6 ms·

I was very fortunate to be in middle school (ages 11 - 13) in the late 60s when shop classes were still going strong. Here's what I recall of our curriculum: 6

• WillAdams 2y ago
  The best advice I ever got (after my Kindergarten teacher telling me, "Now young man, you should _never_ pass up the chance to go to the bathroom.") was my shop teacher advising: >Before hitting the switch on a power tool, slowly count to 10 under your breath to yourself on your fingers, visualizing all the forces involved and planning out the entirety of your movement and how you will be moving the stock/tool, and considering what might go wrong and the results thereof and what will protect you (all guards should be in place and all suitable PPE worn) or where you should be positioned so as to avoid any potential projectile, reminding yourself that you want to be able to repeat that count in the same way when the tool is switched off. Sawstop wouldn't have a business model if all tablesaw accidents were tried by a jury of shop teachers.
  • Xfx7028 2y ago
    I don't get that advice from the kindergarten teacher. Can you explain please?
    • spirotot 2y ago
      Think before you act.
      • tmn 2y ago
        Take your by own advice ;) Don’t pass up a chance to pee is the advice in question. Which I’d equate to; Better safe than sorry
    • mystified5016 2y ago
      If something unexpected happens and your saw kicks a board back at you, you don't want to piss yourself as well as screaming
    • dghlsakjg 2y ago
      Its simpler than you think: No one really regrets going to the bathroom when it isn't urgent. Plenty of people regret waiting until it gets urgent.
      • Enginerrrd 2y ago
        Reminds me of when I interned as a medic. My instructor gave me a list of rules: Walk, don't run. Never trust the public in a vehicle. Always check the rigging yourself before rapelling down the embankment. Sleep when you're tired. Eat when you're hungry. And never, I repeat, NEVER wait to pee. When you live in a world where you may have to scramble at any moment, and you work 72 hour shifts, you can't take simple things for granted. We might go from chilling on base to not being back for 15+ hours.
        • ljf 2y ago
          I remember my biology teacher telling me of the dangers of being a car crash with a full bladder - yet another reason to go.
    • II2II 2y ago
      A lot of young children will have accidents because they forget, or don't want, to go to the washroom. That's true even if it is urgent. (They either don't know what their body is telling them, or they are fearful of washrooms, or they are simply having too much fun to be bothered by what their body is telling them.)
  • analog31 2y ago
    I have a similar habit: Before applying power, I manually turn the blade (or workpiece on the lathe) through one full rotation. I also think my way through the entire cut, including where my body and hands will be, and what I'll do if something goes wrong. I've also mentored younger colleagues. I think there's a problem with shop safety, which is related to computer programming: Some people are able to learn it, and others just aren't. There's a certain situational awareness that you have to develop -- a sixth sense for when something is unsafe, that goes beyond just remembering all of the rules. There's also an intuition that you develop, like in programming, of being able to "think like the machine." Like it or not, there are people who shouldn't be in the shop.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • theshrike79 2y ago
      Pattern recognition. Some people have and some don't. It's also situational for some people. I had a friend who could immediately see patterns in fighting games, after a few plays they'd immediately know how the CPU would react in certain situations. I could never. I can see patterns in code, how it relates to other code and in the processes surrounding it, especially when I'm not taking my ADD meds. It's a superpower when shit's on fire and needs to be handled fast. Similarly some people form this "sixth sense" situational awareness for physical tools and safety. They'll just look at a worksite and "feel" something is off. Or they pick up a tool and immediately know something is off - something in the balance or how it feels in the hand, or maybe it made a noise it's not supposed to.
      • simonbarker87 2y ago
        I ran a small light plastic assembly factory years ago and within 20 minutes of a new person starting I could tell if they could, what I call, “think in 3D” if they couldn’t they would never meet the standard we needed and I’d sadly have to fail their trial at the end of the first day - about 30% of people fell in to this category.
  • ggm 2y ago
    I touched what I thought was a stationary wheel on a lathe as a child. it was of course under flouro tube lighting: it was synced to the tube, the strobe effect made it look stationary. I've never forgotten it. The guy owning the lathe made some short, sharp observations. But I also suspect he sweated blood later on. Explaining his role in this had I lost a finger or worse would have been nasty
    • Aardwolf 2y ago
      > it was synced to the tube, the strobe effect made it look stationary. Why is it synced like that? Seems dangerous, and I don't know much about lathes but lighting synchronization doesn't seem something that would affect the mechanical parts being processed :)
      • sevensor 2y ago
        Sounds accidental, but might be interesting to be able to see the workpiece as if stationary, while it’s turning at 1800rpm. Everything looks smooth under ordinary lighting.
