This might well trigger a few people but in the interests of fairness here we go...
Routinely teaching students now things that you learned at that age is in general, a dead-end. It would be like insisting they all used log tables and slide rules, abacuses and slate tablets. Very relavent at the time, but today, perhaps a touch less. Are students now taught how to use hand tools, lathes, bandsaws, 3-axis manual milling machines etc... yes actually. Perhaps not in every establishment, but they really are in some places, in those same places they are also taught computer aided design and modern manufacturing methods, why? Because that’s how things are made now, like your car, the concrete and bricks in your house and the computer you are reading this on. Is there a mountain of paperwork to do to enable this, yes, obviously, because taking a risk with someone else’s child is not something to be taken lightly, one slip with a Stanley knife could cause enough soft tissue damage to ruin someone’s fine motor skills for the next 80-years, if it happened and the establishment said “we didn’t think it mattered because in our day we did it all the time”, I can’t imagine that being viewed too well and rightly so. Many of us have seen what a large machine can do to people too, so the stakes are much higher still, but teaching students how to work safely around machines needs to be done and it really is still.
I do agree students need to have a balanced education and I do find it odd that things like cooking are taught at schools... isn’t that something for the parents? Well, maybe, but everyone’s got different parents. I, like many people here was brought up with tools and so naturally I found the level I was taught at school somewhat basic, for others they had never even seen a saw. You also don’t need long to teach someone how to use a saw in at least a basic way at any stage of their life, the same cannot be said for the fundamentals of language, maths and physics which will be of much more benefit to the individual and society than producing classes full of expert spoon carvers who can’t add up, though of course no sane person would ever propose such a thing, as we all prefer our computer designed, machine made, metallurgically designed metal spoons.
Not all kids are going to be interested in making physical things, the world is changing, whilst we still need those things, we also need the future and it may not be made the old fashioned way.
A
