>What is "shop" ??
>How do you think Americans got to be such voracious consumers? We have classes in it!
I did wonder ...
I think that the same thing here is called
Technology. They got rid of the old woodwork, metalwork etc in the early eighties and created CDT (craft, design and technology) which incorporated home economics and computing. The girls grammar school that I attended paid lipservice to teaching home economics and we didn't have any woodwork or metalwork workshops, thankfully that has changed.
The website below gives a guide to the history of the subject and what is included:
Regarded as largely for pupils who were “dull in all ‘brain work’” 2, handicraft was from the outset bereft of status, view as the black sheep of the British educational system - a position not helped by the 1944 Education Act which effectively relegated workshop skills to the secondary modern sector, thus further reinforcing the established “gentlemanly culture”.
Britain’s post-war economic decline is seen as rooted in this culture: humanistic and aesthetic pursuits being regarded higher than practical and commercial activity, resulting in the more able youngsters being attracted away from careers in business and industry.http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/trinity/ph_hist.html
