I graduated from an Ivy League college. I work for a large test prep company (perpetuating the college-bound cycle) and I hate it. I never took any sort of shop class in high school or college, but I'm getting into building and renovating stuff now and I love it! I think I would have been happier if I stuck with a trade right off of the bat.

Credit to Elliott Trotter, friend and Sawhorse collaborator, for the best cheer in history.

-the tall counselor

Coming from a carpenter, that first picture of the girl using the worm-drive saw is hilariously unsafe.

Love this story. Builds on Matthew Crawford's critique of our educational system in "Shop Class as Soul Craft." The question is, should our educational system actually teach kids to build and fix the real physical things that make up our world. I like Michael Theriault's idea in this piece that the ideal school would enable kids to toggle back and forth between, for example, studying Euclid's geometry and applying it working on hands-on projects. The brainiac computer jocks would benefit from actually using modern tools to build and fix things, and the hands on kids will get turned on by having their physical skills validated and seeing how intellectual know-how is relevant to the physical world.

"Hannah" in the pic "going at it with a power saw"?
Someone needs to tell her to control her ponytail around power equipment! Scary pic!