Everything In The Whole World Is Bad For You
I can barely operate household tools beyond a hammer, and have always had to turn to boyfriends to put up pictures or curtains, but now even boyfriends may look at a drill or a saw and go "huh?" Via Overlawyered, schools are canceling shop classes to avoid liability risk. Actor John Ratzenberger writes for the Washington Times:
Here's how this plays out: A teenager gets hurt in high school shop class. His parents sue the school. The school district cannot afford the costs of liability risk, so they cancel vocational training. Thousands of kids in one school district go without the opportunity for hands-on skills training.This same teenager graduates high school and faces a media culture that tells him that he must go to college or be a failure. Taking a minimum-wage service job, he reads about high unemployment in the daily newspaper. Despite available technical training and vocational schools, he doesn't think that jobs really exist on the other side. The celebrity culture further stigmatizes his views on skilled work. Only low-class people work with their hands, or so goes the implied message.
Meanwhile, employers are starving for skilled workers in all sectors, from health care to infrastructure construction and repair to high-tech manufacturing. These employers, however, face an ever-increasing mountain of regulations that sap resources from recruiting and hiring into bureaucratic compliance that often has little to do with public health, safety and welfare. Skyrocketing liability insurance premiums and litigation costs drain further dollars away from training - not to mention research-and-development innovations that would create millions of new jobs. That would be too costly, too risky.
More from Ratzenberger here, in an interview with The Mouse Club:
The city of Oakland, when they cancelled their shop classes the dropout rating went up 30%. Any time you get rid of those industrial arts courses and home ec, the dropout rating goes right up. In the African American communities the dropout rate is even higher, it's 50%. A lot of kids could have this great life if somebody would teach them a skill and nobody's doing it. Everyone's got this idea that everybody's got to go to college. I think we have enough sociologists and attorneys. What we really need are plumbers. If you're a brain surgeon, that's great, but if there's not hot water coming out of the faucet before you do the surgery to wash your hands, you're not doing the surgery. So the degree of brain surgeon is useless if you couldn't find a plumber.
Ratzenberger's foundation: the Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs Foundation.
That's right - we have almost completely destroyed the trades. There is no longer a formal, well-understood path to becoming an electrician, a carpenter or a plumber. It used to be the case that one had vocational schooling, followed by (or together with) a formal apprenticeship. Nowadays, it's more or less by accident...
Vocational training and apprenticeship still exist in other countries, including much of Europe (but not the UK). The US would do well to adopt it once again. Note that these are very secure jobs - everyone has faucets and drains, and you cannot outsource plumbing to India.
a_random_guy at November 26, 2010 12:56 AM
First off, shop class was not going to get you very far. Maybe enough of a taste to get an idea if you like it.
Second, at this point there seems to be an over abundance of these individuals, at least where I am at. Well, except some health care.
Third, there a bunch of trade/tech schools, at least around here. This does not apply to certain fields - e.g. plumbers are dominated by a union and in order to sit for licensing exam you have to work under a licensed plumber in the field for a long time(4000 hours, just looked it up - and it is sub divided into specific fields).
I was reading in my parents paper how about how these schools have been training all these people and then they get out and there are no jobs for them. Whether this is because of poor training or really no need for another person with that skill set is yet to be determined, but first glance indicated a bit of both (according to the article).
The Former Banker at November 26, 2010 1:18 AM
Can I sue someone that leaves 14 knots in my veins just to start one IV? I had to put wet towels in the freezer and wrap them around both arms.
nonegiven at November 26, 2010 1:19 AM
I talked about this kind of thing in my post the suppression of shop. I quoted one student who remarked, speaking about automotive shop: "When I come here, I know exactly what I'm doing," said Raymond Butcher, a 17-year-old junior. "This is what feeds my brain."
And, as I asserted in the linked post, learning a craft has more than economic value. One learns self-discipline, deferred gratification, attention to detail, and ability to work with others. And one may also learn intellectual skills such as inductive and deductive reasoning. Diagnosing engine problems, for example, surely requires an internalization of cause-and-effect thinking.
The negative attitude of school administrators to shop courses demonstrates once again--as if further demonstration was needed--just how narrowminded are the people who run the public schools, and how little they really care about their students.
david foster at November 26, 2010 6:01 AM
I own a small manufacturing business, a job shop. I probably interview 20 to 30 people before I hire someone who is only minimally qualified. I've seen people who can't spell the name of a machine that they claim to have worked on for the previous five years. Hell, I've seen people mis-spell their own address.
I have a small handful of people working for me who are dedicated, conscientious, and put effort toward continued learning in their fields - and trust me, it's as difficult to keep up in manufacturing as it is in most other "professional" fields.
