Imports out of the steel used in just one of these trucks. Years back at various times i owned four of these trucks, they were all unbeatable.

 

[Budnicks]

Yep we should still have shop class an elective classes
not everyone is cut out for college
even some that do want to go to college
the learning to work with your hands
in wood, metal/welding/ machining, drafting/drawing, electronics,
auto-shop, even agriculture & various ROP etc.
is all great resources
It even could steer a few into engineering fields,
they'd probably never known about or liked before shop classes...
I know I loved shop classes, I took all of them, I could....

We need more working class & less elites middle management
types, the world would be a far better place...

I'm a college grad., I still think shop classes were the best...

 

[Budnicks]

Personally I think ever kid should take a basic auto-shop class,
if they want to ever own or drive a car,
it's a good entry level into the inner workings & what **** actually is called,
what it does/how stuff basically works, where it's located & cost even,
a bit of knowledge never hurts...

All mine did & are better off for it...

 

[GetX'd]

My dad was not really a handy guy. My uncle was - he did a lot of the fixing stuff at our house. My dad not being handy or the teaching us things type of guy - most of my 9 siblings didn't turn out handy with things either. I have one brother out of the 7 boys who is handy and does a lot of - but not all of his own stuff. I often bemoan that because I feel inadequate when it comes to fixing things - including my car. I took all the shop classes in high school but screwed around during most of them. Then when I graduated from high school I had no real path to a profession of any kind. I bummed around for 5 years doing jobs that were not something I wanted to do for my livelihood - but didn't know what else to do. I went to voc tech for auto mechanics but quit after a semester because it was too far from my home. I was pretty directionless. I had wished I paid more attention in high school and learned a trade. At least I would have had a direction to start out in - I did get a job for $2 and hour working as an auto mechanic asst. wasnt too good at it and got fired after a while because I was mostly lazy too. I wanted to work on my GTX but didn't want to work too much on someone else's rusty car in the winter in Minnesota. Basically I was kind of a bum - I always thank God my younger sister talked me into applying for college. How I got in with my high school grades is a whole other story. I took college VERY seriously and graduated with honors and got a job as a trainee with a very large reputable insurance company - yes I was one of those. I did pretty well over the course of 33 or so years. The problem for me is I still can tie my own shoes - but have to pay out to get most things that aren't pretty simple done. These high school vocational classes are good for many things and some parents just aren't the handy/teaching types. A combination effect along with the right attitude go along way toward giving a kid a head start. I often look back at those years and wish I would have taken a different approach to them - even though I've no regrets about going to college and doing white collar work. Kids deserve opportunities at multiple paths and then it's up to them to choose the one that interests them most. Parents can do a lot - but can't do it all.

 

[mopar 3 B]

One of the grandsons started working with us two years ago in the summer time. He now out preforms gramma. After the first summer he bought an xbox. His mom was not happy about it but it was his money. Last year it was a phone and tablet. This year he bought the compoments and built and programed his own desktop. He has had shop and home ec at school. His mom and gramma tought him how to cook and sew. Which impressed the heck out of his home ec teacher. He will be a Junior in hi school this year and had the opportunity to skip his last 2 years and go direct with full scholarship to a state 4 year university.
We are dam proud of that boy.

 

[eldubb440]

I had 2 years machine shop....... first lesson, first day was how to sharpen a drill bit. To this day, I rarely grab a bit without walking it over to the bench grinder for a touch up. I learned more usable math in that class than I did taking algebra. I loved it, It was a reason to go to school, rather than cut.

 

[Sonny Black]

went to prep schools...no shop(darn it!) like to work on old cars...(don't always know what the fu#k i am doing)
I still work full time, and just don't have the time nor energy to do some of the things I would like to....

if i was retired well.....

 

[Jcharger]

It is a loss.

For our local school (IIRC) a few years ago they pulled the shop class from my son's school, and started to pull the tools for machining. We (a group of parents and the Principal) successfully argued a case to keep the tools and space for a robotics program. There is not much for shop though, and one of my son's friend's had to sign up for CC classes in auto, which I think is presently the only option. I tried to shop him around to a few shops b/c he said he would volunteer, and had a sympathetic ear, but was unsuccessful because they said they needed people with longer term experience. I remember when I was a kid that was not that difficult to do.

The robotics building with those tools was not a bad experience, but I am sure no replacement for shop. Because of it, my son was recruited in his first year of college to two SAE teams (a Baja team and a formula team) one because he knew how to build/machine stuff (learned from robotics) and another because he knew how to design/model stuff (learned from his aero program). In the end, I don't know the most efficient way to do this. I had thought technical schools had taken that role, but I see benefits in having shop class and other non academic classes to bridge and introduce.

