From the 1950s through the 1980s, virtually every high school had an auto shop program and now hardly any of them do as high schools transitioned into being feeder programs for four-year colleges and universities.
The result of that transition has been soaring student loan debt, people exiting college with a degree but no actual practical skills, a shortage of car mechanics, welders, electricians and an entire generation who can’t change a tire, much less change out brake pad lining.
It is time to bring back auto shop.
The early Romans once developed a technique of mixing concrete that remains unmatched to this day. Despite numerous earthquakes, the famous Pantheon Dome still stands after 2000 years.
However, in the periods following the Pantheon construction, Roman concrete building ceased and the reason was that when the generation that developed the technique died off, there was no one to replace them.
The Romans literally forgot how to mix concrete.
According to a recent study by the TechForce Foundation, the United States will have a shortage of some 642,000 auto technicians by 2024.
People who are skilled in working on pre-computerized era combustion engines are becoming rarer and rarer.
When the Carter administration formed the Department of Education in 1979, it was announced that education in America would be “revolutionized.” What happened, though, was not a revolution of learning, but a devolution of practical skills.
The subjects of history and civics were deemed “non-critical learning areas” and diluted down into something called “Social Studies” and new high schools were constructed that included huge “media centers” but no auto shop or welding shop.
It used to be that you could tell who the gearheads were in high school because their fingernails were always stained black from grease. Students sometimes would spend an entire school year tearing apart a junk vehicle and rebuilding it from the ground up.
However, over time, the pressure on students was to learn trigonometry, calculus and other college prep courses so they could apply to a prestigious university and obtain a fancy and often useless document stating they are an expert in “gender studies.”
Richmond County School Board member Venus Cain agrees and says that while Hephzibah High, Lucy C. Laney High and the Marion Barnes Center offer technical courses, other high schools have had to abandon those courses due to low student interest.
“It’s like they feel they are going to be looked down on if they take the trade route, but I just had a young guy come out and work on my plumbing, he couldn’t have been more than 25 years old, and he told me he makes $200,000 a year, and he has no student loan debt,” Cain said.
Augusta Technical College has recently expanded its automotive program and is about to move into its new facility on Walton Way, but that will do little good to solve the mechanic shortage if kids aren’t interested in learning the craft.
According to a report in Hagerty, the automotive industry is partly to blame for having lowered benefits such as vacation pay and healthcare benefits because of having a glut of eager young technicians willing to work for less. However, those days are long gone and the automotive industry is swinging the pendulum back to attract young talent and keep them on permanently.
Becoming a car mechanic is once again becoming a financially attractive option.
Cain says that parents should assess their children’s talents and guide them towards a career path where they are going to be successful even if that career path doesn’t include a fancy four-year degree.
“We need to be telling our kids that it is okay to get your hands dirty at work,” Cain said.
