Health and Safety in Schools and Colleges.

100% agreed Tony - the PC bunch that won't allow a kid to learn because of some small chance something might go wrong are killing us.

The 'nanny state' in action!

It's not about health and safety, nor political correctness, it's about lawyers.

40 years ago if you got hurt, you got treated and went about your business.

Today, you'll have 20 ambulance chasers knocking on your door telling you how many millions (minus their 33-50% fees) they can extract from the organisation that allowed little Johnny to get a splinter in his finger.

As Shakespeare said, "first, let's kill all the lawyers"!

That Shakespeare was a smart fellow!

Shakespeare!

Nothing but a scribbler.

Let the Sawyers take care of the Lawyers.

The Soparanos would do better!

Put up a small bounty (all a lawyer is worth) and turn them loose!

Weeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllll,

Except you fail to take into account the fact that there are lawyers out there who take pleasure in rendering those "hold harmless" agreements invalid. Their motivation? Not justice. Not their client's wellbeing. Certainly not education!

It's all about money. We're doomed to live in a society of money grubbing lawyers with no conscience.

C'mon -- that's a horrible indictment of the legal profession.

Absolutely true, of course, but horrible.

I agree completely.......Parents sign the waiver......little Johny gets hurt.....parents hire lawyer.....lawyer argues that parents didn't understand what they were signing.....school loses lawsuit.....shop class closed.

Little Johny's sister Mary, distraught over Johny's injury, starts eating too many Ding Dongs out of the school snack machine....this leads to weight gain, zits, low self esteem, and eventually thoughts of suicide. Parents start and win another lawsuit.....snack machines are removed from school.................I wish I could say, the end........but it goes on and on.

After their classmates recognize Johny and Mary as complete losers, they start to suffer relentless bullying. Parents sue again, forcing school to install a non bullying compliance board. These people must be paid!.....no more field trips.

Did I mention that Johny and Mary's parents are in the country illegally?

At some Universities there are certification courses that engineering students take during their Freshman or Sophomore years to utilize the machine shop. This allows them to design, build, test and modify their experiments.

I think it comes down to a lack of qualified professors of Industrial Arts with solid engineering backgrounds. There is a lack of experienced students entering the workforce, as you said, but much of it is due to a lack of qualified teachers at that level.

Amen!

I was 9 or 10 when my first paid job was building a doghouse for the owner of the local shoe store, as you say, using my dad's tools. At 11, I got paid to cut down a couple of small dead trees, and was already repairing radios and beginning to accumulate my own set of tools. Next year my original soldering gun (a MAJOR Christmas gift for an 11-year old) will be 60 years old, and it is still working fine! The skills learned at home and in woodshop in 7th grade and metalshop in college led to a lifetime of only once having to look for a job.

@ Icarus - Well put!

I'm not sure about the state of schools, but my college permits the use of all machinery freshmen year (engineering design) such as lathes, etc. to build a small cannon you have to model yourself :P As we progress through the years we expand and now we can walk in and use an NMR machine whenever we please (just an example).

If your son isn't getting very much hands on experience, have him contact any one of his professors to see if any of them are doing research (they probably are), and see if they need any extra help around the labs/shops. Best case scenerio your son will get a little extra spending money and lab experience, or he could just volunteer to help and still get the experience.

I can understand not letting students go into the labs without doing research or unsupervised though. At least for chemical engineers, the equipments cost ranges from a lot to a ridiculous lot :P

It's illegal to build a canon in the UK, I got around that by building a beer delivery launcher, (mortar). It could deliver a can of beer 250" (bit warm when it arrived).

My son abandoned engineering and went on in to manufacturing. He's happy, but I wasn't when I found out.

Don't blame the lawyers. They are just following the rules described by Charles Darwin.

Blame the society that provides the jurors who determine the awards to the "injured". And take due note of the fact that most intelligent people figure out one way or another to get out of jury duty. Who is left? Not exactly the brightest stars.

We have grown an entire society that is virtually given everything they need to survive and even prosper as an entitlement. As one might expect they are terrified of any threat to those entitlements. They have been trained by a doting mass media to fear anything that seems to threaten their safe little womb.

They have been trained by the same media to want all kinds of luxuries they cannot get. So they hate and want to punish all rich "institutions" that deny them their desires. They relish the opportunity to give a win to the underdog without any consideration of whether he/she deserves it. Just punish those rich bad guys.

Nobody needs to make anything anymore. Just a few keystrokes and you can get anything you want. As easy as that. Someone in another country takes care of making it. So why bother with teaching engineers or anyone else any hands on stuff. Labs are way too expensive and dangerous for our little darlings. They are absolutely perfect, can't possibly do anything wrong and shouldn't be required to stoop to get their hands dirty. Just sit at the computer and make the world go round.

Ed Weldon

"And take due note of the fact that most intelligent people figure out one way or another to get out of jury duty."

And those "intelligent" people end up with exactly the society and justice system they deserve.

There is another facet of the problem. I've had two close friends who have managed the mahine shop in the engineering department of a university serving Silicon Valley.

One retired a little early and the other took over at age 50. Within 5 years, he retired early. Why, I asked ?

This used to be the greatest job in the world. The kids would come in with crazy projects and we would help them build and often destroy. They made great stuff, and learned a lot as did we.

Now, we don't see them very often. They would rather simulate the device on a nice 3D Cad system, including the operation. No dirty hands, no pinched fingers, just put it all in the format the instructor wants and they are done.

The engineering department used to have hands on training with lathes, mills and even casting equipment. A standard project was to build a bench press, including casting the frame and machining the rest of the parts. Hope all of that is not gone.

Our company has encouraged the young engineers to work in the shop when needed. We had top notch machinists, but did not want an engineer to have to wait for a hole to be drilled, or part turned. The result was better engineers, devising better parts and working more closely with the machininst as well.

Your company has a good attitude to "skilling".

You know what you want done, don't explain it, do it.

We have been facing a downward spiral in education for years! If this topic seriously interests you, I implore you to read 'The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America', by Charlotte Iserbyt, who was in charge of the Dep. of Education under the Reagan admin. This book will blow your mind at the atrocity our government's willing to go to to stupify it's citizens.