More Schools Are Closing Up Shop

Ian Gordon might be the most obscure gold medalist and national champion of any contest, event or competition in the country.

Not everyone, after all, follows the world of precision machining or, frankly, even knows what it is. But to those in the know, Gordon is a star.

With the dexterity of a neurosurgeon, the 19-year-old Costa Mesa high school senior can fashion a piece of metal to within half a hair’s breadth--one of several skills that have earned him numerous awards. This month, he won a gold medal in a statewide competition sponsored by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving education in the trades.

But Gordon is also a dying breed. At a time when industrial jobs paying skilled workers $60,000 to $80,000 yearly are in rapid creation, fewer and fewer high school students are being trained to fill them.

The problem is that “shop” is gone.

High school auto shop, metalworking, woodworking, printing and drafting were once the domain of kids nobody expected to go to college. They couldn’t seem to learn physics from a blackboard, but they could apply the theorems to the workings of a car and make it purr like a kitten.

Several educational trends are responsible for shuttering the shops, but the one most often blamed by industry experts is the reversal of society’s expectations. Now, it seems, everyone is expected to go to college.

“The president says we’re going to give the opportunity for every kid to go to college,” said George Morales, the chief financial officer of a small aerospace company and a board member of the vocational club. “But 100% are not going to go, and we’re cutting back on programs that help them. We’ve shifted gears into college, college, college--and folks in education are missing the boat.”

His sentiments are echoed by many in business and industry and are validated by a yearlong study commissioned by the state Department of Education.

The report, issued by the 35-member Task Force on Industrial and Technology Education, calls for a halt to the hemorrhaging of industrial education.

“There will be essentially no programs remaining in the state” within six years if the trend is left unchecked, the task force reported. “No teachers will be entering the job market for technical education programs. No students will be receiving any technical education, technical career exploration or technical job skills in the public education system.”

According to the report, of 851 high schools in the state, fewer than 40 still have metalworking programs and about 300 still have drafting programs. Automotive programs have held on better but are still falling off. About 15 years ago the state had almost 900 automotive classes; now it has 555.

Reform in Educational Philosophy Required

What should be done? The task force asks the state Legislature to forbid school districts to shut down their industrial education classes with few exceptions and to beef up college programs for teachers, among other recommendations.

But any renaissance of industrial education in California will require a reversal of current spending and instructional philosophies.

The programs are expensive, and task force members say it will take an initial $250 million to bring high schools back to square one.

Also, as teachers left to pursue more lucrative jobs in industry or to retire, they often were not replaced. Now a severe shortage of industrial education teachers means that even school districts attempting to hang onto their programs often have no one to teach them.

At the college level, only Cal State Los Angeles has continued to graduate credentialed industrial education teachers in the state. Others California colleges offer some courses, but currently a mere 40 students in the state are slated to become industrial education teachers.

“I’ve needed teachers in automotive, wood, plastics--everything,” said Art Rosenberg, vocational education supervisor for the Garden Grove Unified School District.

Like many school districts, Garden Grove has held onto some programs while phasing out others.

“At the high school level, where once there would’ve been auto, wood class, electronics, drafting class . . . many of those programs now are weight rooms, dance classes or something else,” Rosenberg said.

In automotive education alone, 140 high school programs statewide languish without permanent teachers.

“We are fast losing the ability to teach young people how to make a living using their hands, and if we’re going to have automotive programs at all, we’re going to have to get our teachers out of the trades and teach them how to teach,” said Quentin Swan of the state Department of Education’s automotive trade and industry committee.

All of which is not to say that there are no good programs left. There are many--just far fewer than needed to supply industry needs.

Mission Viejo High School has eliminated metalworking and electronics programs, but its automotive program is touted by state officials as one of the best.

Teacher Ken Welsh says his program benefits, in part, from the natural interest many teens have in cars, but also his close ties to the industry and a steady flow of equipment have kept the brunt of an expensive program from falling on the school district.

