3.12.2009

We Have Computer Education but No Automotive Education? What Is Up With That?

I had an entry last month about how I think that computers should have a very limited role in schools. I want to go off on sort of a tangent of that and ask the question, “Why don’t we have mandatory automotive shop class in schools? Why doesn’t each and every student have a basic understanding of how a car works by the time they get out of high school?”

I mean, we all use cars just as much as we use computers. They’re just as big a part of our lives as computers are. Most every American adult has one. They’re even the second-biggest purchase (after a house) that we make in our lives. So why don’t we know how they work?

I was twenty, TWENTY, years old before I knew the difference between a carburetor, an alternator, and a distributor. I also didn’t know the difference between gas and diesel, that brakes and power steering systems used fluid, and that car axles weren’t just straight metal rods that connected two wheels like in the cartoons. And those were things I could’ve learned in ten minutes! I had a drivers license since I was 16, but I bought my first car without even test-driving it, much less looking under the hood!




We spend thousands of dollars on laptops for kids, while an automotive course requires a battered car that a school could get for $500. $300? Free?

Car stuff is knowledge that all our students could use, male and female, yet it is being withheld from them in the name of “electives.” Why is a course in basic automotive mechanics an elective while computers are brought in for every high school English class? Why do we insist that kindergardeners know how to type but leave the exploration of cars to those only those who are self-motivated? Again, cars are just a big a part of our lives as computers are!

The result of this is a generation who buys cars for looks rather then fuel mileage or parts availability, and chooses to pay the 70-100% (!) markup on parts that their garage charges them (which they do) for things like brakes. Brakes! You know when you need brakes, so why not just go down to an auto parts store and buy your own brakes? They have parts catalogs there to help you find what you need and everything!

And we blow fuel efficiency way out of proportion. This article from the LA Times critiques the new Honda Insight, priced at around $18,000. A comparable car, the Nissan Versa for example, costs $9,999, but is not a hybrid. At today’s gas prices, the Insight is estimated to save you about $315/year in gas over the Versa. When will this make up the $9000 price gap? In about 31 years. The I can almost guarantee that it will be cheaper to fix the Versa as well! Good fuel economy is something to consider, but not something on which to hang a horrible financial decision.

I think that good education about cars and how they work, even if it's a single course in high school, can help a lot of these problems and help the coming generation make increasingly smarter decisions about buying and maintaining a car. As cars become increasingly more sophisticated and engine diagnostic equipment becomes cheaper and cheaper, it will be easier and easier to solve your own car problems. Hopefully we can take full advantage of that when the time comes.





_DZ


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