In U.S. schools shop class has been sacrificed to the Moloch of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Ninety percent of shop classes have been eliminated with the exception of a few robotics programs. The result, ironically, is STEM graduates so out of touch with the physical world that they design things impossible to build.
Image: Maplewoodworking
Maplewoodshop seeks to reverse this trend with an innovative woodworking program that trains teachers to integrate hand tool woodworking into their lessons plans. Teachers who graduate from Maplewoodshop’s training get a rolling box containing all the tools they need to teach woodworking classes in any room. Maplewoodshop is a great example of not letting perfection be the enemy of the good: we’re not going to get shop classes back any time soon but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do something.
You can listen to an interview with Mike Schloff, founder of MapleWoodShop here.
Support Root Simple
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a “knowledge worker,” based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.
“The result, ironically, is STEM graduates so out of touch with the physical world that they design things impossible to build.”
This is nothing new. The husband is an industrial construction electrician and since forever he’s seen stuff on blueprints, designed by architects and engineers, which simply will not work in real life. He says it’s almost as if the guys doing the designing have never been inside a building and have never opened a code book. The trades workers just have to create a work-around.
I still have very fond memories of my high school wood and metal shop teacher Mr. Zambella decades after I left school. He taught me how to make wooden shelves and a steel garden shovel from scratch. But more importantly he taught me all the little skills along the way that are applicable to a hundred other similar tasks.