For over a generation, school counselors have steered kids away from the trades because their school rankings look better if more of the grads end up in college. And sadly, nothing in our culture makes working in the trades the least bit attractive as a career option anymore. Just something to keep in mind the next time you make it through the pat down and are actually sitting in that aluminum tube going 600 mph at 35,000 feet.
Tom Accuosti at November 26, 2010 6:35 AM
I was surprised to see the drop-out rate increase when shop classes were cut because my high school shop class was almost as big a waste of time as home ec. We learned nothing except how to carve a duck out of wood and stain it. I knew some kids who went into trades. The ones that became electricians had electricians in the family. Plumbers had plumbers in the family and so on. My former father-in-law was a floor layer and my ex-husband did that on the side but it was hard on knees and he became a cop for the benefits. I think I'm more concerned about all the cuts in phys ed and recess. That's a lot of trapped kids who get no activity all day every day.
Kristen at November 26, 2010 7:12 AM
Something I wondered after my last post. Was the drop-out rate increased because the kids didn't have wasted periods to fill out their schedules? I just have such a hard time believing those shop classes were such a value based on my own classes and the shop classes my kids took. Is it that those kids who are dropping out can't handle the academic portion? I don't see the requirements in America meeting such a high standard any more so I would be concerned that these kids can't make it through a high school English or math class. It doesn't have to mean they are college bound, but at least shouldn't at a minumun they be able to read, write, and calculate?
Kristen at November 26, 2010 7:15 AM
And then there's hipsters who, after 4 years and $200,000 later, decide to start a woodworking company, or a leather shop or a candy company.
KateC at November 26, 2010 7:25 AM
"...my high school shop class was almost as big a waste of time as home ec. We learned nothing except how to carve a duck out of wood and stain it."
It depends on the shop teacher. Also on the school's fear of liability - do they dare let you use a table saw? If not, you get to carve a duck. Heck, in today's climate, you probably aren't allowed to use carving knives anymore.
America, land of the scared, home of "it must be somebody's fault, I'm gonna sue". Not what I learned in history class, but it's what we've got today...
a_random_guy at November 26, 2010 8:40 AM
OMG, I would have LOVED to have had a real shop class in high school!!! Do you know where I learned to use power tools, like table saws, electric drills, and the like? Intermediate PAINTING class in college, because my instructor liked for us to know how to build our own canvas frames, etc! It was one of the best life skills I ever learned, and even today I love to get out power tools and build furniture and picture frames whenever I can!
If I had had the opportunity to take auto shop, and had I the benefit of parents who weren't snobbish about the trades, I'd have been unstoppable.
Melissa G at November 26, 2010 9:33 AM
Me too Melissa! I always wanted to take shop classes in High School. We had them, but due to various circumstances I wasn't able to take them - REALLy wish I had.
Feebie at November 26, 2010 9:40 AM
What many people don't realize is that individuals working in the skilled trades are often more intelligent, on an IQ and aptitudes basis, than college graduates. Machinists, for instance, have average IQ's comparable to accountants. Airplane engine mechanics are near the average for mechanical engineers. The correspondence between profession and intelligence is not governed by whether the profession requires a college degree. But that's what's implied by their social hierarchy.
mojo at November 26, 2010 11:30 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/11/26/everything_in_t.html#comment-1789058">comment from mojoWe are in Paris where we just had lunch with our friend Pierre, a retired master cabinetmaker who never went to college and may not have finished high school. I asked him what he's reading now, and it's the political philosopher John Rawls' "Theory of Justice." Last time I was here, it was something by Hannah Arendt. Pierre and I have rather different politics, but he's an interesting guy, and a thinker, and not because somebody makes him think or read to grub for some grade. It's a mistake to assume people who are not college educated or who haven't finished college are necessarily less intelligent or less educated. I have no degree in psychology or anthropology and I spend my weeks reading books and studies in both.
Amy Alkon at November 26, 2010 11:40 AM
I used to teach Industrial Technology and Mechanical Systems and Devices to high-school students. The main problem with vocational-technical education is guidance councilors. They steered students into my classes who had been failures at everything else they had taken. The result was a class with one or two students actually interested in learning a trade, and a majority interested in throwing things, stealing things, raising hell, and playing dangerous pranks around operating milling machines and lathes. The administrators would not kick them out because the budget depended on their butts being in the chairs.
ken in sc at November 26, 2010 11:53 AM
It's a mistake to assume people who are not college educated or who haven't finished college are necessarily less intelligent or less educated.
Most people aren't capable of educating themselves in challenging subjects. So they regard the idea that others can with skepticism. For these people, what you can know is a function of what you have been formally taught.
