Good wood

Good wood

by Garrison Frost

The woodshop at Redondo Union High School had a table saw the size of a Volkswagon with a giant circular blade right out of a Batman television episode – big enough to cut in half two caped crusaders were they not to wriggle out of their bonds in time. There was also a planer that could flatten a car door and a jointer that could turn any hunk of wood into something usable. It was an intimidating place and empowering place – so much industrial power at the creative disposal of just about anybody.

It's gone now, gone years ago, sold off not only to the highest bidder but also to the notion that knowledge is measured only by which bubble you fill in on the Scantron, and that a career tapping on a computer keyboard has higher value than one in which you build something with your own hands.

At the time that Redondo Union stopped offering woodshop to its students, it said that students who wanted that education could go to the Southern California Regional Occupation Center in Torrance for it. Not much of an option, but at least it was an option. Well, SCROC doesn't even have woodshop anymore, so that idea is gone for good now.

As for myself, I never set foot into the Redondo Union High School woodshop until I was an adult doing so as part of a South Bay Adult School class. When the adult school later stopped offering the class I always figured it was because some housewife had cut off her arm on that table saw, and maybe that actually was the official explanation. But, really, the woodshops all over the country are going away, especially in these supposedly affluent communities where parents will stand for nothing less than college prep classes. And in this era of accountability and testing, why would a high school spend any time on trade education?

I made a dining table in my adult school woodshop class, and I've used the knowledge I gained in that class to do a number of projects on my own. I wish I had taken that class in high school like so many other kids. I feel that, by not doing so, I really missed out on something important. I feel the same way about auto shop, another trade class going the way of the dodo.

Here is my fear: Our children, untaught in how to make anything or use their hands for anything other than keyboards or video games, will find themselves utterly useless in adult life.

While I do realize that it's entirely possible to make too big a deal out of this, I also recognize that an important part of any person's education involves factors totally outside of our regular school curriculum. We need to learn spacial relationships and problem-solving in the physical world. We need to be able to understand how things work and we need to know ways to express our creativity in ways that don't involve a piece of paper or a computer screen. I really hope that this isn't forgotten as our educators continue to nibble away at shop classes and art classes and anything else that doesn't directly convert to better Academic Performance Index scores.

I've been trying to find another woodshop class for adults lately, and if you know of any good ones, please pass the information on. El Camino College offers one, and that might be my ticket early next year.

As for the kids, my suggestion is to take it upon yourself to teach your kids how to build things and fix things with their own two hands. By the time they reach adulthood, and all their friends are vying for the same cubicle jobs, your kids will be among the few who will actually be able to make something out of nothing.

(Nov. 9, 2004)