The Case for Working With Your Hands

Yup, I'm with you, not enough hands on in schools 'health and safety' doesn't help.
got a guy at work who can't even change a wheel.

Del

Yep. I "once" had a son-in-law who was a recent graduate Chem E with a second degree in Law. Unfortunately, he couldn't even rewire a 3-way electrical socket for a lamp. We learned to do things like that in Electric Shop in 8th grade. Not any more. Now the boys are apt to take home economics. Not that that is bad, but I really think everyone needs to learn basic skills like rudimentary plumbing, electrics and basic auto repair. One of my daughter learned this in high school, but they have eliminated these classes of late.

That's not true. Using one's hands is strongly encouraged... for texting.

ahuha - I added a GA just for the train of thought

After all, if we manufacture nothing, what, if any economy will there be for a society...

Everyone in the populace can't spend all day bangin' on their keyboards..

Good on ya!

In the same sort of frustration I started to refuse to help MY sons until they had started - whatever the job.

That is hard for me.

But eventually I was loaning them out to do family brake jobs etc. (I'd come along behind and check - which to their credit - they appreciated)

Pretty soon they were earning beer money from their friends doing odd mechanicals for them. THEN they were happy!

It is my observation that a significant number of academically advanced (good grades) young people lack common sense. I believe this stems from lack of getting out and excercising the human mechanics whether it be handiwork, crafts, sports, hide and seek, or just a walk and talk.

I concur with encouraging children to work with their hands; going beyond the eye- knowledge interface.

My direction to my kids are "Turn that off and go do something in 3 dimensions".

"Turn that off and go do something in 3 dimensions".
I like it...
What ever you do..
Don't say 5 dimensions...you never know what they'll get up to
Del

From another article by the same author, Matthew_B_Crawford:

"an engineering culture has developed in recent years in which the object is to "hide the works," rendering the artifacts we use unintelligible to direct inspection. Lift the hood on some cars now (especially German ones), and the engine appears a bit like the shimmering, featureless obelisk that so enthralled the cavemen in the opening scene of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Essentially, there is another hood under the hood. This creeping concealedness takes various forms. The fasteners holding small appliances together now often require esoteric screwdrivers not commonly available, apparently to prevent the curious or the angry from interrogating the innards. By way of contrast, older readers will recall that until recent decades, Sears catalogues included blown-up parts diagrams and conceptual schematics for all appliances and many other mechanical goods. It was simply taken for granted that such information would be demanded by the consumer."

Continue_reading_here

I like Matt Crawford. He's put into words, quite eloquently, what I've thought for years. I plan to buy his book:

it is simple to all new engineers, practice what you preach

"esoteric screwdrivers"

Don't worry most (practical) engineers have those

...the hood under the hood... the information economy? vs the concealedness economy. hands on vs hands off is an ownership issue. If you cannot make it work, you don't really own it. Nothing is more empowering than working with your hands.

re: daughters. When I was in high school, girls were not allowed to take shop. There were only two girls in our physics class. Sometimes we forget how much things have changed: or not changed at all, in some countries.

Good post. Everybody should make sure their sons and daughters get to do some hands on stuff when they're little, maybe 6-10, as well as hang around folks who do that. If you get through high school without taking algebra, you can get that later. But, if you get to be 18 years old without ever holding a screwdriver, I suspect it's hopeless.

and daughters .
Indeed, my Daught' has changed a clutch, halfshafts, big ends and main bearings, (with some supervision)... she can even draw some of my bows which her boyfriend can't handle even tho' he's a lot bigger than her. She can still do pretty too.
That's my gal... (My son does good too, can't do the heavy stuff, but he looks after the mechanics of his wheelchair and can shoot my bows)
Del

Parents too often rely on public education to provide some of the skills that children could use in adult life. All too often, basic skills are not provided. It is up to the parent to see that this child has some basic building bocks.

Every kid should have an Erector Set in their x-mas stocking sometime in their childhood. A chemistry set is a good bet too.Get them an electrical experiment set. Get them used to hooking up series and paralle circuits, switches and supplies.

Encourage them to disassemble their bicycle and clean/inspect/repack the bearings. There are least four sets in a typical bike. By doing so, they have pretty much completely disassembled the bike in chapters. Good hands-on stuff.

