{"id":5050,"date":"2009-06-01T14:52:34","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T14:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2009\/06\/do-we-need-to-bring-back-shop.html"},"modified":"2009-06-01T14:52:34","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T14:52:34","slug":"do-we-need-to-bring-back-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/06\/do-we-need-to-bring-back-shop.html","title":{"rendered":"Do we need to bring back shop classes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I coached high school basketball during the 90s. During that time I had many conversations with high school teachers, one of them had to do with the gradual elimination of shop classes. The big reason I heard was that, by eliminating shop classes, students could choose only “academic” courses and this elevated the scores and ratings of local high schools. Some of the high school teachers were dead-set against the elimination of shop classes. This recent NY Times deserves discussion here at the Jesus Creed blog — what are the implications of no shop classes? What are students “not” learning? What is impact on society and neighborhoods and families?<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Shop.jpg\"<\/span>From the NYTimes<\/a> (not from SMcKnight):<\/p>\n

\n The television show<\/span> “Deadliest Catch”
\ndepicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty
\nJobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who
\ninseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows
\nmust lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material
\nreality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that
\nfeels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it
\ndifficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly
\nhave you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of
\ncause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience
\nof individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and
\nsimilar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with
\nwhich many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.<\/p>\n

if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<!–
\ndocument.write('\"TwitThis\"<\/a>‘);
\n\/\/–><\/p>\n

Is there a more “real” alternative (short of inseminating turkeys)?<\/p>\n

High-school
\nshop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators
\nprepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the
\nlast 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then
\nto the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow
\ntake leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information
\neconomy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often
\nfeels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever,
\nsomebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets,
\nbuild our houses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I coached high school basketball during the 90s. During that time I had many conversations with high school teachers, one of them had to do with the gradual elimination of shop classes. The big reason I heard was that, by eliminating shop classes, students could choose only “academic” courses and this elevated the scores and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\nDo we need to bring back shop classes? - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/06\/do-we-need-to-bring-back-shop.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do we need to bring back shop classes? - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I coached high school basketball during the 90s. 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