 

[Bruzilla]

I'm still working on getting funded by the DoE to start a training garage for vintage cars here in Jacksonville. I mentioned doing this before, and we did do a site survey, but we couldn't get funding in place to secure the site before the owners sold the garage and land off to have a health offices complex built on it.

I still see a problem with training kids to work on new cars when you have professional technical schools doing a much better job and a labor market that's flooded with experienced techs. Where there is a wide open market is for people with experience working on vintage cars. Most of us are at an age where we have the money to pay someone to work on our cars, we're too damn old and sore to want to be spending a weekend crawling underneath a car and getting up and down 40 times, but we can't find anyone who knows what they are doing.

We wanted to convert an older garage that was located about 1/4 mile from a local high school into a combination classroom/training center and functional pre-1975 garage, but now we have to find another site.

 

[Glenwood]

My Catholic high school did not have shop classes and I was an average student at best as most subjects didn't really interest me. I excelled at courses I was interested in periodically, but there were only a few. I knew I was a tinkerer from a young age but nothing was offered in school to educate me in the things that interested me unfortunately. My father forced me to take courses that I didn't want because he thought that was best. He never really took the time to discuss my future with me nor how to help plan a path to educate me in a way that best suited my abilities, likes and personality. He was old school, coming from a one room schoolhouse with multiple aged students. I did what I was told and hated it. My plan was to become an auto mechanic but I couldn't even go to a vocational school at the time because my marks were too high to be accepted. What a stupid rule our system had in place.
I ended up in the body shop of a GM dealer as a car cleanup/jockey, which would be as close as I could get to the auto business. I asked what I had to do to become a mechanic apprentice, but was told that this was not possible since I worked in the body shop, This after I'm showing their mechanic apprentice how to align a clutch on the dealer's race car at the tender age of 21. Crazy! So I said fine, how about I start as an apprentice bodyman. It is dirty, dusty work, but it would keep me close to what I loved doing I thought. I was told sorry, we're not taking apprentices. So I left for an opportunity to become an electrician. this I regret though as I dislike construction. It wasn't until I learned industrial controls that the trade became interesting and challenging. The better I got at it, led me into management of it but which I disliked. Too much pressure and not much fun managing guys as it is troubleshooting a control system. I didn't realize at the time that once you leave the 'floor' and step into management, you may be perceived as being disconnected from the trade which is what I'm struggling with today. I too believed the bs that if you learn to work with your hands, you'll always have work. It's not entirely true imo.
Parents should take the time to understand what their kids like and dislike, where their interest lies and help point them on a direction that they will be happy with. Whether in a trade or not, but we definitely needs trades programs available in all schools. I knew my kids were not going to be suitable for the trades, so I tried to steer them into fields they would like. It kind of sucks, because I have no one to share my passion for working on machines nor any one to leave my tools too when I'm gone.

 

[Richard Cranium]

My Catholic high school did not have shop classes and I was an average student at best as most subjects didn't really interest me.

It probably doesn't matter now, but us lowly kids in public schools used to make the rulers in shop class that nuns would beat you privileged Catholic schools kids with.

Just thought you should know.

 

[Glenwood]

It probably doesn't matter now, but us lowly kids in public schools used to make the rulers in shop class that nuns would beat you privileged Catholic schools kids with.

Just thought you should know.

Yep the teacher's were pretty quick with the yard sticks! No nasty nuns at our HS thankfully.

 

[YY1]

My HS had an attached vocational wing.

Auto mech, auto body, small engine, electronics, drafting, cosmetology, stenography, and accounting were offered as two year certificate programs.

I realized very early on that I was not cut out for college, or really even a traditional educational one size fits all approach.

Auto mech allowed me to get out of two years of math (had a bad experience with Algebra in the 8th grade- passed but a technicality kept me from advancing and put a really bad taste in my mouth for math and the education system in general) and one year of English, but still stay in school and graduate.

I'm a computer guy now, and the diagnostic procedure is the same, regardless of the system being diagnosed. it's just smaller and cleaner work.

 

[Bruzilla]

For me, it all keeps coming back to The Old Guy who used to be at every base hobby shop I visited in the Navy or Coast Guard. The Old Guy who always knew the tips and tricks to get crap done that was never published in any manual, guide, or instructions. Those guys are quickly being replaced by digital documents that aren't complete, accurate, or updated. They are basically written as a 75% solution, which sucks when your issue is on the 25% side of that solution.

