We had 7th grade wood shop for a semester. Drafting in 7th or 8th grade - I don’t recall which. Possibly it was one semester or drafting and one semester of woods the same year.
Freshman metals was essentially a joke. Some tin knocking which I was WAY beyond so was put in with the junior and seniors metals - which I was also too advanced for.
My home school had a small speedy melt foundry furnace that they never used. Dad ended up donating all the supplies they needed from his program yet they scrapped the foundry in the late 80’s. I found the furnace at the scrap yard and brought it home. It sits on the shelf. I’ve not seen a flame in it since 1978. We did have a forging furnace and some Lincoln dial arc welders.
As you so well understand - how is a student to know if they want to take a vocational level class if they have zero exposure?
My dad’s program was at a vocational center. So - as you can figure for yourself - with zero or very poor home school exposure why would a student take a class that consumes 3 to 4 class periods?
Morning class requires arriving to school via their own transportation as they need to take a special bus to arrive to the career center early enough for an approximately 2 hour class and then get bussed back to their home school. The afternoon class takes the place of 4 class hours. That is an absolutely daunting commitment for a student who may have absolutely zero prior exposure.
School counsellors fail the metal working students by not preparing them for a trade that requires a sound understanding of math. It is less of an issue with on-line help but a machinist still needs some background.
My son took a school auto shop program a decade ago that utilized Lansing Community College. It was a joke. They were not teaching an auto mechanic class. It was intended to create “technicians” who were to attempt to tell a mechanic what was wrong with the car - but not perform actual repairs. He wasted a lot of class time for 2 years.
Another class he took at his home school was “manufacturing”. It was claimed to help prepare for manufacturing jobs and business experience. All they did was operate a Woodmiser band mill making lumber that the wood shop instructor sold to help fund his wood shop program.
That same instructor sold off the shear, sheet metal brake, slip roll, corner notcher, bar folder, the 1950’s Clausing lathes, the Emco training CNC mills, and a small CNC lathe. He sold the entire foundry for under $200. He sold/traded a fully automatic surface grinder that had been donated by Post Cereals in Battle Creek. It was still brand new and on it’s pallet when the prior shop teacher showed it to me 2 years before. He wouldn’t say what became of it. He bought a couple Jet lathes. One broke after a year. It was used for parts to keep the other working for a few years. Both were not usable within 5 years due to broken plastic gears and sold for scrap when 7 or 8 years old. He also bought a small Lincoln MIG welder. He told me he wanted to buy a CNC controlled plasma cutter. I asked why? You sold off the sheet metal tooling needed to work with any parts the student would cut with the plasma cutter. He had no answer.
