Is there an equivalent to home economics or shop in middle and high schools today?

[Demonaut]

a line of thought about creativity....

[retrowire]

1. I graduated High School in 2007.

We had Shop and Home Ec then. Hope this helps!

[Lancero]

2. 2011 for me...

I know that my first school offered both, had two diffrient shop classes.

Moved schools in 10th. I know that that school offered home ec, though I never looked into if it had shop classes.

The second one had a Votech program though, so it offered quite a few supplumental classes from a much larger school the town over. First had it as well, though it was run through a university but it didn't offer as many classes since it was a lot further away and thus harder to schedule.

[Demonaut]

5. were they requiered or elective?

thanks for the responses so far!

[Lancero]

6. Elective

Though you were required to have a certian number of electives so...

Half and half I guess?

Edit - As best as I can remember though, we didn't have shop or home ec classes in middle school. They were left as potential electives in highschool.

[Demonaut]

7. well, what were elective classes?, shop and eco but were the other classes practical problem solving

(shop) or instruction to run or contribute to a household?(home economics)?

[Lancero]

9. Not that I can recall. At least in-school.

Construction and food service were a couple choices in votech. They were more for preparing students for working in related industries, though some things could be applied to running/maintaining and contributing to a household.

Horticulture would also apply, though it's more looser then the above.

Edit - I'll see if I can find a list of what my areas votech program offered.

[Demonaut]

10. good point but as I understand it but most Valectorian students not only had

top grade point average's but were involved with sports too, were/are altruistic
involvements also included?, participation in feeding the homeless or visiting senior centers or
something similar?

[Lancero]

12. My first school had a program kinda/sorta like that...

http://www.eastinitiative.org/

The second started their own in 2013 I think.

I was in the program for a year and a half (Moved after half of the 2nd year). I wasn't much of a people person though, so I asked and signed up to a long term project that had me occupied for most of the first year.

[onecaliberal]

3. We have both at our central California school district.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Both courses remain common...shop is probably better today

It is often supplemented with apprenticeships, co-op work, and internships with real trades.

The notion that these strategies have disappeared from today's high schools is silly. Many kids still find their way into trades through school programs.

[Demonaut]

8. I understand what you're saying but as elective classes which

socioeconomic class do you think or see is encouraged to take these classes? shop and home economics?

[alcibiades_mystery]

23. To be sure, poor and working class kids are routed into these courses

They are popular as ever in minority-majority schools and areas. There are whole schools dedicated to trade that don't really enroll the kids of the upper middle class (Aviation High School in NYC, for example).

That's always been the case, though. School functions as a "sorting" operation (as most historians of education have noted), but the sorting often begins even before you walk through the kindergarten door.

That's a separate question from the OP, however. I was responding to the (incorrect) implication that trades-based curriculum has disappeared from American secondary education. That's simply not true.

[JonLP24]

11. There was something like that but under a different name

Can't remember the name but it was an elective, mostly women took it. By shop there was "wood shop" CO2 cars and stuff.

[emsimon33]

13. In California...yes

Over the past two years, the California Career Pathways Trust has funded the development of career pathways to provide Career and Technical (CTE) counseling and planning, education, and work opportunities and that facilitates the involvement of local industry and businesses in this process. The goal is to create career pathways from high school CTE experiences through post-secondary career education and training to prepare students for high-need, high wage jobs in the county. This initiative has been funded in competitive grants to the tune of $500,000,000 with another $250,000 to be distributed through another formula next year.

The grant provides equipment, the development of curriculum, professional development, and partners with business and industry to provide job shadowing, internship, work opportunities, etc.

The state also has regional occupation programs (ROP) which have career programs in high schools, such as culinary arts, mechanics, agricultural science, sports medicine, etc.

[Demonaut]

15. wow, thanks! that's a lot of information and

enheartening

[emsimon33]

17. There is a big push and I believe that it is national to prepare students for careers

One district in the county has a goal of 70% of the students being career ready. This is a lofty goal; however, the idea is that students have skills that they can use even if they are college bound. Having career skills (and these are real skills where students use real tools of the industry--It is not making birdhouses and bookshelves anymore--so that they have at least gained a hobby. While I am a strong believer in liberal studies with a strong background in history, literature, and the arts, the career pathways movement is very exciting and takes the old home ec and shop to a new level.

