[HN Gopher] Schools reviving shop class
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Schools reviving shop class
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 71 points
Date : 2025-03-02 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/iGeZf
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Someone's gotta keep the old things working when the average
| person can't afford to buy things from the Chinese World
| Hegemony.
| wombatpm wrote:
| I don't know. When you are living in a Chinese owned factory
| dormitory you don't need lots.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Hah, I'm currently enrolled in machinist classes and one of the
| big NOs is no ties! Funny to see one at the top of the article.
| SoleilAbsolu wrote:
| 2 of my big safety lessons from elders when I was growing up:
|
| - 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)
| spicyusername wrote:
| They should also revive or create classes that teach other
| important, basic, life skills - budgeting, banking, getting a
| loan, investing, hiring a contractor, buying appliances, tiling,
| roofing, drywalling, etc, etc.
| millerm wrote:
| Civics, ethics, and cooking too. :)
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| I found that in ethics classes, a lot of it was holier than
| thou and virtue signaling instructors preaching but not
| necessarily practicing. I am not saying all of the
| instructors and people who teach ethics are bad, this is what
| I have observed.
| gameman144 wrote:
| This is interesting to me, none of the ethics classes I've
| ever taken even had _room_ for a holier-than-thou
| instructor; they were taught as "here are various ways
| that people have tried to determine the right thing to do
| throughout time".
|
| 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.
| protocolture wrote:
| I remember my equivalent (they called it "Commerce" but
| it was basically law/politics/ethics) spent some
| significant time navel gazing at legislation that had
| directly influenced the private school system we were in.
|
| "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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulburn_School_Strike
| yapyap wrote:
| these are high schoolers we're talking about, sure people have
| used the excuse of the classes not being given but if they
| were, nearly no one would be interested.
|
| also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage
| goodoldneon wrote:
| Looks like you're being downvoted but you're right. A tiny
| fraction of high school students would actually care about
| these classes -- high school me wouldn't
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I didn't care about English or Geometry either, but I still
| wish somebody had taught me about quarterly tax estimates
| for independent contractors.
|
| Baking cookies and learning to sew was at least a nice
| break from studying books.
| dawnerd wrote:
| The cooking class at my middle school was insanely popular,
| same with shop. A surprisingly large number of students also
| signed up for "consumer math" which was all about taxes,
| budgeting and such.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I think consumer math and statistics should be required
| alternatives to precalc and calc. Maybe even algebra 2.
| dartos wrote:
| > nearly no one would be interested.
|
| 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"
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Media (and now social media) awareness and understanding (I was
| lucky enough to take a course in this, back in... 1989/90)
| Ancalagon wrote:
| drywalling is so far from basic. that shit is so hard
| koolba wrote:
| Dry walling is easy. Good drywalling is moderately difficult.
|
| Best advice is to go with a slower set time so you can go at
| the pace you feel comfortable.
| _bin_ wrote:
| the cover photo wearing a tie is uhh an interesting choice for
| literally any kind of shop. same reason women have to keep their
| hair out of the way.
| yapyap wrote:
| hard agree, that might be the end of him if it wasn't just for
| a photo op
| basisword wrote:
| I remember wearing ties but tucking it into the shirt (in
| between the buttons) and also wearing an apron. Incredibly
| unsafe to just have a tie on normally around machinery so
| imagine that is just for the photo op.
| metalman wrote:
| this wont have much effect, as the origins of "shop class" was to
| introduce kids to power tools and modern equipment, who were
| living with all kinds of basic hand tools and work shops as the
| basic backgound of a world with a large percentage of hand made
| things. That background is gone, and with it the ability to
| tinker and practice, scrounge, and build stuff. Out in the
| country, you might still find plenty of that, but they dont need
| shop class, as there is any amount of tools, for free, or cheap,
| cheap ,cheap, building cars or anything from parts. bumper
| sticker says "built not bought" old timer told me that you used
| to have to watch your tools, and put them away, lest they go
| missing, now they are perfectly safe anywhere, presumably because
| tools have a negative conotation
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think the return on investment is underplayed, it's not just
| what skills you graduate with, it's whether you find going to
| school at all rewarding. I was bored stiff in most of my classes,
| but having marching band to look forward to and the reward of
| traveling to different cities on the band bus kept me from
| completely checking out of school.
|
| 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.
| rckclmbr wrote:
| We had a metal lathe in our high school shop class. I still
| can't believe someone didn't kill themselves on that. I think
| wood lathes are fine, but honestly that should be kept out.
| lolinder wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| cryptica wrote:
| This is an excellent subject to teach in schools. I'm a software
| developer and I felt like I benefited from woodwork and metalwork
| lessons at school. I think if the future generation is to
| automate systems, they will need to understand the manual
| processes.
|
| 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.
| hi_hi wrote:
| Me: Great, an article Not about about AI. _clicks_link_
|
| Me: Oh FFS
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Recently learned that US school students typically get ~20
| minutes of outdoor time per day... is that true?
|
| 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".
| cyberax wrote:
| That's a good idea. Schools should give an "overview" of
| potential career paths and teach some basic skills.
|
| 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.
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