<story><title>Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/06/maker_faire_and_science_education_american_kids_should_be_building_rockets_and_robots_not_taking_standardized_tests_.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krschultz</author><text>&apos;We walked into an empty room that once was the metal shop. It was perfect. I could imagine it having tools and materials and workbenches. I could imagine groups of curious kids being active, social, and mobile. &apos;&lt;p&gt;When I was in 6th grade, they let us use a spot welder and press brake. I still have the box I made out of folded sheet metal from that time. We also had to make a little container out of folded sheet metal that surrounded an egg. The metal shop teacher piled weights on everyone&apos;s in the class until the eggs broke.&lt;p&gt;In 8th grade (2001), they let us use MIG welders and the project was to make a crane with the maximum cantilever given a set of counterweights and a limited amount of 1/8&quot;x1&quot; steel. I remember the entire class standing around watching as we piled weights up until they failed spectactulary.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s not a coincidence that those are some of my (few) vivid memories of middle school. I remember being bored in a lot of classes that simply weren&apos;t challenging enough, but never in metal shop or science class.&lt;p&gt;They don&apos;t even have metal or wood shop in the middle school anymore. They barely have it in the high school. It&apos;s probably some combination of safety and budget, but can anyone imagine the school allowing basically 13 year olds to handle MIG welders anymore? It gets hot! Or sheet metal in 11 year olds hands? It&apos;s sharp!&lt;p&gt;By high school all of the best and brightest are maxing out AP classes for college applications. There is no time left for &apos;fun&apos; classes like metal shop if you aren&apos;t going to trade school. (That becomes quite apparent when you get to college and there are mechanical engineer majors who can&apos;t work a hand drill.)&lt;p&gt;If we lose all of this stuff, we are going to lose the next generation of engineers. FIRST robotics is a great program, but we need more things like it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smacktoward</author><text>Part of this is just a reflection of the changing economy. Shop classes were funded when there was a demand in our economy for people who made things. Now that we&apos;ve outsourced the making of things to China, there&apos;s no perceived need for learning how things are made anymore; they just &lt;i&gt;get made&lt;/i&gt;, somewhere out of sight, and when they break we throw them away and buy new ones.&lt;p&gt;This is a strangely infantile way for a society to live. Part of the mystique grown-ups had to me when I was a kid was that grown-ups were the ones who &lt;i&gt;knew how things worked&lt;/i&gt; -- I knew how to &lt;i&gt;break&lt;/i&gt; my toys, but only grown-ups knew how to &lt;i&gt;fix&lt;/i&gt; them. Growing up was the process of being initiated into these mysteries. That&apos;s less true today; now feels more like an age of adults striving to get back to the (blissful?) ignorance of childhood.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this feeling could just be an artifact of my being an adult now :-D</text></comment>
<story><title>Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests</title><url>http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/06/maker_faire_and_science_education_american_kids_should_be_building_rockets_and_robots_not_taking_standardized_tests_.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krschultz</author><text>&apos;We walked into an empty room that once was the metal shop. It was perfect. I could imagine it having tools and materials and workbenches. I could imagine groups of curious kids being active, social, and mobile. &apos;&lt;p&gt;When I was in 6th grade, they let us use a spot welder and press brake. I still have the box I made out of folded sheet metal from that time. We also had to make a little container out of folded sheet metal that surrounded an egg. The metal shop teacher piled weights on everyone&apos;s in the class until the eggs broke.&lt;p&gt;In 8th grade (2001), they let us use MIG welders and the project was to make a crane with the maximum cantilever given a set of counterweights and a limited amount of 1/8&quot;x1&quot; steel. I remember the entire class standing around watching as we piled weights up until they failed spectactulary.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s not a coincidence that those are some of my (few) vivid memories of middle school. I remember being bored in a lot of classes that simply weren&apos;t challenging enough, but never in metal shop or science class.&lt;p&gt;They don&apos;t even have metal or wood shop in the middle school anymore. They barely have it in the high school. It&apos;s probably some combination of safety and budget, but can anyone imagine the school allowing basically 13 year olds to handle MIG welders anymore? It gets hot! Or sheet metal in 11 year olds hands? It&apos;s sharp!&lt;p&gt;By high school all of the best and brightest are maxing out AP classes for college applications. There is no time left for &apos;fun&apos; classes like metal shop if you aren&apos;t going to trade school. (That becomes quite apparent when you get to college and there are mechanical engineer majors who can&apos;t work a hand drill.)&lt;p&gt;If we lose all of this stuff, we are going to lose the next generation of engineers. FIRST robotics is a great program, but we need more things like it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GFKjunior</author><text>My grandfather was a welder and had a workshop in the back of his house. He took pride in being able to build anything and not buy it from the store, if anything he owned ever broke he would hack it himself.&lt;p&gt;When I was a youngin, about 12, I used to watch him work for a few hours during the day then sneak back to the workshop in the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping. I would fire up the torch and start experimenting with all the scrap metals. Playing with a plasma torch at midnight with no supervision was probably very dangerous but it taught met the importance of being a builder in world of consumers.</text></comment>