Shop classes are slowly disappearing. The last middle level shop class went away from our district a couple of years ago. High school shop type classes only happen at our vocational school. When I was hired to teach a middle level technology class in 1998 it was because they canceled the plans for a wood shop as no one applied for the open position. After deciding not to re-post the position, my principal changed the wood shop into a technology lab.
Even though I got a great job because of this, I think overall this is a bad trend. Kids need a place where they can build things. A place where they can cut and drill and hammer. It's part of how we learn to interact with the world. My teaching partner and I noticed that over the 7 years we taught the technology class, each year, the kids ability to manipulate tools and materials seemed to decrease.
With that said, it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed the following TED Talk, 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do by Gever Tully.
[Image: Grabbed from an article about the Tinkering School on Makezine: http://www.makezine.com/pub/ev/347]
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