I agree wholeheartedly that parents should teach their children the "how to" things in life, but unfortunately many of the parents have been so dumbed down that they cant teach their kids much of anything. SO, it becomes the province of grandparents to teach them what they should know. BUT that can only occur if the grandkids want to learn.

There have been some studies (anthropology, I suppose?) that show that hands-on skills can be lost in two generations. If parents don't have any such skills, and don't do anything to compensate for that in their children, it's gone.

Up near the top of mountain where I grew up lived Max, a basket maker and stone mason (don't ask why those two things?) who used the techniques that had been handed down generation by generation. My sister still has, and uses, a bushel basket that Max made close to fifty years ago (Compare that to a basket that you buy at a big box store now). I have a split bottom stool he made about 1950 and it's as sturdy as ever, including the splits. That was common for his work. His baskets lasted so well he did a good business in replacing handles where human sweat took its toll after twenty or thirty years of handling.

Max had one daughter who learned his work but she didn't continue. Whatever skill or secrets he used is now gone, probably forever. I've seen the work done by people who are considered some of the better basket makers in America, and I doubt one of those would last twenty years.

If you like old barns (other than for shooting pigeons and chasing the milkmaid or hired hand depending on your wont), then you've seen those old timber joints, many of which remain as tight and strong today as they were 150 years ago. We might scoff at people who do work like that, and say we now have better materials and methods, but we've lost that almost spiritual feeling that comes from making something really, really well.

And, I'm not knocking education or "knowledge work", just saying a good mix might make a person a lot happier. The old basket maker, by the way, never went more than maybe ten miles from where he was born. Yet, when I was a kid, and my mom had been suckered by a good looking door-to-door book saleman, we could always count on at least one of the volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia being misssing. Over the course of a couple years, Max read the whole thing, A-Z.

Bricktop did a great job in telling me about this book. I bought it with my birthday gift card and am almost finished. It's great! I happened to remember, and would recommend, another book: John Jerome's Truck, although God knows where you'd find a copy.

SO, it becomes the province of grandparents to teach them what they should know. BUT that can only occur if the grandkids want to learn.

That is also assuming the granparents live in the same town/state/country; which is rapidly becoming an abnormal state of affairs in our highly transient culture (how many people do you know that are actually from the place you live? the percentage is pretty low here where the majority of the population is non-native!)... There is certainly not enough exposure to older generations during the formative years in a typical american kids life; I know, I suffered that shortcoming myself with my closest grandparents living more then 600 miles away and the other pair were closer to 1200 miles away...

Amen! My boy plays with Lego's almost exclusively (when he's not reading!). My little girl follows me around on every project I do...Fixing things, gardening, you name it. They both received a bunch of project toys for Christmas.

If you have kids and can get to Austin, check out the Maker Kids exhibit at the Austin Children's Museum...Very good stuff!

I read some more of that book. I think I'm gonna go by the bookstore (I've got a birthday gift card burning a hole in my pocket) and take a look. Thanks!

Actually that is my standard fee: A case (of beer) for working with my hands to help someone. Now if I could just collect!

It is frightening to see the loss of talent. It is downright disheartening, to hear the loss of respect society has for the trades. When people are sitting naked in caves with the anti-technologists, they will change their attitude - quickly.

I wish I were smart enough to know why all this has happened. But, I'm not. I see young students all the time who have all these ideas about this or that and when I say, "Well, get a bucket, drill four 0.201 holes in it, connect it to a 12V battery...." they stare as though I were somebody from Mars, speaking a strange language. Everybody wants to be an astrophysicist and nobody wants to be a concrete quality control tech. Of course, we as the grownups ought to show we value the technologists more than we do.

Oh well. I'll add this to my list of things to be curmudgeonly about.

It is frightening to see the loss of talent. It is downright disheartening, to hear the loss of respect society has for the trades. When people are sitting naked in caves with the anti-technologists, they will change their attitude - quickly.

You have a good quote there from Heinlein at the end of your post, but to really appreciate just what is going on, go and find a copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. He gives an excellent description of some of the decay this thread has described. His solution was the establishent of the "encyclopedists" to preserve the knowledge that would be needed to rebuild society.

