“Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe said in a Thursday interview that the death of shop class is to blame for the country’s $1.6 trillion in student loan debt.
Rowe joined Stuart Varney on Fox Business to discuss his new book, The Way I Heard It, and was asked why there are “seven million unfilled jobs in our country.”
“Are we just not training people for these jobs? Is that the problem here?” asked Varney.
“It’s not just that. It’s that we have unintendedly maligned an entire section of our workforce by promoting one form of education, in my opinion, at the expense of all of the other forms. Forty years ago, college needed a PR campaign. We needed more people to get into ‘higher’ education, but when we gave the big push for college back in the ‘70s, we did it at the expense of alternative education,” Rowe replied.
He said that the country’s leaders told students if they didn’t get a degree, then they would “wind up turning a wrench.”
“That attitude led to the removal of shop classes across the country, and the removal of shop classes completed obliterated from view the optical and visual proof of opportunity for a whole generation of kids,” Rowe said. “The skills gap today, in my opinion, is a result of the removal of shop class and the repeated message that the best path for most people happens to be the most expensive path. This is why, in my opinion, we have $1.6 trillion of student loans on the books, and 7.3 million open positions, most of which don’t require a four-year degree.”
“We’re just disconnected. We’re rewarding behavior we should be discouraging. We’re lending money we don’t have to kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to train them for jobs that don’t exist anymore. That’s nuts,” Rowe concluded.
Another Fox News regular, actor John Ratzenberger, said in an August interview that the removal of shop classes from public schools forces people to rely on the government.
“They also canceled shop classes about 30 years ago,” he said at the time. “Just wiped them out. And, who knows, maybe it was political because if you don’t give people skills they have to rely on the government. But if you give them skills, they don’t need the government.”
Watch Rowe’s full interview below:
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Autoshop Class” by the US Department of Education. CC BY 2.0.
They don’t have much knowlrdge about tools, standing in a parking lot clueless to change a flat tire.. Yes we do need shop classes..
As a recently retired college professor I saw multiple sides of this issue. This is not a two sided issue. In the more than 30 years that I taught on the community college level, I saw academically prepared students (some with four year degrees) returning to college to earn associates degrees to work in a tech field, and I also had many students who already worked in a tech field coming to my classes at night trying to earn a four year degree to get out of high paying, often very dangerous occupations in the petrochemical industry. Rowe cites not having “shop class” as the reason for so many students having high student loan debt. No. The reason for high student loan debt is because too many people STILL use the term “shop class”. Stagnant, romanticized views of these occupations, as well as degreed careers, do not adequately explain the dangers and consequences of having to work as a contractor, or having to move to a more expensive city to begin a career. This last century view of higher ed also does not allow us to see that students studying these tech fields also incur a fair amount of student debt. Cost of attendance (COA) is what leads to student loan debt. Seventeen to thirty year olds have always been fickle in their career path decisions. University grads have always waited tables and worked at Pep Boys. What IS very different is the COA these young (and older) adults are having to pay for the education they get. We need to focus on what keeps driving COA up and leaving it in the hands of college grads to pay. I look forward to having others comment and engage in this dialogue that is not discussed by higher education institutions for fear that it will invite scrutiny on their, sometimes, top heavy administrative structures and high compensation salary scales for its administrators.
I think this job thing is a bunch of crap..wnen i was young i walked all over town looking for a job.No one would hire me. This was after i spent 15,000.00 or more on a body shop,The guy i helped could not add2 and 2 to get 4.. so i had one last place to go .A guy that used his equipment to dig out our yard . I called bill strube aircraft parts. I want over he was so backed up in work he was trying to find me something to do that day .I worked there 7 years.He died in 1986 Then it was job hunting again i went to york sheet metal and also Flinchbaugh engineering making clutch pistons for caterpillar tractor. Well they told me if i did not study i would be hanging on a drill press the rest of my life.. I made cemetery markers made ok money at that. No i am 65 and cannot get a job to old talk about discrimination it living well. Bottom line i run into the people seeking help don’t know what the hel l there doing I guess i rambled on and don’t make sense. Life is hard to figure out
I had what is considered a trade in my 2 year Air Force career. I loved every minute of it.
I had what is considered a trad in my 2 year Air Force career. I loved every minute of it.
