High Schools Training Students for Manual Labor as AI Looms Over College and Jobs

High school shop classes are back in a big way as students and educators prepare for a future in which AI could take over many of what we today think of as "white-collar" jobs. As the Wall Street Journal reports, school systems across the United States are building out new curricula for shop classes that merge old-school skills like woodworking and welding with higher-tech instruction on how to operate automated machinery. After Wisconsin's Middleton High School spent $90 million updating its facilities to include a high-tech new manufacturing lab — which features a fishbowl-style window to watch computer-controlled robot arms build things — interest in the state-of-the-art shop classes began to rise. Quincy Millerjohn, an English teacher-turned-welding instructor at the Madison-area school, told the newspaper that he began showing students union pay scales for ironworkers and boilermakers that ranged from $41 to $52 an hour. In recent years, roughly a quarter of Middleton's 2,300 s ... Read full article.