Dadburn, Bricktop, you get a lotta stars from me for this one (well, anything past 5 has to be imaginary). I followed up on this and got to the homepage of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at UVA and thought I had suddenly found religion. These people think the way college scholars ought to. I had always thought, half jokingly, that there should be a philosophical underpinning for technology, but they're building it. Listen to this,

"So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You're likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable."

Lets see, I spent 4 years in college studying Electrical Engineering and earn around $96,000/year. My cousin spent 26 weeks in a trade school studying machining and he earns around $150,000/year. Guess who is pissed at their high school counselors.

This is what everyone missed in the big 'liberal education' movement... The idea of a liberal education is to teach you how to think and do for yourself, but somewhere along the line the 'do' part got dropped... I suspect that this is because a country filled with scholars who can actually act on their insight would be a terrible danger... Imagine a million Ben Franklins or Henry David Thoreaus running around... 'Stuff' could happen!!!

It is shameful to me that ANY engineer would be confused by a concept like properly gaping spark plugs, and yet the world is full of 'engineers' who have never done any mechanical work...

Thanks for pissing me off at the world again Bricktop, I was just settling into a nice mind-numbing trance of feigned ignorance...

If people would stop and think, they'd have more money to spend on merchandise (which is the only true economic stimulator) if they didn't have to pay over-priced under-educated goons to do their basic repairs... for example, let's say you need to replace the float valve in your toilet... Alright, the part should cost $5-15, and it should take about 5 - 10 minutes to swap... or you could call a plumber who's going to charge you $60+/hour with a two hour minimum + >20% mark-up on 'supplies' (most of which came in the box with the new valve, which you're also paying mark-up on) and suddenly you're out $200 or more not to mention the fact that you had to spend an entire day sitting around the house waiting for the plumber to arrive. Now I don't want people to think I'm down on plumbers, I just needed an example... I love plumbers.

Alright, enough ranting... There is only one reason any man should need to take the time to learn some 'trade skills'... chicks dig a man that can fix stuff, it doesn't even matter what the stuff is, if you can take a broken thing and make it work you're going to get some action... And for the ladies... there's something sexy about a lady wielding a wrench with proficiency, not to mention the sudden lack of dependence on men...

what we need now are video games that impart the mechanical skills and interests that most of us got playing with lincoln logs, tinker toys, legos and erector sets...

... Imagine a million Ben Franklins or Henry David Thoreaus running around... 'Stuff' could happen!!!

Stuff IS happening- Have you looked at Washington lately?

Best thing I did for my son was to buy a 1980 Ford pickup for him to drive to school. While his friends were driving electronic marvels, he was trying to keep his truck from falling apart every week.

I guess it's part of being a good Dad, teaching the kids some hands on skills.
It's a lasting pleasure when you see them fixing stuff on their own, gives 'em skills and confidence.
Far better than throwing money at 'em, which seems to be what the advert's would like us to do.
Del

Partly teaching skills but mainly being way too mean to buy them new stuff.

My favorite water cooler discussion is from the professional type that talks about their neighbor that buys a new car every year, doing real well, and ALL he is is a (insert blue collar trade here). Sometimes the arrogance is astounding, and it comes from years of self aggrandizing in the schools.

We were the ones that were made fun of in school because we would spend time at parties in the kitchen or garage, talking shop. Oh well.

NEVER CURTAIL THE VOICE OF PROGRESS- a child's attempt/ effort may look funny, provide positive guidance and never utter it to foolish.

So true..
Eductation (and some parents) can stifle the natural curiosity and creativity of children.
Kids playing with mud...
'Ohh, don't do that, it's dirty'
Del

Yup, GA

We got so far away from the idea of productive work that we now have college curricula designed to "rediscover the dignity of toil". There is a fancy, expensive (intended for future leaders) university nearby that actually offers programs on "where our food comes from". Now, we have community garden space nearby where people can put in a kitchen garden and we have coop farms where you can work a couple hours a week and get paid in produce, but these students have an actual old farm about 25 miles away where they go and "learn" about food.

So, there was a picture in the paper showing these students "weeding" their vegetables. They were pulling the weeds by hand and two of them were actually sitting on their keisters. If you've ever done field work, you know there's a reason for the phrase "stoop labor" and you know you chop weeds with a long-handled hoe, not pull them. So, these students think they now understand "sustainable agriculture" and have no clue why the Mexican migrant workers they see on the street have rounded shoulders.