Mike Rowe nails it. I graduated highschool in 1967 with a “Liberal Arts” degree [I was lazy] when back in those days I could have had a curriculum focus on business, metalworking, woodworking, or auto repair. My Liberal Arts degree wasn’t even good enough for bum fodder, and it didn’t take very long to find that out. ~:<{
Ha ha ha
I am a retired electrical engineer. I took the college track, and it served my family well, but I am *SO* blessed that I took all those shop classes. Wood shop, welding, drafting, electronics, even non shop classes like band. Besides being a design engineer, I can also fix just about anything electrical OR mechanical. I have wired so many houses, I’ve lost count, plumbing, framing, drywall, concrete – you name it, I can do it. I didn’t learn all those trades in school, but it gave me the drive to try and the confidence to LEARN new skills. As an adult, I had never laid tile, sweat soldered copper pipe, or installed hardwood flooring, but I learned how and now I’m semi-pro. I’ve taught my kids to do the same. When they have “house” trouble, they call dad, and I go teach them how to fix whatever’s needed. Last weekend, I replaced a kitchen faucet. That’s not normally a tough project, but this one fought us tooth and nail (70 year old galvanized pipe!). We spent 10 hours getting it done, but we solved it. Next month, another son is laying hardwood flooring. It’s fun to help, and saves everyone a TON of money. I’ve lived in my house for 40 years and have NEVER had a house call from a technician. I’ve fixed everything myself. Now, in retirement, I’ve turned to woodworking. Kids are missing SO much by not having this training available.
College track means something entirely different than this. Most school systems don’t have time or the available electives to support students that want shop. This is due to the long term curriculum planners at the schools eliminating the shops and replacing them with required character education programs favored by administrators. Mike for Secretary of Education! Administrators don’t like shop offerings because they require more equipment and the teachers are hard to find because of low pay.
Our school system is out of control. Not only are students learning less, but are leaving behind a whole class of young people. These are the same people who through hands on (not college desk jobs) built this great nation. When I see college degrees going to waste by graduates who are working in fast food restraunts, mowing lawns, doing everything but what their education prepared them for, it makes me ill. What a waste of money, time and effort! I see huge sums going into the school districts, property taxes soaring to support them. We need to revamp the system, not by those who benifit by being inside the system, but by basic citizens who see the waste, poor ciriculums, and lack of skills shown by administrators.
Kids should be offered skilled education, but they still need basics in business, english/communication, science, and some of the arts. They will be well rounded individuals who will know the basics of starting and succeeding in a business of their own.
I am a product of all those shop classes, and growing up on a farm where we fixed all out farm stuff plus out toys, boats and motors, bicycles and later motorcycles. I took Vocational Agriculture all 4 years in high school, and a power mechanics class. Our Vo Ag instructor everything that had to do with farming. We turned an old horse racing stable into a hog barn/sale arena, We did all the concrete, carpentry, electrical wiring and plumbing. We built the first gooseneck trailer in our part of the state. We did all kinds of automotive work, including some body repair and painting. I got drafted into the Army in 1970, and because of those shop classes I ended up fixing helicopters in Vietnam, on a secure airfield and not out in the brush getting shot at because of those classes!!! I came back and went to an electronics school and got a job fixing copiers for Xerox. I made a very good living fixing copiers, much better than some of my classmates with a college education!!!!!
A big problem has been the destruction of our unions that did nearly ALL the training of workers outside of our high schools and colleges. Who ruined and killed our unions?
Amen brother!
Who passed NAFTA?
This is so true but sad at the same time. I went to the same school as you, Mike Rowe, I graduated in 88. I was probably the only 15/16 yr old girl who was pissed off that Overlea got rid of auto shop. I come from a family of cops and mechanics, my dad and uncles taught me alot about engines, and was looking forward to learning more. But was shot down, Overlea stated ” due to lack of participation…”. But I can say that , I am glad that I was required to take shop class. Otherwise I wouldn’t know how to use table saw, or a band saw, or what tin snips were for. I enjoyed my time in these classes.
But back to your point, most kids now a days are looking to get into the financial, technology, and medical fields, that they don’t believe that shop classes would benefit them. So they concentrate on their grades and hope they get a scholarship for college. If they don’t get a scholarship, then they have to apply for financial assistance or a student loan. But now a days, the government offers to wipe out their student debt, so why wouldn’t they apply for loans.
But back to shop classes, kids today don’t know how to cook or don’t want to. Heck all they have to do is Google their favorite restaurant and have their food deliver. Or they sign up for a monthly meal plan where the food is delivered to them with instructions how to prepare it.
