I took Electric Shop in Jr. High, and I took Print Shop, Metal Shop, Auto Shop, and Ceramics in High School. I did well in them all, especially Print Shop, where I Set Type and ran the Press. Harold
We were required to take shop in ninth grade. It was split into, as I remember it: metal shop, wood shop, and leatherworking. They weren't equal divisions though, as we had only a few weeks of leatherworking, and wood shop was longer than metal shop. The school offered other shop classes, such as auto shop, but they weren't required and I didn't sign up for any of them. The shop teacher pretty much ignored those of us who weren't particularly interested in learning anything, and gave us a passing grade so that he wouldn't be stuck with us for another year. I welded some pieces of metal into a box in metal shop, I made a breadboard in wood shop, and a belt in leatherworking.
There was no choice. Alternating with theoretical training every two weeks we had to spend a day in a mechanical workshop where we had to file a workpiece or build something like a deadbolt.
Wood shop and metal shop. What you built you could take home. I have my brother's stool that he built since he did not want it. I guess he wasn't proud of it.
Electric shop and split wood/metal semester, made a knife from a file in metal shop still have it, the handle in wood shop
I took wood shop in 7th or 8th grade. I did most of that stuff at a friend's house. His dad had a nice workshop in his basement and a welding rig in the garage. I was never that good at it, but my friend was. I've since improved my woodworking skills.
Although I didn't at the time, I now belive they should be teaching more shop-type classes in school, so that everyone doesn't grow up to be helpless like I am sometimes, when it comes to fixing something around the house.
I had a friend who bought a house in his early 30s. Before then he had always lived in apartments. It's funny the things you pick up along the way that are totally foreign to those who are used to calling the maintenance man. I don't even recall my father calling a plumber or an electrician.
My dad did his own plumbing and electrical work. Most people in the area, I think, either did whatever needed to be done or asked for help from someone else who knew how to do it. My dad would shoe horses for people, so he might call on them to do something that they have more expertise at. Only wealthy people, which there weren't very many of, called professionals for home maintenance or home improvement work. In fact, the first time I saw a doctor was when I needed a physical in order to work on the staff of a Boy Scout camp when I was thirteen. Parents would diagnose and treat such things as the flu, measles, mumps, and things that people panic over today.
I took auto shop in high school, I have always been interested in cars and motorcycles, so I loved it. We worked on the teachers vehicles at the end of the semester (child labour I think). In grade 8 I took wood working, our project for one of the segments was to build a gun rack. In that same year, I took Hunter Training, where we learned about hunting, tracking, animal indentification, etc. Being from an oil rich province in Canada, we also went on several field trips to oil rigs. Those were the days!
Exactly. Of course, that might cause us to give pause at some of the legacy work that was done by those whose primary skill was "Can't afford a professional." The guy who owned my 600 ft² home I lived in for so long had 3 kids, so he moved the water heater to the crawl space to make room for humans and closets. The crawl was 2' tall and the water heater was 4' tall, so he dug a 2' hole in the dirt and dropped it in. Eventually it rusted through and made a sauna under the house.
Nope, no shop classes but like others, a lot of OJT. My dad’s one single most important thing I learned from him was “if ya can’t do it then ya have to pay someone else to do it” so I had to learn from early on how to do things on my own. I do wish though, that I had been able to take up a welding class in high school. My dad taught me how to build a building from the ground up including some really fine cabinet building but no welding even though he used to teach it to paying students. At this point in my life I’m trying to teach myself on some small projects and frankly, my welding still sucks.
Welding was included in our metal shop but we were just taught how to tack things together. No one really got enough time on the welder to become proficient at it. I later took a welding course at a community college.
They offered Shop Classes but I took all Academic Classes. Unfortunately I am not Mr, Handyman and barely know a hammer from a saw.
My high school offered 3 types courses. Auto mechanics, business, or college prep. Since I knew that I'm clumsy as ..... I opted for college prep which turned out well for since after my first year at Northeastern University in Boston, I was sent to a place where I started writing computer programs in 1958