02-07-2021, 01:17 PM
|
 |
Black Brant & Congreve fanatic
|
|
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 133
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by erik442
When I was in junior high I had classes in two diferent metal shops, a wood shop, a drafting room, and a print shop. By ninth grade (1982) the school district had adopted a new policy and I had to take cooking, sewing, and home economics. I can't imagine kids nowadays using the equipment we had access to back then - welders, torches, gas fired soldering irons, table metal shears, lathes, bandsaws, etc. That cirriculum now is only available in a separate vocational-technical school building across the street from the high school.
|
I hear you. As a grade 8 student around 1970 or so I was within a cohort of young kids that were transferred into a brand new entity for our particular school district: a "Senior Public School" (gr. 7-8). Although the concept was new (to us), the designated school building had previously been a "Collegiate Institute", a high school with a number of dedicated technical classrooms. Woodworking, metalworking, you name it, the school board not only required ALL of us to do such really cool things but also provided highly experienced "shop" teachers to guide our devious little minds and bodies in such pursuits. I still have a wooden billy club that I turned on a lathe and there's probably a cookie cutter in a kitchen drawer somewhere that I personally cut out of sheet metal, folded, snipped and soldered in place. And all these years later I still remember what the teachers drilled into us about oxy-acetylene safety! Although my education and career path ultimately took me away from the technical trades track, I am grateful for the grounding that even such a brief sojourn gave me in handling tools and heeding (if not always precisely following!) instructions.
__________________
John
Was CAR-ACF# S 337
Was NAR# 91049
Was SAM# 0323
Life begins when the countdown reaches zero!
|