“We get great local support--I’ve got 12 late-model cars for the kids to work on,” Welsh said.

Some vocational-ed advocates further complain that existing high school programs have moved away from hands-on machine work to computer-driven laboratories that give students more of a theoretical taste of the work than actual skills.

For example, students might learn about robotics for several weeks, then move on to laser technology or wind-tunnel experimentation. The idea is not to make the students expert at any one thing but to whet their interest in a variety of fields.

‘Technical Literacy’ Seen as Life Skill

Santa Ana schools have found another way to foster vocational training. The district has forged relationships with area businesses and relies on mentoring and internship programs to provide students with workplace experience. For hands-on training it does offer some classes but relies heavily on the regional occupational program.

To purists, that is not good enough.

John Chocholak, president of the Manufacturing Technology Teachers’ Assn. and a member of the state task force, is convinced that no student should leave high school without knowing how to use a torque wrench. He thinks of it as technical literacy.

“These people who run the school system are well meaning,” he said, “but they have the expectation that math, science and English in great quantities, along with the performing arts, are all everyone ever needs to get along in life--and that’s not true.”

Some kids need to put their hands on things, rip them apart, put them together again and build something.

Because programs at the high school level have been scaled back over the years, many students like Gordon who love working with their hands take courses at regional occupational programs and community colleges and participate in the vocational club contests.

The yearly--and scarily intense--competition attracts the most passionate in a wide variety of trades, including hairdressing and catering.

At this year’s event, machinists spoke lovingly of creating durable goods that last through the ages. Woodworking students admitted that their material is softer stuff--but ah, the artistry of it.

The young competitors, some in ties and others sporting body piercings, took written tests on geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (the precision planning and measuring required for manufacture), trigonometry, blueprint reading and machine computer programming--all for the fun of it.

To Gordon, for example, there’s nothing like the thrill of watching a lathe at work.

“I love to watch the form of the chips coming off,” the Monte Vista High School student said, “how they spit off at high speeds and hit the machine shields, making a lot of noise, while the dial on the machine is going up to 5,000 pounds on the tip of the cutting tool.”

As the national machining champion, his prospects are bright. Gordon has received five offers of full-time jobs in the past four months and has had to explain that he is still a student. He works part time, though, and earns up to $50 an hour.

If the industrial-ed advocates have a strong selling point, it is the profitable careers open to well-trained technicians in what some call “gold-collar” jobs.

The task force ran several focus groups and uniformly found that while “shop work” was considered lowbrow, that perception changed when jobs were accompanied by good salaries.

“There are machinists making over $100,000, primarily due to the shortage, so they’re working overtime now,” said Greg Wight, chair of the manufacturing technology department at Orange Coast College, whose classes Gordon attends.

In fact, much of the drive to resurrect high school classes is led by the various automotive and equipment industries, which have thousands of jobs unfilled.

Vocational Education’s Relevance Questioned

All of which matters little to some school districts where the majority of students are expected to attend college with an eye to professional or business, not trade, jobs.

In Irvine, where 90% of the students go to college, one of the three high schools has a wood shop, and that program is about to be closed. Three automotive classes remain, but the new high school scheduled to open in September will offer no industrial classes.

Some Irvine parents have asked the district not to phase out the industrial, hands-on programs, said Dean Waldfogel, deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction. But the chorus of college-preparatory parents is much louder.

“We’ve certainly heard from individual parents about their concern about the disappearance of these industrial labs, and it’s not that these voices aren’t heard,” he said.

“But when you have, as we have, an increasing number of students trying to meet UC entrance requirements and the demands that places on their time--plus a strong visual and performing arts program--there’s so little elective time left.

“Also, I think in some respects the shops--those industrial tech shops particularly--served a clientele that was better with their hands than with algebra,” Waldfogel said. “But in communities like ours, parents began to say that the future of our kids is not in those areas.”