[emsimon33]

14. Links

http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr15/yr15rel25.asp

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/si/rp/

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ct/rp/

In San Luis Obispo County, with the nearly $6 million Career Pathways Trust grant that we were just awarded, we will build pathways in the following areas:

Hospitality/tourism

Performing arts

Patient Care with an emphasis in sports medicine

Manufacturing and Product Development

Design, Visual, and Media Arts

Engineering Design

Applications development; Software Design

Public Services: Legal Practices

The local community college was awarded a Career Pathways Trust grant for $600,000 last year to develop pathways in Health (Patient Care), ICT, and Agricultural Mechanics.

[Demonaut]

16. California is has always been more liberal in social programs and I wonder if

southern states invest as much in students futures

[emsimon33]

18. PS

I wrote the recent $6 million grant and am now working on ones for music, outdoor education, and the arts for the county schools.

[Demonaut]

20. great!!, you must be proud!

[emsimon33]

19. It is a national movement

Here's one link:
http://www.ncpn.info/hotel-information.php

[emsimon33]

21. By the way, I was wrong

The amount for 2016 is $250,000,000 or 1/4 of a billion again. bring the total in 3 years to 3/4 of a billion.

[exboyfil]

22. About 10 Home Economics courses and 15 "Shop" classes

in high school. Also mandatory shop and home economics in 7th grade. Mandatory shop or home economics in 8th grade.

You can actually get a good start on your machining/welding certifications while in high school. Also other vocational opportunities like CNA which can be a pathway to a a nursing career (my daughter is going into nursing). The biggest problem with the high school classes is lack of maturity of the students. Also doing a CNA class in 48 minute increments is very difficult. I actually paid for my daughter to take her CNA class last summer between her Sophomore and Junior year. It was a great experience for her. She met several young women from an entirely different backgrounds including three young single mothers.

My older daughter wanted to get some shop classes in her senior year - she is now studying to be an engineer, but they fell off the table b the because of the college credit engineering, science, and math classes.

The school also has about 20 art classes (art is also a requirement in 7th grade).

A family friend had a son who did very well in his shop classes, but he elected to study criminology at a community college instead of continuing his certification process (hoping to be a police officer). Given his skill set I think he would have been happier in a manufacturing career. My employer is a large manufacturer in the community, and we are having a bunch of retirements in the next few years. I think he would have had a great shot at a rewarding career.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. Union steamfitters make a lot more than college professors

Hell, they make more than a lot of lawyers.

High school kids need better career advising.

[exboyfil]

29. Totally agree

Up and down career advice in general is poor. It is this way at the college level as well. At the high school they do not even know how the Advanced Placement classes count at our three public universities. That is inexcusable. They do not know the various options for higher education. I tailored plans for both my daughters that will allow them to graduate with a B.S. in two years after high school graduation (one in engineering and the other in nursing). The students slogging through honors and AP classes at the high school are overworked and overstressed compared to my daughters. My youngest is getting eight hours a sleep a night and completing a lot more towards her B.S. degree than her peers that were juniors in high school this year.

I know the German system has issues with classness when it comes to determining which high school route is taken (college prep or vocational), but it appears to be a much more efficient system than what we have in the states. In addition it is often difficult to get good information about placement rates and debt loads from some institutions. Like lending and purchasing for cars and houses, higher education selection and financing has many unscrupulous individuals involved with insufficient consumer protections.

[Igel]

24. Seriously?

My high school has something like home ec (they have "Iron Chef" type cookoffs from time to time, even). They don't have lathes, as far as I can tell, for wood or metal shop.

There's a food safety/tech class.

Welding.

Auto shop. (They want teachers to have them do their breaks, tune-ups, etc.)

Small engine repair. (Ditto for lawnmowers.)

"Ag", in which they just do things. Perhaps make carts for cub scouts. Perhaps design and build a BBQ on commission. Perhaps produce the framework and build a solar panel rig for a company that needs mobile power off the grid. Everything from carpentry to masonry to welding to metal fabrication.

Home decoration and flower arranging.

Cosmetology.

Robotics.

Phone apps.

Video tech.

Theatre tech. (They build the sets, deal with lighting).

Clothing design and production.

Pharmacy tech. (Yes, this includes an internship at a pharmacy.)

