What Ever Happened to Shop Class ?

With the Budget vote having passed like a Superbowl Goodyear Blimp, many EM residents seem very pleased with the allocations and minimal increases and the extreme team effort used to create our newly approved expenditure plan.

Many of my  neighbors voiced their opinions and emphasized the overall importance of school activities like sports, music and art at various meetings and gatherings (and not just places that host a great happy hour).

They verbalized their feelings on the subject in local papers, online information sites, forums and blogs. In the local Watering Hole with the holes in the wall, the conversation turned to our youth in the inner city educational gulags of yesteryear.

There have been many changes over the years. Twenty years ago many New York and Long Island schools had thriving programs that would be taboo in today’s day and age. Believe it or not, Long Island High Schools had rifle marksmanship teams. Could you imagine that in 2011?

They have outlawed gym programs like Dodgeball, Wiffleball and “Steal the Bacon” as dangerous, combative and harmful and replaced them with kindler and gentler square dancing and yoga.   

One basic question that  kept coming up, “Whatever happened to Shop Class?”

Now I understand the need for focus on  the 3 R’s . That it is as inspiring as a Vince Lombardi speech to hear guest orator, Councilman Gary Hudes recite Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” to our East Meadow students.  

And that in my day NO ONE would flub the words to our National Anthem like Christina “that female song expert on The Voice” Aguilera did at the Superbowl! But what about kids that excel to work with their hands as well as their cranium full of grey matter. EMHS does have Woodworking and Clarke HS has Automotive classes, but what about  the “Industrial Arts”  like metal, plastics, glass and other shop classes?

I do understand that with the growth of technology since “rotary telephones,” that printing and typing have blossomed into graphics, photography, videography, computer arts, engineering, robotics and advanced time travel. But what our group of “Boilermaker Boys” wondered is why should kids go to Boces learn about things like Electrical, Plumbing, Tiling, etc?

There was a time that guys looked forward to building things that were mechanical as well as ones with diodes and resistors. There was a time that school taught you how to repair a screen door or change a toilet float instead of calling 911 or Googling  “Handy Andy- Free handyman advice.”  

Please do not get me wrong, our budget allows  East Meadow to provide a great, well-rounded education...with a unique plethora (SAT Word-heehee) of class choices like American sign language, psychology and sports marketing that are not available at other schools. And the school superintendent’s staff expanding these choices in the growing fields like video game programming and GPS mapping is great.

However, not teaching ALL our  kids to balance a checkbook, do a load of laundry, change a flat tire, replace a wall outlet, hang a 16x20 framed picture, make change without the cash register prompts or build a bookcase is as true an injustice as showing a picture of Jets Coach Rex Ryan’s mother-in-law to stop a child's hiccups.

I wonder what a 30 year old birdhouse will go for on ebay?