Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey
When I taught school (70's) my system had bowed to the prevailing winds and sent most (but not all) of its "trade" courses to the county Vo-Tech [vocational-technical] school.

My own kids never got the chance to take a "shop" class because there were none offered; the shops had long since been converted to core-subject classrooms. I therefore had to take over what used to be the schools' job, teaching my kids which way to turn a screw to get it to hold something.

This country was founded by a bunch of self-reliant farmers [no, George didn't make his own wooden teeth!] and the ethic of personal responsibility and sweat equity built the U.S. into the position it held on the world stage. It has been imitated, but never equaled, as our Fathers, Grandmothers, and ancestors were intimately engaged and invested in their society and culture.

There has since been created a disconnect between Americans and their environment. Terms like "globalization" and "macro-economic monetization" are floated before our eyes to justify a culture of consumerism and the loss of the D.I.Y. ethos that built this country into the greatest economic engine and egalitarian society the planet has ever known. We have since been sold a bill of goods to cast aside self reliance in favor of dependency on others. Why? Clearly so we can be milked for the treasure created by our forefathers.

The people on this web forum have turned aside from the New Norm [NOT him] and committed to maintain, to larger and lesser degree, the mindset that made our country strong. This is NOT a political point of view, but rather a personal one. Liberal or conservative, Dem or Repub, are all irrelevant here. It is the "hands-on" quality of the American Culture that has created what we have today. The loss, perhaps the misguided discarding, of teaching self-reliance to our children through courses like shop and trades training, will, I suspect, ultimately result in a dilution of the American ethic and an irreplaceable loss of the abilities that enabled the United States to become the shining example of hope and opportunity to the rest of the damn planet that it is.

So, Ellis, does that answer your question?