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.
> 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.
We had to watch a movie on day one (or very early in the class) with pretty graphic scenes of shop injuries. Blood, fingers getting cut off, a guy speared in the stomach by a scrap of wood binding and then thrown from the table saw blade.
I also got the scare treatment. 25 years later and I still refuse to buy a table saw despite being characterized as risk-tolerant is many other dimensions.
I use a table saw, but am extremely slow and careful with it. It's a terrifying tool.
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.
Even 100 psi of plain old compressed air is no joke. After I plumbed my garage with metal piping for compressed air, I had a neighbor who was inspired to do it, too, but he cheaped out and used PVC despite my pleas to him to think about what he's doing. You are probably already guessing how this story ends, but by some miracle it didn't end with an injury. Of course, one of the PVC fittings failed catastrophically, and a metal quick-disconnect fitting launched across his garage at high speed, busting through the garage door like it wasn't even there. Fortunately there were no human bodies along the flight path, and I hope a lesson was learned.
You're quite right. I'd like to add that hardware store metal pipes may not have good quality control - might want to check if they are suitable for compressed air. Just being metal isn't enough. (For example, I would not use metal conduit and fittings designed for electrical wires.)
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.
This is why Sloyd woodworking is taught in northern European countries:
>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.
A slightly different angle could be whether it needs to be school and can't be handled by the town in a different setting for instance.
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.
Maybe - but if it's not handled by the school, then there's going to be some sort of access problem for some kids. Transportation, time to do it, financial for the parents, etc.
What's the right balance on perfect-is-the-enemy-of-the-good here?
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?
I really don't think this is the actual problem here. A town with multiple high schools is too big for a single central youth woodworking shop.
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.
> A town with multiple high schools is too big for a single central youth woodworking shop.
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.
This is my first entry in this conversation, I'm not sure what the original commenter had in mind.
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.
I think the fundamental issue could be that these cities require kids to be bussed around, which is an issue I wouldn't know how to solve.
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.
Yes, depending on the city it can be more or less complex. It comes down to how kids are viewed, and a good indicator could be how libraries are handled.
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.
I generally agree, young people respond well to responsibility.
And whilst it doesn't help me day to day, knowing how the make dovetail joints is one of the things I cherish most from year 10.
All it takes is installing cameras and if anyone is caught up doing stupid shit the shoptime is over for them, permanently if it's anything serious.
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.
> As someone who was shoved and occasionally bullied while operating machines like belt saws... I'm not sure it was worth it.
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).
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.
Wood lathes are much more dangerous than metal lathes IMO!
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.
A metal lathe is the fundamental machine tool. You learn how to calculate feeds and speeds, plan depth of cut, thread cutting, parting, etc. You learn about surface finish, chatter, cutter shape... Why rob students of this? Should nobody learn basic machinist skills? It's no more or less dangerous than any other shop tool.
These things aren't actually as dangerous as Reddit and the white collar internet make them out to be. The "being dumb" to near miss conversion ratio isn't that high and the near miss to someone gets hurt conversion ratio is abysmal.
In metal shop, one kid left the key in the chuck and turned the lathe on. It punched a hole in the wall opposite it. It would have killed anyone in its path.
Wood lathes, and generally woodworking tools like saws and routers are substantially more dangerous. Especially at the scale of machinery you have in vocational classes.
Are shop classes mandated by states anywhere? No schools I know offer it. I am not sure if it’s a good or bad thing. I’ve heard of children having accidents in those classes - sometimes not just an accident but the result of other children intentionally harming them. On the other hand, I feel like our society has lost the ability to DIY and do things that are … less online. Maybe shop classes can help with that.
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.