Frankly, they should pay several of these migrant workers to teach a week-long class. It would cost a heck of a lot less than using a clean-handed professor, and the students would actually know something about food production. But, you see, these migrants don't have PhDs, and some of them don't speak so good, and they sometimes smell of sweat and beer. Imagine having to learn from people like that!

Your post gave me a great idea for a curriculum. The subjects taught would be: farming, livestock including raising, butchering, preserving, fishing, woodworking, blacksmithing, hunting, use of firearms, etc. You get the idea. You would be taught the basic skills that our forefathers had in order to survive. In the event of a total meltdown of our society as we know it, only those with basic skills might be able to survive. The new BS would be Bachelor of Survival.

Nice idea....
Suggest you think of new title...we get plenty of BS already
Del

Just let you old schoolers know there are a few(sadly very few) of us younger guys that have the chops to take your place in the world.

I unfortunately have to disagree with the statement's that a person with hands on skills and practical knowledge will get better pay and respect. From personal experience I see too many modern business managers hire a group of fresh out of school newbies to work and then apparently think everyone of them is going to hang on their every misguided and inept word.

I have worked numerous jobs at numerous places and I can tell you from my personal experience a young guy with skills and a brain is first looked at as a gold mine of new ideas to a greedy, incompetent or inept manager. But then ultimately either leaves from total disgust from the company politics or get fired because the persons above him know the new kid can step in and fill their position far better than they ever could.

Dump the newbie with skills or have him run you out of your own job. Sure the company and the customer will suffer in the end but hey you keep your job a while longer. If you don't fire the new kid it will likely get even worse. Smart people with skills don't fall for dirty tricks more than once. And many are like me and will take a bad manger down. Not by dirty underhanded or dishonest action though.

To this day I purposely land mine any information that could possibly be attempted to be used for someone else's undeserving gain. If you try to take it and implement it as your own with out my knowledge and consent your in for a very bad surprise. I am actually not happy or even very comfortable with the idea of having to do so. I know its not in the best interest of the company and it actually bothers me to do it but then seeing undeserving fakes take my work and get huge bonuses and raises sits far worse with me.

TCMtech,

What you are referring is the threat of survival for seniors by new arrivals. This of course a sentiment felt by service people, that management is going for cheap substitutes against higher paid seniors. This situation normally leads to seniors treat new arrivals as rivals. One thing to be felt is they are to get into your present shoes so as to relieve you for higher responsibilities. The other aspect is human resource planning. The best blend of experienced elders and energetic talentful youngsters are real boon to an organization. It is how we make use of youngers and groom them as colleagues. Professional competition is from all corners not by new arrivals alone. Such things are related to culture in an organization. One way to stay ahead of such threat is to equip oneself in a competitive level and update skills. Youngsters also seek quick changes to get vacant opportunities unlike people with settled tenure. As you have said, few youngsters behave over smart and greedy and aim their superior's spot, a reality too. ALL IN THE GAME OF SURVIVAL in a competitive world,but not meant for a school life, since it grooms future citizens of worth to the society and bear a generous cause of service.

One very important principal in managing a large coorporation is to have two or more people under you and subordinate to you and in turn several more subordinates under each of them. The idea is to have those subordinates compete with each other rather than with you the top dog.

My principal and I were discussing this same topic a few days ago. He said public education was ruined because of the lack of vocational programming. Now we have kids who are "behavior problems" because they are not predisposed to sitting and listening.

I had a genius student my first year teaching. He had a solid "C" average, just enough to get by. In his spare time he read Feynman's lectures and designed and built robots. In spite of his total lack of grades, the local university realized he liked to apply his knowledge and gave him a full scholarship for robotics.

He liked to do...not just sit and absorb.

