Downloadable PDF 

World peace. The end of hunger. The education of our children and the future workforce. The continuing betterment of our employees, ourselves and our businesses.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t find all of the above to be worthy pursuits and grand goals for society as a whole and the metalcasting industry in particular?

But all too often these aspirations go the way of the slide rule, forgotten and left behind. It is in that spirit that MODERN CASTING presents this Education and Training Issue. In the following pages, we take a close look at where high school, college and ongoing education fit into our industry and our businesses. So get out your pen and paper. Someday, there may be a test.

Going Back to High School
By Shea Gibbs, Senior Editor

Lisa Hudson isn’t sure if high school course offerings for metalcasting classes are down over the past decade. It’s just not something she is capable of saying. Hudson, after all, is an education statistician for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and she lets the data do the talking.

Hudson’s employer doesn’t keep statistics on metalcasting classes—that’s too specific for an organization that keeps tabs on the nation’s vast network of primary and secondary schools. But, when asked, she follows up on a hunch that high school students are taking fewer manufacturing classes these days than they have in the past.

The hunch is correct. NCES files metalcasting education under the materials production heading of a larger category called precision production, itself a subsection of occupational education. In addition to metalcasting, the category includes courses such as machine shop, welding and woodworking. And while the credits earned in the category have leveled off over the past nine years, the number dropped by almost 33% from 1990 to 2000. Today, the average high school graduate will have earned only 0.16 credits in materials production by the time he or she moves on to the next stage in life, whatever that might be.

By way of comparison, the average high school graduate will matriculate with 0.55 credits earned in computer technology, up 83% since 1990. Some educators and metalcasting industry members think those are lopsided growth curves.

“The schools nowadays have done away with industrial arts,” said Fred Frese, a teacher of the subject at Old Saybrook High School, Old Saybrook, Conn. “Everyone’s on the computer gig, and that’s that. It’s a shame.”

That’s not to say Frese has thrown his hands up. He, like a number of others in the education world and metalcasting industry, is still working to keep metalcasting in the nation’s high schools, and keep qualified casting personnel flowing through the doors of needy companies.