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I Took Shop Classes in High School
Even though I went to a top academic prep school
Yesterday a friend of mine and I were talking about our high school experience. What was interesting — both schools offered shop classes.
I went to Stuyvesant High School, one of New York City’s elite public high schools. You had to take a test to qualify, and the cut off was the highest for any of New York’s magnet schools. Number 2 was the Bronx High School of Science and Number 3 was Brooklyn Tech, at least at that time.
Yet I took two semesters of shop classes along with 4 years of math, history, science, and English.
As someone who went on to major in engineering — I not only enjoyed the shop classes, I also found them valuable in later years.
My favorite shop class was metal working. I used a lathe and drill press and other machinery to create a metal box, a metal letter opener, and a candlestick holder. It was a lot of fun, even though my box had a hole at the seam so it would not be water tight and my candlestick holder was a bit askew. But my letter opener was perfect.
My friend went to school in Wrentham. His public high school offered vocational programs. Students who knew they wanted to work with their hands instead of going to college could learn those skills, in…