I suspect your genius student had a solid c average because he was bored to tears by most of his classes... I wouldn't describe myself as a genius, but I was smart enough that by the time I was in Jr. High I was starting to get annoyed by the fact that I was being 'taught' the same thing over and over each year because some folks couldn't catch up and the tedium of staying attentive in a class that isnt teaching you anything because you might miss some tiny morsel of new information makes it nearly impossible to give a rat's ___ what your GPA is beyond 'will I be able to graduate out of this meat grinder on time'

It is my firm belief that by the time our kids hit Jr. High they should have most of the skills we currently expect for graduation from High School, and that High School should be geared toward college and trade preparation in such a format that it gives kids the ability to try out a class (career) and see if they like it instead of waiting to get to college to play intellectual wanderlust. I know there are obstructions to my Utopian dream, but I think the biggest of those obstructions is our lack of a reasonable goal for education beyond 'can little timmy pass the standardized test so our school continues to receive funding'. The system is VERY broken and fortunately we have teachers like you that can see that a low GPA does not necessarily equal ignorance or stupidity or many more of our bright kids would be falling through the cracks into oblivion.

I'm afraid my children may fall into the boredom trap. My little boy has just finished kindergarten. He is reading very well. He reads everything he can get a hold of (we have to be careful here!). He is the only one in his class who can read. So when he goes to first grade what does he get to do?...Learn to read again!....In second grade?....Learn to read again! I'm hoping his teachers will realize where he is at and "modify" accordingly. They modify and dumb down everything for those who are not as capable...Will they do it for the gifted? My little girl who is right behind my son is showing similar capabilities...

Ditto

Homeschooling our children then having to succumb to the state standards of education, here is an interesting evaluation comment from a teacher (whom we had to hire to certify my son's education). After spending an hour with my child, she came out of the room to say "He does not need to know how to read".

I have to stongly recommend that you be proactive in compelling your school to recognize your kids advanced level of education. The faculty is probably so inundated with kids that really need help catching up that they probably don't realize your child is beyond them. If they don't have a program for 'gifted' kids I would suggest you seriously consider trying to get your kid advanced a grade or two, though don't forget to account for the social differences that will come with the age difference between your's and the other kids in the class.

Make sure you also explain this to your child as they may not understand why they are being drilled on the same old stuff again and again; also involve them in any decisions to change their situation and I'm sure they'll be fine.

Good luck to all the good parents out there who prepared their children for the world only to be forced to subject them to education by lowest common denominator.

I may need to clarify and elaborate a bit more on my earlier post.

I intended to have people understand I am on the side of the Senior workforce not against it. I have always had and likely will always have a great understanding and friend ship with good senior coworkers and management staff. I am not saying I am trying to take their job away in order to take their place. Rather I am there to learn and help them but when they do retire I am there for them as a replacement with the skills and abilities to carry on in what they have done so well for so long.

I however have ran into numerous situations were there were selfish, greedy and dishonest coworkers and management that would take full advantage of someone else and their work in order to make them self look good and thusly get false praise and rewards from it. And their selfish actions were constantly working against the greater good and overall goals of the company.

They are the ones I strive to eliminate with hopes me or someone else more skilled and more qualified gets that position. I have not and will not make life rough for a honest hard or smart working co worker or manger. I will help and support them in every way I can! It's in the companies and my own best interest to get bad people out of the system. I am just strong willed and motivated enough to do it.

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In response to your C student genius. I was one of those kids. You are 100% correct on the being bored out of our minds with the repetitive run around that the educational system uses. When I learn something I prove it. I will prove it twice even. I however wont keep doing it over and over and over because to me at that point it now looks like YOU are the one who's not getting that I get it.

If a kid gets a D reteach and retest. If a kid gets an A+ first shot, their done. Leave them alone and let them go onto new stuff. When a kid gets an A+ and you still make them do it over and over with the same materials and test procedure boredom and frustration soon sets in. Those super smart kids catch this flaw rather quickly and react at first by finding new stuff to learn. That however often further expands their personal knowledge of the subject at hand and makes retesting even seem more pointless to them because the new information learned often obsoletes that what is being taught and retested upon.

If you only knew how many times I Was told to; Put that book down and look up. Its time you learned something today. you would be amazed. Most times that book I was reading was a text book I checked out from the library that was for a class one or two years ahead of where I was at then. That stuff I was told to look up to and learn was of little interest to me because I had already learned it a year or two before from a book I got from the library way back then what I already knew made the class work seem pointlessly obsolete and therefore redundant.

