Tangledfeet
Think outside, no box required.
- Messages
- 3,065
- Location
- Top of a hill above St Andrews, Fife
Fair do’s . i wish I learned metal work at school. We had nothing like that. Unfortunately when I was 13/14 (1995) it was right at the time when computers were just starting to come into play but not compulsory to learn and metal work was not available at secondary school at all. I did a bit of wood work (built a nice fishing tackle box) in DT but that’s about it.
Very, very little metalwork gets offered in Scottish schools these days - a few generations ago there was much more offered... a school I did my probationary year had a Bridgeport mill! The skills have been lost and younger teachers (the ones that generally go school to uni to teacher training and back to school to teach) tend to want to keep hands clean and skin soft; back in the 70's and 80's skilled craftsmen got into the profession but they're largely retired now. As the skills got lost, the interest in the subject faded - and, as you say, PC's arrived on the scene.
In my local authority there's fifteen secondary schools and only two (one being mine) offer Practical Metalwork as a subject that kids can get an GCSE equivalent qualification. Without meaning to sound like I'm blowing smoke up my own, it is largely down to the teachers that have the outside experience - I'm late 40's and have been teaching ten years.
Practical Woodwork is a subject taught at pretty much most Scottish secondary schools - I get the impression there's very little, if at all, in England?