Carol
Not Ray, but having taught woodshop in a public school, I can cite a few. Shops are hard to fund in a public school environment. Everybody has an opinion and shops are nowhere near the top of the heap priority-wise. Shops have a bad rap as being the dumping ground of unmotivated and troublesome students. Little respect is given to shop teachers and their methodology by the rest of the system. Bad hires and little constructive and accountable administrative oversight doesn't help. Then there is the cost of equipment, upgraded equipment to keep up with the outside world, cost of equipment maintenance, cost of consumables like cutters students don't pay for, and, the biggie, liability. Their is one other biggie we fought every year. The bean counters measured costs in terms of square feet per student. An English class room or a computer lab have a low ratio. Shops have the largest one in the system. They always griped about the space we took up on campus.

Bottom line, there are only so many public school dollars. They go to where the wheels squeak the loudest. The squeaky wheels know how to punch the public's buttons and create a perception of value - and dis-value!

The priority of the shop class in schools has to be to prepare students for a life path, with an emphasis on how other classes in the curriculum mesh, like math and art. Math for obvious reasons and art for spatial skills. There is a place for vo-tech schools and that is where we ought to be placing our support, verbally and monetarily.

Training programs from industry are hard to come by. There is little funding there as well. That would include unions. Leaving tech training for trade skills to the big box stores results in shoddy construction and incompetent repair personal who only know how to replace all together as opposed to repair. Think we haven't already experienced that in our own lives?

OK, Ray, your turn.