I don't know what my current IQ is and I don't want to actually know. I was tested in 7th grade with a 142 IQ and instead of getting praise and rewards for it I caught hell from it until the day I graduated. It was assumed after the testing that since I am so incredibly smart I can obviously do A+ work all the time every time! I could, but I felt no reason to. A+ was just mindless and inefficient use of my skills and learning abilities. I proved it once and that was good enough for me.

I wanted to learn but was not given opportunity to do so. I was actually held back one year with the flat out purpose of punishing me for being strong willed and to show that the teachers and school had the power to make my life miserable for not going mindlessly along with stuff their way. I was not a bad kid who acted out because of what ever bad kids act out for. What I Did was continually point out wrong information in the school books and flaws in the teaching approaches. I basically wanted a better education for me and everyone of my school mates! I actually did not have bad enough grades to justify being held back either. It was simple spite because I would not fit into the student learning mold established at that time.

I was actually well liked, supported, and often encouraged by the teachers that were good at their jobs because the loved teaching. They were impressed that a kid could grasp the need for a better system and actually be demanding one! Sadly my school was one of those ones that has low pay and poor system management which meant the majority of the teaching staff were the bottom of the barrel type that don't care how the system works just as long as they get their paycheck and don't actually have to put forth any real effort . They were fine with how things ran. Low pay, low output, don't care majority.

Nearly 20 years later my school is still the lowest rated in the area and has the lowest average teacher pay too. This continually makes students there academically the furthest behind in the area.

Part of our problem is that we have eliminated "tracking" (made it illegal in fact) in our schools. Every minority group thinks it is a way of promoting racism. Instead, tracking students could help us keep them interested and push them to their full potential.

My boredom story is in math. When I attended math class I had the best of intentions on making a good grade, my parents demanded it. I would do very well the first few weeks. The stuff was fresh I picked it up quickly, then the hell began... My peers started having problems, we would work problem after problem after problem. I would daydream or doodle (I would have been in big trouble for reading a book during while the teacher was "teaching."). At the end of the class, I had missed the new stuff and was totally lost. My home life didn't allow for a good studying environment so I never did much home work... Need less to say, I barely passed my high school math classes. I vowed to never take a math class after high school.

In college, I realized I needed my math to do what I wanted. I took calculus, saw the beauty and the utility of it...Loved it! Now I have a degree in mathematics...Crazy!

I have a vested interested in the subject. Right around the time my middle daughter was 8 or 9, I had a side business rebuilding carburetors. Mostly Holly double pumpers, for street rodders, and guys at a local track. Well, the kid would come into my workshop, and pester me with a million questions, and constantly getting under foot. Anyway, I gave her a spare 600 I had lying around. The kid could take it apart and put it back together again. She was actually very good at it.

Fast forward to the troublesome high school days. She did terrible in school, and ended up dropping out. She worked in retail for a while, and realised that was a dead end, no money situation. To make a long story short, on her own, she went back to school, and today is an electrician. Graduated top of her class, and got a job right away.

So the point is, she was always good with her hands, and found out a way to exploit that.

Yep - sounds all too familiar. Sometimes, you just can't fit a square peg into a round hole no matter what you try. Square off that round hole with a keyhole saw and move on.

Good for her - glad she found her calling.

Or mount the square peg onto a lathe and round it off.

Sorry most of us square pegs are often unmachineable!

Ever try to machine the end of a heat treated high carbon steel punch with a heat treated high carbon steel cutting tool?

The punch gets a bit scuffed up but the tool always gives up first!

There is a movement toward emphasizing two year colleges, and practical knowledge leading toward real jobs. In Europe they have a bifurcated system. One path for technical schooling, and one for academics. Our problem is that our colleges are run for the benefit of the professors, not the students. Practicality and finding a job is the furthest thing from their mind. Few of them ever had a real career. What they want is to teach what they enjoy teaching. We need to recruit teachers from industry. I have a Masters degree in Counseling, but ended up getting a two year RN, to work in psychiatric nursing. I live in a house built by the local school district trade students. I knew they they would do a good job, because they were being graded, and would have good supervision. What is the status of public school shop and ag training today?

In the UK the standard of the 'trade' schools is pretty high. The problem seems to be that all the students coming out of school are being pushed towards university. I know it's difficult to decide on a career path at 16 or 17 but there seems to be no method of determining the their aptitude for practical or academic skills.

Well put. GA

i'd like much to chatt with you.