I am having a walk-in shower installed in my apartment. It is amazing how many different trades are involved in this task: designers, contractors, plumbers, tillers, glassmakers, and others are all involved in removing the old tub, upgrading the plumbing pipes, installing specialized flooring, laying the "mud" or mortar for the floor tiles, measure and measure again to get the correct measurements for the wall tile..carefully cut each tile to make the corners match and line up evenly. These gentlemen, and I do mean that in all due respect, are indeed master craftsmen whose creations and knowledge of their "trade" enrich our lives.
And the work of these folks, as well as those of carpenters, cabinet makers, stone masons, violin makers, mechanics, welders, ironworkers, and electricians take many years to hone and refine. These are careers that involve a strong basis in pure mathematics and a knowledge of the sciences like chemistry and physics that need to be mastered in real life situations. My own children will attest to the fact that I have declared many times that all things are either geometry or physics...or a combination of both: baseball, bowling, soccer, tennis, football, hockey; these all have elements of both in their execution. And if we taught math and science with an eye to theses applications, more students would be directly involved in learning these important skills instead of asking, "Why do I have to learn: fill in the blank geometry, algebra, physics, chemistry?" Educators need to show the practical applications in the real world as well as the formulistic equations and graphs that can be applied to the world of work.
During my tenure as an Intermediate School Teacher, I was exposed to the work of the Salvadori Institute that was connected with the architecture department at City College of New York. They taught the application of pure mathematics and physics in the built environment. Inspired by my summer fellowship with them, one, by the way, I was told by a supervisor I was NOT eligible to take because I was a social studies teacher, I introduced a unit on the bridges of New York and challenged my students to learn the history of NYC bridges and create models of them. It was an exciting unit, and one I did at the end of the school year after the regular curriculum was finished. It was a huge success, and wound up being a real feather in the cap of our school. Some of my students, not just the "honor" kids, had their creations exhibited at the Institute's fundraising event that year. I also got to take a class to CCNY to meet other students from other NYC schools who shared their work and vision for a new re-creation of the site of the recently destroyed World Trade Center.
What was important to me at the time was that my students, most of them students of color, had never been on a college campus, nor had they seen the diversity of our city university colleges up close. And even though I was NOT their math or science teacher, the students were able to see that math, angles, density of materials, force, gravity, and other mathematical and scientific facts they had studied actually had real life implications. lesson all of our students should be exposed to in this age.
Manufacturing jobs are NOT coming back to the United States...get over it. But, there will be a demand for people with trade skills, mathematical understanding and scientific thinking who will be building our future. Let us bring back real vocational/technical education in high school or post high school to make sure we continue to have the next generation of skilled craftsmen and women to lead us on. And let us make sure all of our students have the opportunity to be exposed to the possibility of doing this important work.
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