      • moring 2y ago
        Layman's guess: Both were synced to the mains frequency.
        • ggm 2y ago
          This
      • lelanthran 2y ago
        > Why is it synced like that? Synced to the AC mains or a multiple thereof.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    My high school woodshop teacher simply showed us his short finger. Lost in a table saw. We got the message.
  • conk 2y ago
    There are enough shop teachers out there with missing digits to prove this statement is not true.
    • WillAdams 2y ago
      How many of them sued someone else with the assistance of a personal injury lawyer?
• prpl 2y ago
  i went to middle school starting in ‘98 (7th grade). I used a hand saw, glass cutter, sandblaster, and drill press. That was just a quarter. The second quarter we had home-ec. Stitched and baked and maybe something else. In shop I made a book shelf thing and a nameplate (sandblasted mirror) In 9th grade I used a jointer and a band saw, built deep bookshelf out of poplar. In 10th grade I built a night stand (used shaper, Joiner, jointer, etc..) The table saw was off limits in every class I remember, but most the other things were usable. With saw stops available, I think that reduces liability quite a bit. Also in high school I did drafting and cad (2D and 3D). Anyway, that was across 3 school districts in two states, and was as recent as 2003 - so it’s not like shop/industrial arts stopped being a thing 40 years ago.
  • fn-mote 2y ago
    > it’s not like shop/industrial arts stopped being a thing 40 years ago. Unfortunately, I live near two school districts - one in a major metropolitan area in the US - which have closed down shop classes in the name of preparing students for college instead of work in the trades. It is hard to undo those decisions. Fortunately some local “industrial arts” departments continue to thrive.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
      Yep. I remember going to one of my kids' concerts about 12 years ago and the guest musician mentioning how happy he was to be there because so many schools were closing their Music programs. Same thing is happening to shop class. At least here in a rural district, there's more pressure to keep it going since a lot of what the students learn has immediate use (or they already learned it at home).
• asn007 2y ago
  While I was lucky to have shop classes in my school, this curriculum makes me extremely jealous, to be honest. We didn't have neither welding, nor forging, nor working with fiberglass composites nor "big" projects, had to learn it all by myself. Still, those classes taught me the basics of actually doing something with my own hands, which is pretty important. I also remember that we were trusted to behave like adults in front of heavy machinery like routers, circular saws and lathes. No incidents whatsoever aside from minor cuts, which is normal. We were genuinely interested and behaved accordingly, nobody wanted to get hurt and / or get kicked out of the class P.S. Not sure of how it works in the US, but we also had "shop classes for girls". The curriculum for those consisted of the basics of cooking, baking and working with fabrics (starting from sewing two pieces together in grade 5 and gradually evolving to designing and sewing clothing for yourself by grade 9). Though, in my opinion, those things shall be taught to everyone, not just girls
  • dlgeek 2y ago
    The latter class would have been called "Home Economics" ("HomeEc") back in the day.
    • skinkestek 2y ago
      Both these (sløyd /woodworking, heimekunnskap/cooking and home economics) were mandatory for everyone in Norway back in the nineties(although to be fair shop time was limited to wood, we weren't allowed to use metal lathes etc anymore), as was sewing (both with hand and machines). I'm still thankful because of all the stuff I can relatively easy cook, fix or make thanks to those few hours in school. (I'd also say they made for extremely welcome breaks between boring stuff in other subjects and being bullied during breaks.)
      • theshrike79 2y ago
        Still mandatory in Finland. They have "soft materials" (fabric, sewing, knitting) and "hard materials" (wood, metal working, 3d-printing etc). In upper classes they have cooking and more of the same.
• SoftTalker 2y ago
  Did a lot of the same in middle school in the late 1970s. Less of the home repair stuff, and no welding or machining. We used hand tools and small power tools (hand-held drills and sanders), and drill press and scroll saws. Only the teacher could use the table saw, planer, and jointer. One kid made a muzzle-loading rifle as his project. Can only imagine the hue and cry that would cause today.