Wonder how many kids know how to change a tire? I know of a handful of guys and girls who didn’t, I ended up changing their tire and made them help me so they would know what to do if it happened again. They thanked me and to this day most come see me everytime they’re in town, even introduced me to their parents, who thanked me again for my help, I’m a bartender in OC.
But again, if they were required to take shop class, then they would’ve known how to do this.
Bring back shop classes!!
I was shocked when I moved here and saw no public vocational tech schools in California. Guess who owns the ridiculous not even good vocational tech schools in California? Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Dick Blum. And he gets the School tuition funded at $27,000 per year per student thru the Federal Government. Hmmmm….with a wife who can see that happens, sort of like when she got on the US Postal Service governing body to endure all properties were sold by her husband’s company, with lands owned by the taxpayer with leases he had to pay on for his Rincon Towers in downtown SF sold to him….with income to help pay for the US Postal Services gone forever…wow. So when I first saw California had no public vocational tech schools like Georgia has, where students pay for instance $5,000 per year and come out making huge and good pay at about $120,000/year as airplane mechanics and in much lower cost to live Southeast, with great homes and education….I knew California was a backwards state working for millionaires creating monopolies to enrich themselves, even stealing ad nauseum from everyone. Got it?! Also, as an architect who graduated from Georgia Tech, I am fully aware that everyone’s brains and talents are different, and that you should use your God-given talents accordingly. Nothing is shameful, as if you can’t do college!!! It is about your brain and how it works, what you can do is always of great value!!!!!
Individuals who flat out tell falsehoods should be ashamed. California has vibrant public vocational tech programs, that are public. One need only search “Public Vocational Tech programs, California, to find them. AS to the other false statements, Mr. Blum has investments in for-profit higher education programs, that are career versus degree oriented. Some offer online programs, other s are more in the vocational/technical field. The only federal funds used would be those that any student applying to higher educational/vocational programs would be eligible for, and those are student loans. if one truly wishes to look at those profiting from connections, one has to look no further than the Presidents Family. All his children have vastly increased their wealth, through no skills of their own.
Oh, Boo! You ignore the Democrat politicians whose children automatically get into Harvard and Yale etc., no matter how dumb they are. Dreamer. All states have Vo-Tech programs in community colleges. CA isn’t special in that regard. Our children are being brainwashed to believe that they should automatically prepare for college while in high school and that’s where the emphasis is. Mr Rowe is right. College isn’t for everyone and those students should get as much attention as the college bound students. I attended the first Associate Degree in Nursing (RN) program offered at a community college in MS. It was a fast-tract initiative to assuage the nursing shortage and offered affordable tuition etc. Win, win for the students, state and nation. My family was low income and I did not have to borrow a penny.
Awsome Barb ! Congratulations !
Here we go again .Blame the President and his kids . Ever occur to you that they each Do HaveA Brain. When did it become a problem with you when a parent teaches his kids how to make a living other than what a political party thinks he should do.
evidently no P.E. class either or there might be less obesity. What are the schools doing?
They teach basketball dribbling 101
that’s not the whole story.
it’s also “right to work” states that can fire anyone for any reason and lack of unions.
or how employers will bring up politics so they can fire the leftists.
or mass layoffs.
Mike Rowe and many people commenting here are also ignoring the fact that college doesn’t have to be academic. if tuition is paid for by our tax dollars, that also means we can afford to people people in welding school and STEM who actually want to be there.
and if we want to do big infrastructure projects, that means we need leftist presidents that are willing to cut the military budget and end the corporate wars based on lies.
WOW !
I’m not surprised. I still am angry about not being to take shop when I was a senior in high school in 1980 because I was female, I would have loved it!
“College is not for everyone, it will never amount to anything for you”. So my high school guidence counsler told me as she signed me up for mostly shop classes. The best thing that could have happened to me. I was good with my hands but not so much with books or academic classes. Went to a trade school for both auto and diesel mechanics. Did very well and became a well known regional mechanic and trouble shooter for numerous auto and construction equipment companies. Started my own small construction equipment and engine rebuilding business for 18 years, was then bought out by a larger company and asked to run one of their divisions for 14 years before retiring. Just think of a college graduate that needs his car, appliances, plumbing, heating, or home electrical, repaired. Its the guy that went to trade school, that must keep up with the latest codes , changes in systems, the new inovations on systems, he is hiring. I wish the academics in this country would tell high school students the truth. Not everyone is a College student but can still make a good living wage and raise a family but go to a trade school.
