I think there are still plenty of young people interested in learning to make and fix stuff. What we lack is a will to admit not every kid needs, or wants, to go to college. Our schools do not prepare kids for a career.
We need tech schools. We need to teach kids a skill set and prepare them for a career.
AMEN! Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" fame runs a scholarship course for vocational training IIRC. An outstanding idea IMO. I wish that vocational school had been more of an option when I was a kid. As it was, vocational schooling was for the "dumb" or problem kids. Maybe 1 out of 15 or 20 students that chose vocational training was what my wife the special ed teacher would refer to as "typical". Many of the kids that went to vocational training did a heck of a lot better than the sports star prince and princesses that are found today sitting on the same bar stool they'd occupied directly after HS graduation in '78. These days vocational training is the choice of more than half the kids in out local high school. Part of that is because of the adiminstration in the school ('nuff said there) and part is because in a poor area like ours college isn't a given for a lot of people. It seems to be a decent decision for many of the kids.
Someone mentioned combining vocational training with all the other stuff in HS, turning it into a tech training course. My youngest son was involved for one year in a program like that. The whole class day was project oriented with all the various subjects worked into the project- math, english, science, history, art, athletics, etc., plus the hands on stuff. It was working splendidly for him and 75% of the other kids. Unfortunately, many of the participating schools used it a place to send their problem kids and that 25% turned it into a zoo by the end of the year. Not to get political, but as usual, the answer wasn't punishing the problem causers, but taking away the right of the good kids to have a chance at an alternative education option that was really working for them. It was a really good program that was screwed up by people looking for the easy way out. Sad.
GPS. Yes, I know it's a lot better than it used to be, but I'm still stuck remembering the countless people I found on what were little more than wagon roads or atv trails that were directed there by their GPS systems. Or the stolen car I was looking for that the on board GPS showed as being 300 yards directly in front of my location...which would have put it 300 yards out into the St Lawrence River in 50 feet of water. Or the people I'd find totally lost trying to turn left onto a road that hadn't existed in 40 years. I'm sure it works great in a lot of places, but the system itself tying all the "down to the millimeter" accuracy into the road map system is still wrong in many cases. Just 2 months ago the guy coming to pick up my lambs was doing his best to find my place and kept driving in a 25 mile circle because his GPS nav system insists the road which has been County route 7 since 1985 is still labeled as County Route 95. Garbage data in, garbage data out.
Bill, on being "Uncle Bill". Many, many cultures had the practice of taking boys entering puberty and sending them off to learn to be men with older relations or members of their tribe/group. That kind of removed the snot nosed angry kid from mom and dads house to give them all a break and gave the kid a chance to learn from someone who he didn't have that close relationship with, so rebelling wasn't as big an issue. Today we call it "mentoring". It ain't really a bad idea IMO.