  • II2II 2y ago
    I was in middle school in the 1990's, in Canada so the legal bit wouldn't be all that different from the US. We had welding, machining, and all sorts of power tools. That said, the teacher used their discretion while deciding who could use the more dangerous tools and supervised their use carefully.
    • thijson 2y ago
      Attended an elementary school in Canada in the 80's. There was a shop trailer that went from school to school. It had all the wood working tools like band saw, or drill press. My parents still have some of the items I made in it.
• tkgally 2y ago
  I entered junior-high school (as it was then called) in Pasadena, California, in 1969. In seventh grade, all of the boys took four 10-week modules: electricity (make an electric motor), print shop (typesetting by hand and printing with a platen press), wood shop, and drafting (pencils and straightedges). The girls took a year of home economics; my two older sisters learned how to sew in those classes, and one made most of her own clothes when she was in high school. The next year, the classes were made co-educational, with students choosing which stream to take, but at least in that first year the gender divide remained sharp. I chose to take drafting for all of eighth grade; there was only one girl in the class. I can’t say that what I learned in those classes paid off for me directly, but I did pick up knowledge and skills that I applied indirectly in my later careers: from printshop for writing and editing work, and from drafting for learning how to use drawing and graphics software. It would been nice if I had learned how to sew and cook then, too.
  • SoftTalker 2y ago
    In middle school we could take Industrial Arts, Home Economics, and Art. Seventh graders took all three, so they were each 2/3 of a semester, with one of them broken across the semester break. In eighth grade we got to select two of the three, and they were each one semester. I took Industrial Arts and Home Economics because the Art teacher was a complete wacko who in the seventh grade class destroyed any interest I had in the subject. I am pretty sure seventh grade Industrial Arts was co-ed and everyone took it. But maybe girls had another option, I don't quite remember. In eighth grade since it was an elective, it self-selected to almost entirely boys.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    My shop classes paid off handsomely for me. I recommend taking them.
  • rvense 2y ago
    A basic education should include a lot of stuff you never use. If you're not exposed to things that don't interest you, how are you going to find the ones that do?
  • kstrauser 2y ago
• nicoburns 2y ago
  I didn't have access to heavy machinery or welders until high school (14-18), but I was very fortunate to go to a high-school that taught most of the above while I was there in the late 2000s. The "product design" class (which was really either woodworking or metalworking depending on which stream you ended up in) was definitely my favourite class, and I think the most useful for later life too.
• rkagerer 2y ago
  Wow, I wish I'd had this. Closest I got was building theatre sets. But they were some awesome sets, with huge moving parts counterweighted via airline cable and sandbags, and we conceived and designed it all from scratch under very little supervision. Come to think of it I'm sure it wouldn't fly these days (I remember a substitute teacher walking into the gym flabbergasted at one point when I was climbing in the rafters drilling anchor holes for pulleys... the regular guy knew well enough when to be present and when to stay away).
• bsder 2y ago
  > In today's world, parents (and lawyers) might find it unsafe for boys (very few girls elected to take these classes) but in seven years of shop, I only recall one serious accident involving the loss of a finger tip. A lot of the danger can be ameliorated by using CNC machines instead of circular saws and hand lathes. Standing 3-6 feet away from the machine when something goes wrong is way better than being 3-6 inches away. Gantry CNC machines are superior to table saws for almost all sheet goods, anyway. Sure, the jointer is still kind of dangerous. However, it has a very specialized function and normally you can keep your hands safely away from the blades with various push mechanisms.
• hlehmann 2y ago
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• pjmlp 2y ago
  Similar experience in Portugal, between 10 and 18, that is why when I got into university already had a couple of years experience in metal and woodwork, electricity, and computing in general, enough to get a job if my application had fall through.
• bwanab 2y ago
  My step-father taught shop for over 30 years at the 7th-9th grade level using all the tools you mention. I can't recall a single serious accident under his watch. Not to mention, at his funeral, you'd be shocked at how many of his former students came to pay their respects. Many talked about how it had changed their lives irrespective of the fields they worked in as adults. Further not to mention, I'm sitting next to two Appalachian dulcimers that were among the 100s he built in the 70s and 80s.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    My old man taught shop at the high school level for a similar amount of time, and (even though I am admittedly biased) I can say that he was measurably the most beloved teacher in the school. To this day, he gets messages from former students who are now successful tradesmen, thanking him for getting them on the right path.