ANAHEIM : Science for Art’s Sake Is ‘the Future’

When students make a replica of a fish or create other artwork in Brookhurst Junior High School’s industrial arts program, they are as likely to use a computer as a traditional block of wood.

The move away from metal and wood and toward the keyboard and the mouse is part of a nationwide trend, school officials say, that is shifting such computer courses as desktop publishing, computer-assisted drafting and telecommunications into traditional junior high industrial arts curricula. Officials are spending thousands of dollars to accelerate the transition.

“It’s the future,” said Brookhurst Principal Richard M. Lodyga, whose school has spent more than $38,000 on computers for industrial arts programs, with more equipment on the way. “It is vital that students have computer knowledge and can relate that to industry.”

Bruce Armstrong, an industrial arts teacher who is designing many of the school’s curriculum changes, said it won’t be too many years before 95% of new jobs require computer or technical expertise that will necessitate at least two years of post-high school training.

To be prepared, he said, today’s students need to begin understanding advanced technology as early as possible.

At Brookhurst, students are given one- or two-week tastes of the new industrial arts. When they reach high school the programs become more specific, particularly in the 11th and 12th grades, Armstrong said.

“What we’re about at the junior high stage is exploration,” Armstrong said. “We want the students to look at the careers that are going to be out there, find out what they’re interested in and to understand what kind of training they need to have to do that job.”

Brookhurst’s industrial arts classrooms include computers for desktop publishing and a robotic arm that students can program. Other equipment, such as computer programs that will teach engineering, is on order or is part of future plans.

The stumbling block is money. State grants have helped pay for past purchases and will be needed in the future, administrators said, and some computers have been donated.

“What would be really nice is if some of these companies that have laid off workers would donate their now-extra computer equipment to the schools,” Armstrong said. “We could put them to work.”

In one seventh-grade class on Wednesday, Armstrong assisted students as they learned desktop publishing. It was their third day in the five-day unit, and teams of two were writing and designing fictional neighborhood newspapers.

Eric Hare, 12, was designing an advertisement for a monster truck show while talking about how the computer knowledge he is learning now will assist him in his goal to become a stuntman.

“I would take a portable computer with me on the set and I would design a program that would show me how to fall and do it safe,” Eric said.

Elizabeth Papin and Jessica Perez, both 12, were finishing illustrations to decorate their news stories about an intergalactic invasion of rabbit people and tryouts for the Lakers and their cheerleaders.

“This will help us get jobs because when we get older everything will be done by computer,” Elizabeth said.

But does all of this technology mean that mothers of the future will never receive an odd-shaped mahogany fish?

“I hope not,” Armstrong said. “I hope there will always be a place for the traditional.”