This attitude is the bane of many engineering professions where bright autodidacts are thwarted by administrative and hiring personnel who just can't accept that someone might have been able to develop competencies without the aid of a formal program. It's a significant factor driving the fragmentation of the definition of technical and engineering roles.
mojo at November 26, 2010 1:05 PM
"many engineering professions where bright autodidacts are thwarted by administrative and hiring personnel who just can't accept that someone might have been able to develop competencies without the aid of a formal program"....There was a study done quite a few years ago in which *actors* were taught a smattering of electrical engineering jargon and sent out to interview for EE jobs. At the same time, actual EEs were sent out on interviews for similar jobs. The actors got more requests to come in for followup interviews than did the real EEs.
Not clear how many of the interviewers were HR people vs how many were the hiring managers, who would themselves have been EEs...if the former, the results are understandable though not good, if the latter, then the results are *really* scary...
david foster at November 26, 2010 1:14 PM
It may sound odd considering the push for everyone to go to college these days, but there's actually a lot of "kewl kidz" anti-competency attitude in society these days. If you enjoy and are good at the job you work in, and that job isn't one that TV dramas get made about, you are open for ridicule. I can't tell you the number of times I've had people who have asked about what I took in school, and then whan I tell them about all my math classes, they giggle out "Gosh, and I can't even balance my checkbook!" To me, that's tantamount admitting that you can't read. Is that the sort of thing you should admit to, with pride even, to someone you just met? And yet it's considered polite conversation these days.
As for the trades: In my generation, a lot of boys were taught trade-type work as teenagers. Our fathers taught us, or maybe we had summer jobs doing that work. My dad was an old-school electrical engineer and he taught me electrical wiring. I did nearly all of the finish wiring in our house. I know some plumbing too; I don't really enjoy it, but I know enough to make minor repairs. Not too many kids get that kind of experience any more. A lot of their parents don't know enough to teach them, or they live in a part of the country where it isn't legal to do your own work (as a homeowner in Alabama, I can pull an electrical permit for my own house, even though I'm not a licensed electrician). And skilled tradesmen these days are nearly all sole proprietorships; they don't want the paperwork headaches or liability of taking on apprentices.
Cousin Dave at November 26, 2010 2:12 PM
I'm a degreed engineer, I run my own IT business, and I can't balance my checkbook.
No, I'm not proud of it. But somewhere along the line, I wound up missing something, and as a result I can do complex maths in my head, I can wire a house, build a cabinet, fix a motorcycle, diagnose a system failure remotely -- yet I cannot balance a checkbook.
I learned woodworking, plumbing, electrical, etc. from various family members, none of whom were professionals in the trades. I guess I got lucky. I know plenty of people my age that couldn't sweat a joint to save their lives.
brian at November 27, 2010 7:49 AM
You're all overlooking the consequences of the fact that power tools are dangerous and people can get seriously hurt by them. Even non-power tools like ladders can cause injuries.
If you offer shop classes, students will get injured, some seriously. Who will pay the medical bills and possible disability?
The same goes for industry. Some of the regulations may not be really needed, but there's always going to be the problem of who will pay for injuries?
Philip Ngai at November 27, 2010 4:20 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/11/26/everything_in_t.html#comment-1789758">comment from Philip NgaiSurely power tools have gotten less dangerous since I was in high school (Class of '82). Who paid for injuries back then?
Amy Alkon at November 27, 2010 4:42 PM
Surely power tools have gotten less dangerous since I was in high school (Class of '82). Who paid for injuries back then?
back then there was not the lotto factor. When I was in grade school a friend at school climbed on some rocks and they all crashed down - multiple bones broken, etc. The district paid a few thousand dollars (according to him at the time). They just paid out for a new case almost a million dollars - my brother was talking about it at Thanksgiving. And it sounds pretty minor.
And skilled tradesmen these days are nearly all sole proprietorships; they don't want the paperwork headaches or liability of taking on apprentices.
That and union issues.
The Former Banker at November 27, 2010 11:57 PM
If you can add and subtract, you can balance your checkbook.
But the real question is, WILL YOU balance your checkbook?
Um...does anybody actually use those anymore anyway? I do everything electronically. I keep a file on my computer that details all my "Mandatory" expenses. Mortgage, association fee, electricity, etc. and either a precise or aproximate expected cost, I know every month almost to the last dollar what my expenses will be and what I will have left over. The only real variable is groceries since I don't buy the same thing every week.
This isn't even close to hard to do.
"Can't balance my checkbook" almost invariably means, "Won't".
Robert at November 28, 2010 2:36 AM
No, I mean "can't".
I've got a math minor attached to my degree. I can add and subtract. But before I found Quicken I would end up with odd things happening, like my statement balance showing I had a thousand dollars more than my register did.
I let the computer do it. And since Quicken and Quickbooks will both download the transaction register from the bank and the credit cards, all I need to do is make sure they match.
And it makes expense tracking so much easier.
brian at November 28, 2010 8:11 AM
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