Nice move. Congrats!
Okay. Some of the debt. But not all. We still need teachers, doctors, and other professionals. My girlfriend racked up $190,000 in debt, but she’s now a licensed therapist who works with drug addicts.
Sounds like social work. No money there.
He is not saying all. It’s all the loans to certain students, that in truth, will not have a chance in Hades to make it through College. By no means that they are ignorant, it is just the structure in themselves and what avenues they are molded to take due to these some of these changes. Some do not have the will or discipline for that type of structure(college). We all know that seeing some folks that are close enough to us that we know. We all have those folks in our families. They have strengths some of us do not …college may not be one. Most have been programmed like a robot and money lended out that way, hence his point.
Yes.trade schools should be their for the kids who can’t do college. Being smart is not always book smart. Common since will take one a long way.
For me, English is my third language. It used to be a compliment to claim that a person speaks English like a native. My prayer for you is that you search for a class to help you to learn the language of America.
Amen
Amen!
This article has some truths to it, but it ignores the fact that the people who went to college got to decide who gets paid more, the college educated or the workers, and the workers don’t win out until they get very scarce.
It also ignores that the people who went to college get to decide who gets laid off first during an economic downturn.
It also ignores the fact that if you get laid off, the paper the banker wrote that says you owe for a car, or a house still works.
Bottom line is, people went to college to get paid better and have a safer workplace, not just because cleaning shit out of somebody else’s toilet sucks.
Not all college educated people draw higher wages. A school teacher makes way less than a plant worker in our area. we As teachers educate them and straight out of high school they are hired on at the plants for more than we make after 10-15 years teaching. Just because they have the training in high school. So, college isn’t for everyone.
The c+ common seance people kept the world alive! FACT.
Amen !
I do not have a college degree, and I never cleaned crap out of anyone’s toilet except my own. Before I retired, I had an office job and made just as much money as many of my college educated coworkers, and in some cases, I made more. I also know people who are not college educated who own lucrative businesses who hire both college-educated as well as non-educated employees. Like Steve said in his comment, college is not for everyone. I agree. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of college-educated people who are unemployed.
Tell that to all the kids getting out of college with $200K in student loan debt and not much more than a bunch of $35K jobs to choose from. No question, the more education you have, the higher you are on the food chain, but that doesn’t mean your education has to have a B.S. at the end of it. There are plenty of trade school programs that offer a business management background producing entry level jobs at $60K or more.
The problem is that jobs for college grads pay so much more than jobs for high school grads.
a software developer can easily make $ 45 to 60 an hour.
an auto mechanic makes about $ 20 per hour.
a lot of the college debt is from college majors that should be for rich kids only, like art, music, history, philosophy, etc.
very few people can make a living in those majors. one needs another source of income.
this is something that colleges don’t explain.
Yet welders can make a 6 figure income. There are alternatives even for Programmers that never step foot in a college. I worked for a company in Canada that had people that weren’t old enough to rent a car in the US getting high tech jobs back in the early 2000 that paid $60 to $70K a year, High School grads!
Go to any car dealer and ask their shops hourly rate it will be 75 or more per hour so your premise is very flawed, in fact mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, masons and most other trades make an much as most people with a 4 year college degree, the problem is that most people have for decades looked down on skilled labor jobs and the people who do them as being somehow less than and lower in stature to them and what they do.but every college educated person will at some time in their life needs the services of most every skilled type labor job and they may well be very surprised just how much they will have to pay their non college educated skilled labor counter parts of society who are able to earn what they do or more without the Student Loan debt strangling them plus they were already earning money and amassing wealth during the 4 plus years the college educated were amassing debt from student loans.
The mechanic makes a fraction of that 75 per hour. The dealer takes most of it. This is a false analogy.
That dealer ship rate doesn’t include the expenses the dealer has to maintain the shop. On average it’s about 40 to 50 an hour depending on how busy they are. Those mechanics that work by the hour get laid less. Others work on contract basis.
A good mechanic can make a million easy if he works hard and opens his own business. You have to have the will to be more and the patience to persevere to your goal. If all you want is 20 an hour (too mechanics make more btw) that is all you will have.
High school shop classes taught me to think out problems. I have only a high school education, but work in the single largest astro physics project in the world. Shop classes gave me the skills to do this….life is an education that can not be taught.
