"Andrew VK3BFA" wrote in message
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On Jun 17, 12:34 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"AndrewVK3BFA" wrote in message

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On Jun 13, 4:18 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


And that's why you've gone off on a no-facts, all-emotion, old-man's rant.
d8-)

--
Ed Huntress (another old man, but I try not to get old any faster than I
have to)

Well, yes Ed - I was in no doubt you would comprehensively demolish
any different views from those you propound - But us peasants, every
now and then, get cranky and say "Hang on - Liberal Romanticism - that
didn't work either "

Andrew, let me just clarify some key points. The misconception about
"industrial arts" teaching in the United States is that it all grew out of a
more practical time, when there was a track for kids destined for further
academic studies, and another one for kids destined to work at trades and
industry. But that's a myth, as those historical accounts explain. Shop
classes in most of the US were useless for industrial training. They were
more like hobby-shop training. The US educational pedagogy is still based
mostly on the socializing/citizenship-training ideas of the
early-20th-century progressives. Or it was, until the past couple of
decades, when we started to worry that kids in the US were falling behind
the rest of the world in math and language. That's just a historical fact.

But there was always a thread of vocational training in the teaching, which
dominated in certain areas, particularly where there was a lot of industry.
I have personal experience with one of the most extensive such programs ever
employed in the US. It was spending time with my uncle (I now own his SB
lathe, bandsaw, table saw, jointer, and three basement walls full of hand
tools) and in his shops at school that got me interested in industry and
drove me to seek a writing position with _American Machinist_. Those real,
vocationally oriented shop programs motivated and helped many thousands of
kids to pursue industrial careers. But there never were that many of them.

You're right that many kids took shop as an escape from more abstract
academics. It did attract kids who were interested in manual skills. But it
was always, in most areas, a half-assed system that was like teaching all of
history, geography, and English in a single class, making brass candy dishes
and walnut-stained pine corner shelves.

Many folks on this NG grew up in industrial areas so they probably have had
a better experience with their school shops than most kids in the country.
In some places we had vocational, industrial training that was as extensive
as the system in Germany, for example. But that's not typical of the US as a
whole.

If you understand the real historical background it's easier to understand
why shop classes are not getting much support these days. Some people point
to the lack of qualified teachers; but there are few qualified teachers
because job prospects in that field are declining. Some point to the
"liberalization" of school curricula, but the fact is that it is the old,
progressive-era theories of socialization that have collapsed. We've shifted
towards an intense focus on the "basics": teaching to the tests, and the
(NCLB) tests are in those basics, which means math and English, with a bit
of science, history, and little else. All other courses, from metal shop to
home ec, and all of the so-called "liberal" programs, are being shoved into
a corner. This is the opposite of what many people here believe but it isn't
worth trying to explain it every time it comes up.

So one wing of the field is collapsing because the pedagogy has shifted from
socialization to basic skills. That's a DECLINE of liberalization, which no
one here seems to have noticed. The other wing is collapsing because there
are poor growth prospects in manual, industrial jobs. This is something we
bemoan here all the time but seem to forget when we start talking about
schools.

I wasn't arguing against your point that many kids took shop because they
didn't like the academics. That's quite true. I was pointing out that the
shop programs, in most parts of the country, never served those kids very
well to begin with. And that's because their origin, in terms of pedagogical
philosophy, was not intended to train them for vocations. It was to
"socialize" them into the culture. If you understand that, you understand
much of what happened. That's all I was saying.

I never saw any of that. Would be Nice if it twas true.... And yes, I
knew it was a RANT. Like a good rant, know and then, do I....

I cant read all your quotes - its just mind bogglingly difficult to
make sense of all that lot, let alone the sheer number of words. (And
their much Bigger words than mostly I use. Makes it a bit difficult)

But thats OK, - a national tradition here of yelling "Bull****" on an
instinctive, gut level, usually at totally inappropriate times... g

Well, say bull**** all you want. But if your bull**** is bull****, I may
step in and say so, if the subject is important enough. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress