"I am a woodshop"

[Jim Matthews]

This trend is cyclical.

When I attended high school, there was unrelenting pressure to attend college.
There were literally 800 kids in my freshman Chemistry class, and ten other sections besides.

I remember in my third year of University wondering where all these people would go to find work.
The truth is that few of us were prepared for meaningful careers, with an associated demand.

These days, I'm paying big money to attend woodworking classes to learn the stuff
I could have learned in High School shop class, had I but paid attention.

Gathering a basic skill set for household repairs means you're not at the mercy of contractors,
and at least know enough to shop around. Every handyman has limits, and shop class expanded mine.

*******

Anybody that goes off on a bender and twists this to any agenda should be beaten with a torque wrench.
It doesn't belong here, not now - not ever.

[Brett Luna]

Brian has obviously never been in a position of working with someone who has no idea of how to use tools. I regularly hire high school students in the summer time for part time help. I can easily see the difference in someone who has taken some shop classes. I had one kid who didn't know how to use a push broom, No kidding. It gets harder all the time to find someone who wants to make a living in the trades. Shop classes in school need to be kept going.

I even experienced that in the military. I maintained fighters (avionic sensors) during my first 12 years. Every year, it seemed like more and more young people hardly knew the difference between and socket and and allen wrench. It also didn't help that maintenance was dumbed down for expedience, although I well understand the reasoning. When I enlisted, I learned how to troubleshoot down to the individual component and replace it. I could repair a printed circuit board. I could build a wiring bundle. Then more and more was done at the depot level rather than in the field. We swapped cards and later, entire modules or subassemblies until the systems worked.

[Stew Hagerty]

Please don't, you're lecturing out of your depth.

Spare us the Libertarian theology. Plenty of places for this - elsewhere.

I'm sorry Jim, but after what I said, why did you feel the need to insult me and tell me not to do something that I'd already said should not be done here.
Oh, and just FYI... not to speak on something "out of your depth" or anything, but I am a Conservative and an Originalist not a Libertarian.

[Chris Padilla]

No politics, Folks, and let's keep this friendly please.

[Stew Hagerty]

No politics, Folks, and let's keep this friendly please.

That is exactly what I was trying to do Chris.

[Brian Elfert]

I went to a vo-tech college after not making it at a traditional college. I was working towards a Microcomputer Specialist associates degree, but I got a job two classes short of graduation so I didn't finish. I started a small business and ran it for a few years. When it became clear I was going to sell the business I went back and completed one of the two classes I needed. I got a new job after selling the business and never took the last class. I did go back this past fall to see if I could take the last class, but they said I would need to meet the requirements of the current degree. I would basically have to start over and it isn't worth it.

I don't have a college degree and still make a salary approaching upper middle class. I'm pretty lucky as most in my field won't hire anyone without a degree. There are four where I work doing the same job. Only one has a degree even though most would have degrees. One guy was promoted from another dept and the other guy was hired a few years back without a degree. (He almost wasn't hired without a degree, but he is an excellent worker.)

[Stew Hagerty]

I went to a vo-tech college after not making it at a traditional college. I was working towards a Microcomputer Specialist associates degree, but I got a job two classes short of graduation so I didn't finish. I started a small business and ran it for a few years. When it became clear I was going to sell the business I went back and completed one of the two classes I needed. I got a new job after selling the business and never took the last class. I did go back this past fall to see if I could take the last class, but they said I would need to meet the requirements of the current degree. I would basically have to start over and it isn't worth it.

I don't have a college degree and still make a salary approaching upper middle class. I'm pretty lucky as most in my field won't hire anyone without a degree. There are four where I work doing the same job. Only one has a degree even though most would have degrees. One guy was promoted from another dept and the other guy was hired a few years back without a degree. (He almost wasn't hired without a degree, but he is an excellent worker.)

Great success story Brain. Your will, drive, and hard work has served you well.
I went to college for Business Management then started my own construction company. I was a general contractor for 14 years before selling my company and going to work as a Senior Project Manager for a really large commercial contractor working primarily military jobs all over the world. I worked there until I got sick in 2008. Thankfully they have a really good LTD plan because I am now confined to a wheelchair.
I wouldn't have been able to do what I did without Middle School Shop Class and working summer jobs at one of the local mobile home plants. They always hired 16yr+ teens in the summer as extra help. I learned framing, electrical, plumbing, cabinet making, roofing.