Anthony – Shop classes and many more wonderful vocational classes are still around. They are now called CTE (Career, Technical, Education) and in Georgia they are CTAE ( Career, Technical, Agricultural Education). We offer many pathways for students to earn skills and credentials that help them succeed past HS graduation. In Georgia, we also offer Dual Enrollment where students can take post- secondary classes at our Technical Colleges as well as our Universities while still enrolled in HS (at no cost to the student). We would love for you and Mike Rowe to come to Georgia and visit our classrooms and labs.
Julie Chance, CTAE Director
[email protected]
Old enough to remember shop classes and totally agree their demise is a monumental mistake!!
I was good at both and it was invaluable schooling.
Hardly knew though, about how the systemic white upper middle class male privileges, the social tracking of higher education of students by Department Chairs in High School and how it worked though.
Heck, could have been quotas.
If they had the design though, they could have easily tracked me the other way (seen it done shortly in another 4 years) After all, I was insistent and defiant to religious authority.
Outcast and outspoken in public, I even protested that invasion to my own family. In turn I was reminded that the lineages were welcomed into the USA, that two uncles became staff sergeants. I then did the work and it was too late to rig the grades. It gave me 4 years of the student deferment that kept me from an illegal, unconstitutional, undeclared war, war so full of the two extremes. McNamera’s Morons is what they called the draftees on one hand (too young to have for many, executive brain functions fully formed) and the Dogs of war, the Point and added Academies of Sea and Air.
You, do you all understand that?
I liked the doing. All doing for a being among good people, and making things and visioning things and learning about things.
I have some college , an associate degree and work on Airplanes and make more money than someone with a Master’s degree. I did shop class in high school.
[…] by Anthony Gockowski for The Tennessee Star ~ November 8, […]
I looked forward to the shop portion of FFA. I already had a self taught background in how mechanical things worked. There was very little counciling where I went to high school. I wanted to learn a trade so I enrolled in a trade school. The government had a program called Manpower Development Training. I chose the machinist school. A helicopter manufacturer hired the top six from the class and I worked 39 years and retired at 60 with a house and two cars paid for. I know everyone doesn’t have to have a college degree.
Not only shop class was eliminated in many places; so was home economics. Home Ec skills may not give one a high paying job, but they are quite useful in everyday life. Things learned in shop and Home Ec classes gives one the ability to DIY.
That is not so much true in today’s world . I own a auto repair shop and we are experiencing a huge shortage in techs . Most shop are starting at mid $ 40 dollars an hour . I know other business owners in the trades are offering big signing bonuses to higher workers . The trades has been ignored a long time and blue collar workers pay and where they are on the food chain has climbed and will continue to because there is shortages all the way around !
This was done to discourage minority progress in the 70’s. Than came the destruction of the Black Family structure. Single parent homes was not the norm until the intentional (pre-planned) war on drugs, and the campaign to criminalize Black America. Felonies became the instrument to limit voting, and voter suppression still goes on today.
White America makes excuses unroll it hits their families, as they did with Heroin. They treat heroin addicts with hospitalization and health care, while crack addicts are locked up and treated as criminals and the worst of the worst.
The lack of Shop class is now affecting rural America. They are paying for education, faking degrees and credentials. The cheating ways are starting to show up more and more. Unqualified Doctors, Lawyers that exist on backroom deals, the twisting of reality and the inauguration of an Orange President (lol).
Shop class was eliminated to destroy the Black progress in America.
Yawwwwnnn? Get a life. Now it’s all the white man’s fault that shop class was canceled. Who are these people that have the power, time, and money to set around thinking about how to undermine Americans of African ancestry?
Note how politically correct the photo at the top of this article is…
DONALD TRUMP CAUSED NONE OF THIS DILEMMA! STOP BLAMING SOMEONE WHO JUST TOOK OFFICE RECENTLY. OTHERS HAVE BEEN IN OFFICE OVER 20-30 YEARS!
I disagree. Starting in the late 1960s liberals thought shop class “humiliated” Blacks and wasn’t good enough for them. Instead of becoming a qualified electricians with a secure financial future liberals promised them college even if they were not qualified to attend one. Blacks believed these false promises that guaranteed they would become CEOs of companies if they graduated college and have a bright future with he help of affirmative action programs and other privileges based on race. Sadly many, if not most dropped out of college and resented the system. Trade schools were abolished by misguided liberals who always end up destroying everything that works based on their insane social justice fantasies and obsession with race.
