College-bound kids should be taking those classes too. I saw the same thing when I was in high school: they treated things like auto shop as things that colleg

College-bound kids should be taking those classes too. I saw the same thing when I was in high school: they treated things like auto shop as things that college-bound kids shouldn't be doing. So you wind up with college kids who have absolutely no hands-on ability and no understanding of the machines that enable their lives, and then these kids go into engineering school and have no idea how to actually build things that really work. A machinist should not know more about metals properties and how to make things out of metal than a mechanical engineer. The machinist should know more about the particulars of operating a particular machine tool, since he uses it every day, but the mechanical engineer should know more about how to actually make physical things that work, and not just theory. So a class in machining, IMO, is absolutely essential for a ME major. Same thing for EEs and electricians; if a EE can't use hands-on skills to troubleshoot his design, he's a failure of a EE.