Sunworshipper wrote:
On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:36:12 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

When I was in school, these were every boy's favorite, and almost the
only useful education we got.

I would say litigation.

As my son was proceeding through public school system in California
I was wondering what was happening to the wood and metal shop classes.
His middle school was the last school in the district that still
offered metal and wood shop. When the teacher retired (and my
son moved onto high school), the middle school shops were closed.
They could not find anybody who had both a valid teaching certificate
for California and the technical arts option. I dug a little deeper
and said "why?". It turns out that only one teaching school down in
southern Cal. provided the training for teachers that wanted to teach
technical arts *and* very few people were enrolling in the classes.

So, when the technical arts instructor retires, the principal
posts an ad for a trained technical arts instructor, gets no
responses, and shuts the metal/wood shops down. A year or two
later, the equipment is auctioned off so the space can be reused.

Meanwhile, kids in school are going ga-ga over robotics and want
to build them and there are no facilities at the schools to build
them. It is kind of sad.

-Wayne