There was a story on page 2A of last week’s paper that some readers may have skipped right over. It was about a summer camp for middle schoolers. Go back and read it.
Kids from the Boys and Girls Club of North Georgia, fifth grade through ninth, spent seven Thursdays at Chattahoochee Tech’s Appalachian Campus in Jasper.
In essence they learned what you need to know for business. They learned to read a caliper down to a 1/128th of an inch. They pulled a tire off and put it back on. They bent a welding rod at the four-and six-inch marks and turned it into a pair of stainless-steel menu stands. They priced a menu, ran the food costs to clear a profit. Pretty impressive.
Math instructor Suzette Hermann put the camp together with the idea that plenty of people get through life without knowing much math but if you know it, you’ll find a place to use it.
We’d go further than that. Right now, the ability to physically do something is looking like the best bet a young person can make. (Note: We recently saw a post from a daughter to her father asking for step-by-step instructions on how to change a flat tire. The young girl was with her boyfriend when she had the flat. Knowing this, the dad texted: Step 1. Break up with boyfriend.)
For 30 years the message to every kid has been “go to college. Get the degree. Sit at a desk.” Trade work was what you settled for when the other thing didn’t pan out.
Like much advice, that wisdom hasn’t aged well. Think about what an entry-level office job actually consists of — reading documents, summarizing them, checking somebody’s numbers — precisely the work artificial intelligence does faster and cheaper than a human.
But look on the flip side.
Nobody has built a machine that will crawl under your house in February and find the leak. The people who wire our additions, fix our HVAC, weld our trailers, cut our hair and drive the ambulance aren’t being replaced by anything, and we don’t have enough of them as it is.
According to the county’s Chief Financial Officer, Miranda McDowell, there are currently five open full-time paramedic positions, one part-time paramedic position, and one open EMT position with the county and this isn’t unusual.
Automotive instructors Ben Pendley and Dillon Wilhoit told those kids a mechanic on the right career path can clear six figures. That’s a good living, earned 15 minutes from home, with no student loan riding on it.
The best line of the whole story came from carpentry instructor David Mazzotta, who was asked why a 12-year-old needs to know how to use basic tools. “One day ya’ll will live in a house,” he said, “and that house will have problems.”
Every house does. Every car eventually quits in a parking lot. And the person who knows how to handle these things never has to look to far for a job.
So, thanks to Hermann and to the instructors who gave up their Thursdays, to Pickens County EMS and Fire Marshal Shane Callahan for the blood pressure and burn lesson, and to the Boys and Girls Club staff who hauled a bunch of 11-year-olds across the county seven weeks running. That took real effort from people who weren’t obligated to make it. Do it again next summer.
And parents — if your kid comes home from something like this talking about welding, don’t steer them off it. Then drive them by the Appalachian Campus of Chatt Tech and consider which bright future they want.