I don’t see this as a race issue. Single parent homes? Crack addiction treatment versus heroin addiction treatment? All directed at destroying black progress? Everyone is effected by the decline of shop class in schools. Not just blacks, but whites also. People need to hold themselves accountable for their own actions instead they blame someone else. This effects us all equally. I have it no better then anyone else. This is a national problem. Not a racial problem.
I agree with this 110% I have been in the Ag business for 39 years . The biggest challenge in today ag business is finding parts people and techs I blame that on no shop classes . I hated school left my Jr year went to work at a gas station got married then went to work for John Deere dealer setting up machinery then to diesel shop into sales management and ownership . And I give credit to shop class for most of this . I just recently retired at age 61 then was called by another ownership group do internet sales and just having a blast working from home.
Any questions feel free to reach out .
Great hou are %100 right, and thanks for building America !
Learn how to run an engine lathe in metal shop class. Little did I know I’d follow a path that led me to becoming an aerospace machinist now a Model Maker. That Metal shop class gave me a incite at another career path besides college. Now most of the young machinist I work with get a 2 year Associates in machining from the community college, which is more in depth than High School Metal shop. Volcantional schools will give a skilled career also if you choose that route and it doesn’t cost you an arm an a leg.
Awsome ! I am hoping to follow in your footsteps. I own a small auto repair shop and am currently 58 years old and will sell the business in the next three years hopefully . I really used to enjoy the business but the new labor laws and restrictions are going to be hard for small business in the future . Love your story congratulations !
nope. correlation is not causation.
1. Shop classes should be taught. (I have graduate degrees, but enjoyed these classes, and used them to build skills that I still have)
2. Federal and state funding for higher has plummeted.
Our program “Freedom rock experience ” was the brainchild of Jeff Senour to help fund the arts programs in schools. Please check us out CTSMUSIC.COM.
The reason shop class disappeared is only the losers took the class and they were just wasting time.
Don’t call me LOSER I took shop to improve my skills and improve I did,,,now I own the largest logging company in UPPER michigan ,,,,so KEEP YOUR STUPID COMMENTS TO YOUR
Guidance used it as a dumping grounds for low academic achievers or troublesome students. It was the most expensive course to have in school because of the equipment. Also, liability came into play. The academic world figured it was more beneficial to teach all theory then hands on. Left teaching Industrial Ed after 6 years when the garbage men made more money than I did. Back to industry..
Wow what a moron you are! With that kind of mind set i bet you got beat up a lot in school.
I taught shop for 10 years in the High School. The problem was the Guidance Counselors and administration loaded these classes with the problem students after the fact. I generally had good students that initially enrolled and by the end of the third week of school, was loaded and overloaded with the problem students dumped into my class.
I now teach construction 30 years later in a community college. The lack of basic skills are revealed at this level. The 9th graders that came into my program that had middle school industrial arts had way more skill coming into my shop than what I am putting out of my program at the Community College level.
I don’t think so…. It was the lossers that eliminated the classes…
“He said that the country’s leaders told students if they didn’t get a degree, then they would “wind up turning a wrench.””
Now I know why he went on FOX. That’s just bull. I never heard that once. He’s just trying to disparage higher learning.
I took shop in Jr and High School. I was there too. And our shop classes disappeared because the funding dried up (and lawyers and insurance companies drove up costs). Because good paying manufacturing jobs went to Asia folks could no longer afford to pay their taxes.
Today, paying taxes is no longer seen as a civic duty. It’s not cool any more. The rates my parents and grandparents paid were a lot higher back then, and paid for things like shop classes.
I’d happily pay an extra $50-$100 a year on taxes if I knew it was going to pay for such programs. My question is why did the funds “dry up”? Maybe because the government stoped supporting them?
The money for a lot of school programs was redirected to fund the war on drugs.
I was told if I didn’t go to College and get a degree I’d end up digging ditches. I went to College and got a degree and ended up digging ditches and love it!
It was a significant Trend that men of a certain age were drafted if they did not go to college.
Have shop and industrial arts classes really disappeared in most parts of the country? We have them in my school district in mid-Missouri, and also two two-year public colleges were you can get certificates and AAS degrees in manual arts areas.
Labor names it’s own price these days because no one is going into the trades. There needs to be a balance between the two. College and trades
Very valid observations.