SuperJail Warden wrote:
Jay wrote:
DesertFox- wrote:
I mean, I know boys still can play football and light off fireworks so those points are moot, but I must ask, why welding?
It's infinitely less useful than both sewing and cooking unless we get into some sort of Mad Max situation (and even then, it's still not as essential).
It's an incredibly useful skill that I really want to pick up myself. Substitute welding with shop class if you want. Shop classes have largely disappeared.
I blame insurance companies more than leftists though. They're the ones that made society, and thus parents, paranoid so they could limit their exposure. Everyone is afraid of getting sued if little Johnny gets a bruise now.
It more has to do with society focusing on preparing students for college and white collar work than fear of insurance companies (?) and lawsuits. My generation was told from a young age that if we didn't do well in school we would end up in careers cutting grass. So art classes replaced carpentry because it looks better on college applications.
FWIW, my high school had a carpentry class as well as classes in art and accounting. Though they removed the car repair class and replaced it with a pottery class. I took the pottery class. I can make jars. One of my co-workers who moved into white collar work lived in NYC and went to school there. They still had car repair classes.
They removed shop class from my hometown school as well as all playgrounds because insurance premiums spiked. It's been happening a lot all over. Everything is about safety now. Don't go outside at night, don't play sports, make sure you eat your vegetables. It's like society suddenly decided collectively to become Jewish mothers.
My grandparents would kick me out and say go play outside, so we did. We built tree houses in the woods, had bike races with all the neighborhood kids, walked ourselves to school, went fishing and swimming at the beach, played tackle football and baseball in the street. It was a fun childhood full of minor scrapes that if I allowed my son to have, I would go to jail for child abuse.
Edit: and I still have a scar on my neck from playing with fireworks. I lived to tell about it!
Last edited by Jay (2015-09-05 04:53:47)