[Brian Ashton]

Yes, I'm serious. How many openings are there for people to work in an old fashioned wood shop and make things on table saws, jointers, planers, and the like? There is a place near where I live where they make custom things from wood, but a lot of cutting is done on their CNC router. I believe they will make cabinets, but they don't make cabinet doors. They just order them from a place that specializes in cabinet doors. I had them cut some plywood for me once as I needed higher precision than I thought I could achieve with my tools.

I don't believe that taking wood shop would help me be a carpenter or anything like that. We didn't learn how to build houses. I loved wood shop, but we never built any big projects as a class like a grandfather clock or some other big project.

Right now, there aren't a lot of jobs in the woodworking end of things. But that's because we're at the bottom end of the business cycle world wide. Give it a few years and wood shops will be screaming for labour. Things are definitely getting better though. I've been looking on UK job websites and there's a lot of ads for tradies.

I emigrated solely on my cabinet making qualifications at a year or two before the peak of the last boom, no body cared about my post secondary. Cabinetmakers, and all trades, were on the very high in demand list for Australia. So long as you were white, could speak english and had a trade ticket you leap frogged over all the other visa applicants and went straight to the front of the line. Right now you you can only get in on a trade ticket if you have a ridiculous amount of money to put up as security. All western nations were at that time screaming for trades. Tradies were higher in demand than PhDs, doctors and the likes... Give it a few years when we are well and truly heading up the face of a newly building business cycle you'll see demand for all trade really take off again, just like it does on average every 7 to 10 years... The key is capitalizing on the ups and downs of the cycles. Jump in when there's a solid upswing happening and get your tickets(s) asap and get ready to ride out the coming collapse. Then pay close attention to where the cycle bottoms out and start getting ready to start your own business, and jump in when you start seeing building start and house prices increasing. And when things are progressing along well and you are putting out ridiculously high quotes to customers, more in hopes that they will go away, but they still want to you to do the work and your profits are at an all time high with no end in site of when they'll start levelling off... sell the business off at a stupidly high profit and go work for the new owners or another outfit and prepare for the coming crash... Then when things start heating up again start another business...

The average person in their working life should see around 5 to 6 full business cycles. The biggest problem is very few in the trades have any idea what a business cycle is and get caught thinking the gravy train can't end and they end up in bankruptcy court. And/or they have short memories and forget about the last time the economy was on the skids and stick their neck way too far out again and again...

[Brian Elfert]

Anyone who can accurately predict business cycles should be playing the stock market instead of plying a trade. The United States, and most of the world, has not really fully recovered from the last recession. Recessions have happened every five to seven years recently so we might be due for another one soon. My employer survived the last several recessions before the 2008/9 one without layoffs. This time they had to lay off half the work force and the jobs are never coming back.

The only possibly bright side for the USA is the number of workers retiring. By 2020 we might have a labor shortage due to retirees. The department where I work has at least three people retiring this year, but it is possible none will be replaced.

[Patrick Grady]

The shop class that I took in grade school back in the early 70's taught me not only woodworking, but also fundamentals of electricity. It helped me to secure my first paid job at age 11 wiring houses for a church member during the summer. Learning how to use tools, how to take a project from idea to completion, how to search for answers to joinery challenges also helped to create and nurture a sense of independence, confidence and a love of working with all types of tools that has benefited me throughout my life.

Shop class is not just about woodworking - it's about teaching young adults the basics involved with living on your own and the satisfaction resulting from being less dependent upon others. It also is about opening one's eyes to the wonders of how things work in our world. And finally, it is about opening your eyes to what your own true potential is, instead of just learning about what others have done.

Well said.
I graduated from a tech school in North Carolina (NC has a powerful system of tech schools modeled on the Calif system dating back into the 60's) and it changed, focused, and directed my work-life. HVAC became my sport and it played into immediate successes starting with testing into a valuable masters refrig license. One vivid memory is being required to cut and file a 2" aluminum hexagon block using only hand tools and files. The block was an after-class project requiring the display all the common screw threads along with appropriate labeling and was to be measured and graded down to a calipered thousandth. I poured my pride into that stupid block and after thinking at first that it was some make-work exercise I later understood that it was serious business. I learned tons in tech school and still lay my clean tools down on a cloth in an orderly manner no matter what the task. Tech education is a village handing down folk tools regarding electronics and steel and wood and plastics and chemistry and physics. But more, gives a hand up to younger folks in a place that allows their curiosity and pride to express themselves into growing and filing perfect aluminum blocks.