David C. Lykins
How did shop class impact your life, if at all? All through High School I took Industrial classes, Electronics, Mechanics, Drafting and Metals. Ironically, though it was offered I don't remember Wood Working being part of the curriculum I had to take and never took it in High School. At this point I truly believe it might have changed my life completely, due to my love of wood working and a "creative" side of me I didn't realize I had. But who knows? Right around my Senior year in HS I built my own guitar amp head from a kit for my electronics class, and of course I wanted a matching cabinets for the head and the speaker. So my father and I built both and they looked like they came out of Fender's factory. I believe the ONLY power tools we used was a hand drill and skill saw. Everything else was planed by hand with my great grandfathers wood working tools my father had inherited and now I have them. I'd give ANYTHING to have that 2x12 speaker cabinet back. Like an idiot I traded it many, many years ago.

Did it set you on a course for a lifetime interest in woodworking? Unfortunately "NO", it didn't as I never took Wood Working in HS.

Do you have any anecdotes about those days that you'd like to share with us? I didn't get interesting in wood working until I built my first guitar in the mid 90s from parts that I ordered or purchased locally. After the building the second guitar from parts I had this burning desire to build a guitar from scratch. So I sold some guitar and amps and purchased my wood working tools and the rest is history.

Do you think that the demise of wood-shop education bodes ill for our society? I believe the demise of ANY kind of shop type education is bad for our society and students. Because I took many shop classes in High School it has educated me on the workings of things we use everyday and has motivated me to keep learning about things that are either electrical, mechanical, structural etc., and it has opened opportunities to enjoy such wonderful hobbies such as wood working and flying RC aircraft. YES, we definitely need to keep shop in our school rooms. I feel that if we don't keep offering shop classes, we'll become an "Information ONLY" society and we'll stop producing engineers, mechanics, electricians, and many, many other technical workers our society desperately needs. My BIGGEST REGRETS are NOT getting my Mechanical Engineering degree, and NOT getting into Wood Working earlier.