School "Tech" classes.

[Ianab]

Eldest daughter is starting High School next year (Year 9) and the local High School had an open evening for prospective students and their parents to come and get the grand tour. This is a small town school with around 500 students. Some families think they are doing better sending their kids off to boarding school, or bussing them to one of the bigger city schools. Can't see it myself.

What did impress me was the "materials tech" block. That covered what used to be called Home Economics (Cooking and sewing), Art, metalwork and they still have a FULL woodshop. 

All the year 9s (Boys and girls) get a short course in each section over they year, and they become "options" in more senior years. Even if a student isn't planning on a trade (some obviously are), the courses still carry credits towards University entry quals. (Design / Materials etc). The head girl that was our guide had designed and made a very nice cypress coffee table the year before. Being able to make your own ball gown was popular reason for the sewing option etc.

Anyway, I was impressed with their setup, and I think it put Lara at ease about changing schools. Not such a big shock as her current primary school is one of the larger ones (~370 students), and most of them end up at the High school. Bit more of a change for some of the outlying schools with only 50-100 students though.  

[Ljohnsaw]

When I was in 7th and 8th grade in N.Y. (1971), they had us rotate through the Art/Home Ec./"Industrial Design" (more art with wood parts)/and Woodshop.  I really enjoyed that.  In High School, we had a full wood shop, about 1/2 a metal shop (no mills), auto shop, ceramics and art.  My graduating class was the largest at 274.  There was about 750-800 students in total for the 4 grades.  Since the town has not grown much since I left, I would guess the student population has dropped a bit.

They have the Home Ec, Wood Shop and Ceramics in 8th grade here.  In High School, they only have "Construction Tech" with is house framing with some light electrical and plumbing thrown in.  No more auto shop, wood shop or metal shop :

[Don P]

Ours was similar, I learned to scorch a few things in home ec... but I learned enough to know that I had burnt it :D. I also took mechanical and then architectural drafting, we had to draw a house plan of our design, look up and draw to code. 10 of us from the area schools got to take another semester of drafting at the community college. I remember the instructor came in one day, he had been shown progress on some computer programming "don't worry boys, those are nothing but fancy electric typewriters". That classroom smelled of diazo, I think that was probably the last time I smelled it. The year after I graduated they brought some early apple computers in, we had a couple of punchcard terminals tied in to IBM's mainframe prior. Over a couple of years they removed the shop tools and classes, not very smart IMO. So in some ways they saw the future and in others did not very well. I think a basic core of skills should be taught, it sort of amazes me how many kids, and their parents, cannot do much in the way of basic manual skills or understand how simple stuff works.

[LeeB]

Eldest daughter is starting High School next year (Year 9) 

Wow. Time flies. My mind still see a little one not yet in school.

[Ianab]

Yeah, the kids have been born and are growing up in the history of the forum. 

I guess we are lucky with local schools as the town has been pretty stable population wise over recent years.  A lot of smaller centres have had to close schools, or combine into an "Area School" that does year 1 to 13 on one campus. Hard to maintain all the options in a smaller school. But we live in an active farming / service area. Lots of the local kids will be working on farms, or going to "trade" jobs, builders / electricians / mechanics etc. 

Had to chuckle though when Lil was looking at the various new students and recognised several of them, having taught them in Kindergarten. Then we get to the sewing classroom, and the teacher had taught Lil at high school.  And here she was enrolling her daughter. 

She did mention she was planning to retire in a few years. Maybe the thought of teaching a "Lil Mk 2"   :D

[DWyatt]

When I was in 8th grade we did a 3 class rotation, home economics (sewing, cooking, etc.), Industrial Arts (Wood Shop), and and Ag class. After that year you had the option of which to pursue through high school. I was lucky enough based on how I was raised to have a well rounded home education. My dad and Gramps had me in the shop when I was 5 or 6 and I helped teach the teacher techniques, Mom taught me to cook dinner at the same age, and my Great Grandma taught me to mend clothes and how to embroider (my sister still has the pillow I made he for her birthday one year). However, so many kids in my graduating class of 75 people have no idea about any of what we were learning. It's sad really, sad that they didn't have the opportunity to learn skills that I consider necessary to daily life.

Two years ago Carey built a new school to replace the one that many kids' grandparents graduated from, like many districts I was worried that "extra" classes like that would not be offered because they don't cater to state testing standards. I was never so happy to see that cyclone being piped in along the outside of the building next to the new wood shop. It's easy for people to forget about the real classes that they benefited from in high school, I for one am thankful I came from a town that still values what I call the Real Classes.

[Ljohnsaw]

It's sad really, sad that they didn't have the opportunity to learn skills that I consider necessary to daily life.

In my son's Home Ec class, they had to learn to sew a little, including sewing on buttons.  The teacher said that is a very important skill to have in college.  Her son made a lot of spending money there sewing for other kids that didn't have a clue! ;)

[caveman]

Last night I typed a lengthy response to this post and deleted it rather than post.  I have been teaching agriculture for the past 19 years of my 27+ as a teacher.  On numerous occasions students and former students have told me that the math or science that they take in an academic setting finally made sense when they applied it in my class.  This can range from doing legal land descriptions, trees per acre, estimating yards of concrete or blocks for a building, fertilizer calculations, electrical capacity per certain sized circuit, volume calculations and the list could go on.

We have a variety of tools and I intend to obtain more to get some of the things I left behind when I left my previous school nearly two years ago (point made).  We have mig and stick welders, plasma cutters, oxy-acetylene torch, table saw, jointer, planer, wood lathe, a few band saws, a couple of tractors, zero turn mower, blower, JD Gator, transit, and other shop tools.  The tools I miss having are tube notcher, tube bender, metal shear, metal brake, overhead hoists on an I-beam, Coats tire changer, vehicle lift, and several scroll saws.

The only thing holding the students back is a lack of ambition.  Some come in not knowing how to hold a shovel or drive a nail and leave with employable skills.  It amazes me how many adult humans do not know how to do simple tasks.  For example, last week a female coworker was at her twin's water day at preschool and one of the dads stated "oh no, this is not going to work.  We are going to need an adapter", when attempting to attach a water hose to the spigot.  Jessica, my coworker, walked to the other end of the hose and threaded it on the faucet.  Technical education would benefit those among us who do office jobs and earn ridiculous salaries.  

My youngest daughter will start high school next year too, Ian.  She will be taking some tech classes along with the academics.  

[marty3d]

I retired a little over a year ago from teaching at a very small jr/sr high school in N. Idaho.  The whole school population was just about 140.  That made shop classes a bit odd as you might only get 3 to 10 students per class and only one tiny shop to do things.  We created a program that helped tremendously.  In essence, we did not have normal classes on most Fridays - but had more immersive classes that allowed students to come to the shop all day long to learn and build.  Other teachers had different 'tracks' for the students, from cooking to outdoor skills to on-the-job internships for Juniors and Seniors.  When I left, the shop had a decent set of woodworking machines, a CNC milling machine, CNC router, Bridgeport mill, auto hoist, welding machines, and a CNC plasma cutter.  If they could dream it, they could probably build it.