[TheForge] Industrial arts (personal thoughts and experiences)

[Phlip]

Shannell wrote:

> Thats a fantastic idea, I have seen similar but lower key ideas in my
> education history (as a pupil) but something like that would be the key to
> wake a lot of the slumbering minds who think school is a joke and those who
> enjoy school will do even better.
>
>  > How about a
> > class project where students design and then BUILD a bridge?  The
> > history teacher could do a week or two of lessons into the history
> > of bridges and how they have impacted human events.  The science
> > teacher can speak of the physics behind the various static structures.
> > The math teacher can address the static calulations, and perhaps
> > with an advanced class, the dynamics.  A teacher of literature
> > could easily occupy a semester with literary references to bridges
> > and students could write about them.  And in shop, the students
> > learn how to take all that good theory and put it into practice.

Actually, that's how I was taught in grade school. It was a small (less than 30
students total, grades 1-8th) private boarding school in New Hampshire, and for
one of our science blocks, we were presented with a couple of different bridge
structures, (suspension, and forget the name of the other one- looked like what
you'd make with an erector set), made models of them, then went out in the
woods and built them over a couple of streams. Also studied beaver dams, then
went and saw a couple, and during our history class, while we were studying
Aku-Aku and the pyramids, went out to the front yard and raised and moved a
couple of those stone monoliths that New England yards used to have so many of,
using the theorized techniques as they'd been described. Also built our own
kayaks..... but I digress.

When I went on to High School, it was a private girls boarding school, college
prep type, and everything we did was rather dry and academic- I really think
the girls would have benefitted from some of the experiences I had had, rather
than showing off their Gucci loafers, or whatever.

Several years later, I built my mother a shed for her new house, and she wanted
to know what my old principal, Miss Lurton would have thought. I told her to
ask her, and she did. Miss Lurton thought it was great, but also wondered where
I'd picked up those skills ;-)

I've been formally educated in a lot of places, and under a lot of
circumstances, and I really think that shop and home ec type classes should be
taught to all, along with the academic necessities for college. I think it
would make us all well-rounded citizens.

But then, who am I?

Phlip