I think you might be looking at this issue the wrong way. How can there be relevant standards when there is no definition of a "machinist" or "toolmaker" or whatever.
I use a die grinder to flatten the bottom of trim/flange/restrike steels for the dies we build. My roommate uses a surface grinder. I haven't touched a milling machine in five months, my roommate uses them daily. I stone and polish dies for days or weeks on end (and there *is* a skill in doing it correctly) while my roommate only uses diamond paste and very infrequently. The parts our dies make must look cosmetically flawless, my roommate's dies make parts which are buried in a car. We are both Ontario Tool and Die Maker Apprentices. Should we write the same test? Could I do his job and vice versa?
"Gary H. Lucas" wrote in news:L2ahf.12357$Lw6.1280@trndny02:
I have. Maybe not in as dramatic a way as you have. I think people have got to want to change at some level in order for you or me to make a difference.
I also get asked for career advise quite a bit. Younger guys that want to know how to get ahead or improve their skills. A number of those guys have taken my advice and are doing very well.
Good call. There is nothing worse than doing work you hate.
"Robin S." wrote in news:yKahf.5865$ snipped-for-privacy@news20.bellglobal.com:
There are, but not as many as there used to be.
I think that as much as than anything specialization has helped kill formal training programs. There are a set of basic skills required no matter what you end up doing. The weak areas that I see are: math, metrology, blueprint reading, and basic methodology. Surely you don't need a four year apprenticeship to learn those skills. A two year course would be overkill IMO.
In another post you mentioned Europe and their training programs. Having worked with some of those guys, I find them to be a little more rigid and less willing to think outside of the box. There is a downside to serving an apprenticeship and then spending your whole career with just one company. Namely you never get exposed to other methods and company cultures.
I find that some of the best guys that I've worked with over the years have done some bouncing around. It gives them a broader range of experience. Working for the right job shop will expose a person to a wide variety of work and methods as well. Problem is, working at the wrong one will teach you bad habits and poor practices.
Motivating students to learn things for which they can't see the immediate benefit is one of the age-old problems of education. You still need to force-feed some of it. But there is an argument, which I agree with, that some subjects are best taught in young adulthood, after a person has a little exposure to adult responsibilities and concerns.
Maybe. But I attended what was then one of the better public high schools in the US. My son's school is good but not in that category. Nevertheless, he and his schoolmates are learning things that they wouldn't have considered teaching then. And he has twice as much homework.
How ya' doin', Dave? I'll bet the business of making lie-detector parts is hoppin' along about now, with all of the indictments of administration officials. You must be cleaning up.
Yeah, dealing drugs is a Texas-size bidness these days. I can hardly believe all of the marketing activity that goes on in this business.
BTW, I just borrowed one of my son's graphing calculators today (several light-years more advanced than my calculators) and he looked at me in disgust as I expressed my amazement that it will do indefinite integrals. When I was in high school I couldn't *spell* indefinite integral. Well, by the end of senior year, maybe. He's been doing them for over a year. I'm afraid to ask him what he's doing now.
Who in the hell says they don't teach enough math in high school? The problem is that kids don't TAKE enough math in high school. It's there for them to take.
Dan, You are right, you can't change everyone. In fact you can't really change anyone. What you are looking for is a diamond in the rough, that just hasn't been discovered yet, and may never be without a little help.
I once said "There are no bad employees, only bad management" I couldn't have been more wrong!
We can do it in 10 years if we eliminate the 3 month vacation.
This was necessary to provide labor in an agricultural economy but no longer needed. In a very few cases students can work along side their parents and pick up the skills by "osmosis" but this is an increasingly rare exception.
Eliminating 2 years of schooling means two more years of work. Current median wage is around 36k$ per year or 72,000$ total. see
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state by state details.
If one of the reasons for an education is "to make more money" here it is.
This will also have the affect of increasing the available educational infrastructure [buildings/equipment] by 33% at no cost by 12 month rather than 9 month utilization. This will also operationally increase the supply of teachers by 33%.
This is a myth. Planting is in the spring. Harvest overlaps the beginning of school. Even most universities have terms that run, typically, from October through June. For example, at Oxford University in the UK, the Trinity Term next year ends on June 16th. Michaelmas Term doesn't begin until October
8th. That isn't so the Oxford students can work in the fields.
Many institutions have a traditional summer recess that doesn't involve farm work. Most legislatures around the world recess in summer; even the Finnish legislature. Summer recesses started because the heat of summer makes work and studying difficult. In my district, the subject has come up: nobody wants to pay for the air conditioning.
That would allow you to die two years sooner, and still have the same number of toys when you die!
That's exciting...
Well, that's *one* of the reasons, all right. But education the world around is responding to the broader demands for general education, for the purpose of creating versatile young adults who can adapt to change. In Japan, they are holding conferences with educators from the UK, the US, and Australia to learn how to build this into their curriculum. A statement by one of them last year contained this:
"Since the 1990s, Japanese authorities have begun to shift their emphasis from knowledge-oriented education to building children's ability to adapt to changes and open up their own future..."