FFA and livestock. Horticulture and farming. Small animal science (with vet internships).

Some of these are two-period block classes. If English 1 is a 50 minute class, cosmetology meets for 100 minutes.

These will soon stop being just stand-alone courses. Every two years the Texas legislature meets. They routinely revise education in serious ways. Usually "seriously stupid ways," because whatever they do can't possibly have any real effects in the less than two years before they meet to examine how their revisions worked. It's hard for there to be effects in 4 or 6 years. Last time they met they passed HB 5, which set up what amounts to high school majors or "endorsements." There are 5. They are mandatory.

Beginning last fall, freshmen had to select a "pathway" to graduation, including an endorsement or major. STEM, business/industry, public services, arts/humanities, multidisciplinary. They all have some basic requirements: 4 years math, 4 years English, 4 years science, 4 years social studies. 4x4. But what counts as math or science, etc., varies. Electives are to be grouped. This was outlined in something called "HB 5".

Don't point out how silly it is for an 8th grader about to enter 9th grade to pick out an endorsement, or that choices made and not corrected by the end of the sophomore year lock kids into a plan that they might find they despise, or even that while a high school with 4000 kids might handle all 5 endorsements a school with 400 will do good to wrangle 2. We've hashed out all the ways it could go wrong--and given the size of Texas and the number of kids, the ways it will go wrong. Nobody can quantify this, however, so we're holding our breaths. Not just from the stench, either.

Anyway, one format for the basic information is this:
http://www.lubbockisd.org/dynimg/_FHAAA_/docid/0x0E1C06750DE94E44/52/Endorsements%2Band%2BPathways%2Bvertical%2B2%2B11%2B14.pdf

That's linked to from an all-purpose HB5 information page, courtesy of Lubbock ISD:
http://www.lubbockisd.org/pages/Lubbock_ISD__TX/Top_Navigation-Folders_Docs_Li/Staff/Departments/Central_Office_Departments___A/Counseling_and_College_Career_/New_Edline_folder__Garza_06_19/Endorsements__Careers__Pathway

Lubbock ISD, apparently, has not yet realized that you *can* have folder names and URLs that are both information *and* short.

[B Calm]

26. It's a damn shame, not all kids are going to college. Here in Indiana only the

largest schools in the state offer shop classes.

[6chars]

27. Not in my district

these don't help the schools get higher average scores on high stakes standardized tests. so they are a waste of time, like music and art which have been fairly curtailed (also may be linked to creativity).

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

28. I wish we'd had better ones.

I got out of high school in '87, and both our home ec class and our shop class were oriented simply on 'making things'. We had to bake a cake, sew a piece of clothing, make a wood project (I did a hideously ugly lamp base) etc. But I'd have been far better off long term if we'd simply practiced the basics over and over, and never actually even finished anything. Learn which parts of the recipe do what in terms of science, what leaveners are, how fermentation and yeasts work, how caramelization occurs, how acids break down and tenderize meat. Which foods to water bath can, which need a pressure cooker. Practice threading and sewing straight lines and curves, learn when specific stitches are more appropriate, why you use one type of cloth or another, how tensile strength needs change in different parts of a given outfit. Get it into muscle memory, practice using jig saws, scroll saws, table saws, planes, drills, gluing, clamping, etc, etc over and over, not just do them a few times while 'making' something and then just get judged on the technical proficiency of that piece. I'd love to know how to correctly dry wood now, not cut down a maple or cherry and see it be useless as anything but firewood because I didn't know how to treat it from the moment it was cut to keep the wood from cracking and splitting.

[Brickbat]

30. My kids are required to take visual arts, shop and a home ec-like class through middle school.

There are electives further on for automotive tech, welding, and specialized trade and vo-tech classes that are sponsored by local community colleges and employers.

[Kali]

31. my kids attended schools in small town and about 5 to 7 years ago

there were a series of "Foods" electives. rather than teaching much about shopping, nutrition and cooking healthy meals, it was more about learning skills for working in food services. a lot of pre-made crap cooked in large quantities. they would have an end of year project that involved feeding their class and invited family members, sort of like one would do at a large meeting in a hotel or something. some got state food handling certification this way.

since this is a rural area the "shop" classes were taught in an Agriculture/FFA oriented curriculum. some construction/building skills, welding, and animal-related classes.