Gday all,
Perhaps I can add something to this conversation as I too am an ex high school shop teacher as you guys on the American side of the pond would term it. I have also many years as a trade college technical instructor. Sure! It is an Australian perspective but there well may be some parallels for the situation America.
In my humble opinion there are a couple of reasons behind the decline in the trade training of young people in apprenticeships.
These causes have largely gone unnoticed and ignored by our industry leaders, most trade educators and of course politicians.
Caliber and Educational background.
Firstly is the caliber of the training candidates.Once upon a time a certain group of students went from year 12 to university and the rest went from year 10 into labor and trades related work. The students who went to the trades while not university material in general had a good grounding and schools generally produced good workers for the trades.
From the mid eighties the push was to send more and more students to university has resulted in the upper level of students who would have left at yr 10 to become trades people then continuing on to YR 12 with the view to going to university. The group that formerly may have been relegated to other than trades apprenticeship jobs,the laborers ( nothing wrong with laborers mind you,but that was all that was available due to this groups educational standard)
Due to the those who would have been good electricians, plumbers and machinists, etc. then going to university - those kids who took their place as potential tradesmen were in general the ones who would have formerly been the laborers and had a educational abilities were far less than the student group they subsequently replaced.
Falling Educational Standards
The educational system had been dumbed down from the nineties onwards. The result was that the groups then being trained as pre apprenticeship or apprenticeship candidates could then pass a low level exam but could not effectively read and understand an instruction sheet ,a bill of materials ,specification sheets or add up a simple column of figures without a calculator . Education has tried to hide the numbers of students who don't have adequate literacy and numeracy to perform well in the world outside of school.
The apprenticeship process has been degraded, in that the time taken to train an apprentice has been reduced and its theoretically possible to gain tradesman status in three years instead of .Students have been signed off on particular training modules by a single assessment of that particular skill. Real competency is the ability to perform to a set standard not once but time and again.Add to that a good percentage of school teacher /trainer/ instructor experience has only been in university teacher training- ie - a week in arc welding bay, and a week on the lathes and mill and so on. Some one with twenty years trade experience behind them can forsee and prevent an accident or a failure. University trained teachers with almost no experience cannot do this., but unfortunately they are the in majority of Australian school trade training teachers. Students go from school to trade colleges where long term trade based but degreed teachers have been substituted with the lesser paid tradesman who have 12 weeks assessment training behind them.
Text materials for the courses where simplified to an unrealistic level to simply allow those students of low educational ability to pass. It has got down to tick and flick. This has flowed out into safety training for (certificates in the trade such as Induction training,working at heights and confined spaces) where tick and flick courses are conducted to satisfy legal,insurance and operational needs.Trust me ,it goes on , I have been there.
Industry Complaints
Industry complaints about the quality of pre trade and trade students simply not listed to by govt and Educational Authorities.
I have been present in many industrial shops local to where I live and have listened to employer complaints about (ex school student) employees who can't read, can't write , can't spell,can't think for themselves and have poor attitude and time keeping..Schools can only teach if the basic ability is there and that is fostered by the student attitude which is something that mostly comes from home. If not supported from home its near impossible to give a students a good attitude if good attitude is not also supported by MUM and DAD and sadly in many cases it is not. Employers whom I speak to are tending to reduce the number of apprentice intake each year and perform a fairly thorough interview and selection progress.Even this does not help if potential apprentices are already signed off in modules ( at school) they have no hope of being competent at on the shop floor. I have seen many examples out in industry of indentured tradespeople unable to perform to a basic level.
Technology and Society
Technology has had a profound effect on students. Due to such advancements such as the cell phone they are unable to understand the basics of personal communication . In the pre cell phone times we could face each other immediately detect if what we said had an effect on the person we were addressing.We got a smile , a poker face or a scowl or a punch on the nose dependent upon what was being said.
None of this is detectable on a cell phone and these young people have lost much of the art of reading another persons emotions as they talk face to face with others. Society accepts the cell phone and the negatives that have come with it. The lack of understanding of personal interaction has an affect on the shop floor. Also excessive cell phone use in work hours robs the employer of production time which he is paying for.
Of course there have been exceptions ,but I am only conveying what I have seen in a general sense.
Some of you may see similar things in your country.
Oz