"'It is not simply the ability to make a living . . . but the ability to make one's way through today's dramatically changing world. We consider it the ability to open up one's own future,' Kawai [a Japanese school official] said."
It's coming around to the classical idea of a liberal education: education gives you the means by which you can *take advantage of* vocational training. Without the former, the latter can become a straightjacket.
As for the evidence of the supposed benefits of year-'round education, it's a mixed bag. The year-'round students seem to pass standardized tests somewhat better. But they don't seem to do any better at anything else. It may be mental fatigue, or it may be too much indoctrination. Either way,
12-month programs don't seem to produce anything of lasting value for younger kids.
Efficiency, in the end, will have to take into account the end product. Packing more data into less time is a questionable solution.
We'll await more evidence. I'm skeptical. One of the reasons is something you alluded to in an earlier message: as we know from some psych research over the past few years, younger kids can handle more facts but they don't have the mental maturity to handle some kinds of reasoning. And, as Japan has learned, "more facts" doesn't seem to lead to the desired result.
Now ED, you told me that the drug companies you work for would keep you alive until your health insurance ran out. So you die only when you ins runs out, what's 2 more yrs? Without sulphur OIL I would be dead already. Are the drug companies in with the people that are trying to outlaw it? I know you can't say.
Well, I don't know how to say this gently, but...Dave, you're actually
*preserved*, like canned meat or fish. All those years of being covered with sulfur oil has left you in a state that's something like, ah, kippered herring.
Pharmacology and medicine can't do much for you, I'm afraid. What you need is a food chemistry specialist...or an embalmer.
Lots of good observations and opinions but still no list of the skills that the companies are short of or the criteria to be used to determine when a person has that skill.
Does anybody or any organization hase such a list? There are several lists on the internet/web but these are generic to tool/die and precision machining programs. Is this a case of "I can't tell you what I want, but I will know it when I see it"?
Until we have such a list we are simply debating the gender of angels. Some skills are best taught by the family, some in primary/secondary schools, some in trade/tech schools, and some on the job.
If you are going to "hollar for help" lets be specific about what you want/need.
The NIMS skill set is the one used by industrial-training planners:
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And the US Govt. report that you pointed to in an earlier message has good lists of basic skills that employers say they want and need. Put the two together, and I think you have a good basis for judgment.
Sorry I missed this thread, i should refresh. There has always been a 1-10 ratio of people with brains vs those without. I guess it's about the same ratio concerning spines. But the reality is, we are short on bus drivers, not bus riders. I agree, without bus riders there is no bus buissiness, but at this point we are low on bus drivers. Soooo, since there's lots of money floating around from low interest rates people are literally throiwing money at that problem. they even gave their solution a name..."automation".
We need people who are raised with the idea working for a living is honorable. As long as we teach kids in school to get a good education so you make a lot of money for doing nothing we wont have whats needed to continue being the greatest manufacturing nation on earth.
Anybody remember the episode when George Jetson broke his finger...there were no sprockets that day.......
Everyone knows whats needed,.... a culture of honorable people who are willing to kick ass for the right to belong to the greatest nation on Earth, or the Earth has ever seen.
(top posted) When a competency list for a position is provided, it is assumed these are "requirements" and not just characteristics that it would be nice if the job candidate possessed.
We will ignore the SCANS list because of the difficulty in objectively measuring the candidate "objectively" [which can be operationally defined as obtaining the same rating from two or more raters.] I sometimes refer to the SCANS skills/abilities compilation as a "boy scout list," i.e. brave, trustworthy, loyal reverent, obedient, etc. as there are few testable skills (in contrast to the merit badges.)
When Ed observers "The NIMS skill set is the one used by industrial-training planners:" he identifies a major part of the problem without knowing it. How do these skills match up with what industry needs, or even more importantly what industry wants? Also NIMS is not an organization that employes machinists.
A further problem in these lists is validating the requirements. I wish that I could provide the group with transcripts or videos of the many meetings with local manufacturers where we attempted to extract exactly this information. The first problem was the majority of people attending the meeting had no real contact with or knowledge of the actual production process. The people actually doing the work were too busy "getting the product out the door" to see us. In other cases where the meeting participants had some connection with the manufacturing process, they were years out of date, suggesting requirements for equipment and processes that had long been eliminated at that location, such as hand scraping machine slides or bearings, and hydro-tel hydraulic trace operation.
A parallel problem was the lack of common requirements between companies, even in the same general product areas for positions with the same (or close) names. When the reasonable requirements for a technician from companies A, B & C were combined, the result was that a licensed engineer with years of experience would have trouble meeting them all.
The NIMS competency list can be reviewed at
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of the people in the alt.machines.cnc group are full time professionals in the metal working field. I suggest that you print off a copy of this list and mark the items you feel you are competent in.
You have to learn the rules before you can break them. I think that's what a heavily standardized national curriculum teaches. It's true the "square-heads" are more resistant to thinking outside the box but perhaps you can't have it both ways, or at least you can't teach it into them.
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