The Death of Shop Class?

Last night I attended the "Back to School Night" event at Rece's school. We initially gathered in the gymnasium (which was a very cool old-school, if you pardon the pun, style gym) where some of the faculty went over basic school info and some of the various groups and clubs (PTA and the likes) got to speak about what they do. Pretty standard stuff. After this we were on a school schedule where we got to visit each of our student's classes in the order they would during their school day. We were given 5 minutes to get to each class and each teacher would then talk to us for 10 minutes - this was complete with school bells indicating when that class visit time was over. I thought it was a pretty cool way of doing it.

7th period was wood shop. In both junior high and high school I had taken wood shop and remembered having a great time learning how to work with tools and creating things with my own two hands. Heck I still have the scar on my finger from when I got it caught in the jig saw. Anyhow, Rece's shop teacher told us that he had been doing this for a very long time. During his talk, he mentioned that there were now only 3 shop classes left in the entire Newport/Mesa school district - 2 wood shop classes (one of them his) and an auto shop class. This struck me as very odd, as I can easily remember the shop classes always being the most difficult ones to get into back when I was in school - they were always the most popular, especially with the guys. Beyond their popularity, the classes taught us that we were able to fix and create things from raw materials. We learned how to use tools and how to use them safely. We were given a chance to create something useful and often times in a creative way - my mom continued to use a chess board and cutting board for over a decade after I had made them!

I stuck around after the other parents had started to leave and talked with him for a couple of minutes to discuss this trend. He told me that this was not just the case in our school district, but also much of the other districts in the state. This was quite a shock to hear. He did mention that this seemed more the case with schools in California than with schools in the midwest - where there still appears to be a good amount of "industrial art" classes going.

Why this affected me so much still puzzles me now, but it just seems sad that so much has been eliminated from schools since I was a kid. Some of the art/music classes were already being cut back when I was in high school - and now seem almost a bygone era. Why is this? Why are our schools so focused on only academic topics and turning away from a more well-rounded collection of learning? Don't they understand that the world isn't all about numbers and writing and history?

I thought I had more of a point to this, but I can't seem to articulate it very well. It bummed me out to see how the schools have changed so much since I was that age.

This entry remembers enjoying band, wood shop, metal shop,
drafting, and over 6 years worth of art classes!