No, we'd still have shop classes if we still saw a need for lots of factory workers. What we have instead is a school system that's designed from the ground up

No, we'd still have shop classes if we still saw a need for lots of factory workers. What we have instead is a school system that's designed from the ground up for turning out lots of factory workers (and farmers, clerks, and homemakers) trying to keep up with the times, and failing. ETA: On reflection I suspect many here won't see it that way. It's worth pointing out that, even in the public system, there are different schools, and different subjects, for kids whom the system identifies as "smart", than for those whom it does not. The former will generally have ample opportunities to learn about computers and programming whether it's officially sanctioned or not, and indeed will probably do so more successfully if it isn't, because being required to do it makes it feel less like fun. The latter will have to learn that kind of thing on their own, if they're inclined to it, because the system isn't going to trouble itself, the attitude being that anything more complicated than making change and operating a point-of-sale system is almost certain to be wasted on them anyway, and trying to impart complexities to them will only leave them bored and frustrated anyway. (This is in fact true, in a superficial sense, but it has nothing to do with their ability to cope with complexity, and everything to do with the way it'd be put to them. See also: the utter, abject incompetence with which almost all high-school-level mathematics is taught.) It works this way because it was explicitly designed to work this way by people who genuinely believed in the progressive utopia, where in exchange for there being a specific and fitting place for everyone, everyone was trimmed and pared down to fit a specific place. (See also: Aldous Huxley. Why do you think he went to the trouble of writing a book-length satire of this kind of thinking? Just for the hell of it?) Unfortunately, their design was fundamentally flawed, and they therefore bequeathed to us a system which cannot possibly bear up under its own weight. Fortunately, their design was fundamentally flawed, so the system they inflicted upon us will inevitably collapse and make way for something new which might turn out to be better, not least because it could hardly be worse.