What I want to see is basically a Shoah Foundation type project to capture all this information, document it before it's gone, and train it to a new generation of young techs who will actually be able to use it to get a job instead of being told "no" because someone tech with experience on modern cars got the job.

 

[GetX'd]

have no one to share my passion for working on machines nor any one to leave my tools too when I'm gone.

Don't worry Glenwood you can leave your tools to me after you're gone - I'll see they're well taken care of.........

 

[Glenwood]

have no one to share my passion for working on machines nor any one to leave my tools too when I'm gone.

Don't worry Glenwood you can leave your tools to me after you're gone - I'll see they're well taken care of.........

Thanks i feel much better now!

 

[Sonny Black]

It probably doesn't matter now, but us lowly kids in public schools used to make the rulers in shop class that nuns would beat you privileged Catholic schools kids with.

Just thought you should know.

The good sisters were great teachers(except for the industrial arts, were not offered)
and could smack you one so quick!...did not dare tell dad , he would give it to you again!.....

The Sisters of Perpetual Motion

 

[Auggie56]

As i pointed out in my post concerning my particular trade after a trade school you usually still start out as a apprentice. Experience as we all agree only comes with time on job and learning all different aspects of that trade. Flooding the country with trade workers is great except for one small problem, jobs or rather lack of them and illegal immigrants working for low wages. I just a little while ago walked down the street and passed a house which all the walls were removed and now is completely re-framed with a second floor. All young hispanic men. I see them at the end of the day sitting on the curb waiting for a ride home. They work from early mourning till almost dark. You think they get OT after 40 hours ? I doubt it. They are obviously experienced framers and they work fast. No white young men, no black young men there, why? The infrastructure bill as not come about as well as manufacturing and i doubt it will with enough of a impact to revieve trade schools as we once knew them. What would anybody expect while immigrants flooded into this country both legal and illegal and many employers profited off there cheap labor

And this is biting us in the *** right now. Don't think this lack of vocational training and young people saddled with big college loans is not a plan? Think that one over again. They are destroying the middle class.

 

[Auggie56]

No body but a couple of uncles were handy at anything in my family, but they lived to far away for me to be exposed to them. I drug home bikes and a couple of lawn mowers to work on. Had my own basic tool set by thirteen that I bought with my odd job money. I was tearable in school, always just making a barely passing grade. I was just board and my folks never took any interest what I was doing in school. I took JR high vocational courses and liked what I was doing but the auto shop was the only course open to me in high school so I took that. I worked at gas stations and picked up some knowledge there and after graduation, I went to work at a Chrysler dealer, then Olds and finally onto my own shop. Like someone else said, I was always employed. Not great money to start but was knocking down good money the late seventies. I liked the job, but I was in my early thirties and applied for a job with the city and retired from there. To back up a bit, my one uncle and I got together and did many home and auto projects mostly at my place but we paled around for a good twenty-five years before he passed. His two boys were never interested in the work he did. He was pretty much a self-taught man. I looked at him as my dad for years. I'm in my late sixties now and still do work around the house and the shop. I do pay to have heavy work done though. I'm not rich but I'm not poor either. Starting out in the trades was the best thing I did for myself.

 

[steve from staten island]

And this is biting us in the *** right now. Don't think this lack of vocational training and young people saddled with big college loans is not a plan? Think that one over again. They are destroying the middle class.

The problem is kids go to college and by there third year they still have no clue as to what they want to do with there lives after they graduate. They lack direction. Your post #59 almost mimics the way i came up, the difference being i went to work in the power house and at some point i was asked what i wanted to learn as far as a skill. I wanted to weld as i liked that and all the welders made the most overtime. My basic learning came from other skilled welders and a welding school that the company ran. I learned the trade the correct way. The problem is when you take away all the union welding jobs, the city welding jobs, the refineries, mills and some major shipyards, there is not much left. All those smaller fabrication shops, iron working shops, truck and heavy equipment shops dont pay. Plus you have small manufacturing outfits that only need MIG welders. These jobs are being filled by immigrants both legal and illegal and i cannot compete with a illegal nor would i. So sure i can go down to the small local shipyard and get a job for 20 dollars or less a hour, no benefits at all and work like a dog but i can assure you that you wont find many if any American born working there. They rather would be sitting at some BS job in front of a computer with there college loan not getting dirty or learning a real skill, white collar or blue.