I think the protagonist of this article is as rad as the story is sad. I do understand the desire to frame the narrative as having the most possible impact, but I think the framing ("joy and honor?" "strengthen our nation") is ham-fisted and reductive. It starts to unpack something meaningful though...

It IS a huge shame to see wood and machine shop programs disappear. Even if you're not "blue collar" or a "craftsperson" there are massive benefits to learning the processes of working with your hands. At my undergrad architecture school you had to learn to use the shop in your first weeks. If you were familiar with the tools you had to go through the training and get re-certified. If you were never required to use them before, now you were. But power tools are such a time saver for always busy architecture students that you just did it anyway. Even if somehow you managed to avoid it you were still required to make physical models which requires precision, attention to detail, and care around sharp tools. In the 2000's there was a move toward an entirely digital pedagogy, but the pendulum has swung back - in architectural education today we require our students to make physical models. Many professors are less passionate about making still require a final model to "prove" your ideas. But as someone who bangs on endlessly about the lessons to be learned from craft I make my students use them as a constant and iterative process of prototyping and testing ideas.

There are some things that absolutely cannot be understood without having to struggle through how to represent them in real materials with real properties, in space, and subjected to gravity. Hand craft makes you plan your actions carefully - even in the small. There is no undo button on a hundred dollar piece of burl walnut. And unless you learn to always be constantly aware of your body and movements (heck, let's intellectualize and call it proprioception) a chop saw can get a little... choppy. Understanding that "let the machine do the work" is simultaneously safety advice AND a philosophical masterstroke is sublime.

I never took a shop or vo-tech class, but I grew up around machines and craft. My father was a union machinist making jet engines (and tooling), only retiring from poor health right after hitting his 30 years. His stepdad got him in to the trade, and was a career machinist turned manager. My dad's half brothers were gearheads - one has bought, revived, and sold literally more cars than he can count with nothing more than a vo-tech degree (but his first flip when he was 14). His day job is in machining consumables sales. His home shop would put most of his clients to shame. My dad's other half brother has an Associates in Electrical Engineering and has always been in high demand as an embedded and controls systems programmer. I changed my parents' oil for the first time solo when I was eight (for reference I also wrote my first simple computer program when I was seven). We all grew up working closely with machines. It was just what we did. To this day I'm the one in any situation who winds up fixing anything wonky. I can't explain it beyond "sometimes machines just speak to me." Sounds ridiculous but it's just a process of understanding through exposure how things normally should work and how to spot the things that are out of whack. Once you can understand the cues these complex machine systems want to give you it provides insight into ones you've never worked with before...

That's all to say even in the most intellectual modes there are lessons to be learned from understanding how to use (and not use!!!) machines. The death of shop class is unfortunate and short-sighted. Everyone across the political spectrum is guilty, all together for the death or flight of the industries that demanded these classes in the first place. I don't believe there's anything -intrinsically- redemptive about understanding these processes. (Knowing lots of building tradesmen will immediately put lie to the more over-the-top notions in the article.) But the ability to mediate between your brain and the outcomes of physical processes that comes with machine work is exciting (even joyful yes) and filled with lessons far beyond learning to face mill a plate or lathe a precise cylinder, etc.