Blue-collar classes are classes in which students are taught to utilize manual labor or skilled trades. This would encompass classes such as construction, electricity, plumbing, welding, and mechanics; classes that educate kids on the basic background knowledge applied in trade school.
Students engaging in these vocational classes are beneficial to their everyday lives, as the curriculum can be applied further than the classroom. Construction could allow students to make functional items, plumbing would teach kids how to unclog toilets, and welding permits fun jewelry making at home.
The point is this: Blue-collar classes teach skills that exceed the classroom or a specific career, unlike many traditional curricula offered to high school students.
It’s not uncommon for high schools across the country to provide at least a couple of trade-focused curricula to their students — just a city over, Sherwood High School offers a construction and woodworking class; however, Wilsonville High School lacks this department entirely.
While Wilsonville allows students to engage in quite a few hands-on CTE programs, including computer programming, digital arts, education, engineering technology, and journalism, vocational courses are absent.
Despite the common presence of blue-collar classes in past decades, trade-focused courses have faced a dramatic decline. Catalyzed in the 1980s, culture in the United States steered students away from trade schools and encouraged white-collar degrees.
Because of the belief that laboring jobs lead to low-wage jobs, vocational classes started to be replaced by STEM courses with the hopes of pushing kids towards a Bachelor’s. According to constructconnect.com (2023), blue-collar careers are facing a huge labor shortage.
Regardless of negative stigmas, skilled trades can provide workers with a substantial living. Nuclear power reactor operators, power distributors and dispatchers, elevator and escalator installers and repairers, and ship engineers are amongst the highest paying manual trades. According to Accreditedschoolsonline.org (2023), these trades pay at or above 100K annually.
Additionally, the strong demand for skilled laborers matched with less overall competition in the work field heightens one’s ability to obtain a secure job, further securing a substantial living.
Yet, blue-collar jobs are still negatively stigmatized.
Wilsonville High School could help lead the way to reinvent trade-focused negative connotations by introducing vocational classes into its curriculum and encouraging students to get involved.
Students on campus voice their enthusiasm for this idea, expressing that they would enjoy taking a blue-collar class if they had the option.
“I think it’d be fun to take a welding class cause then, like I can see if there’s something that I might like doing, or like I could just start a new hobby, and it would just be a fun thing to fill my schedule with,” Junior Ari Avilla says.
Norah Arthur, another junior at Wilsonville, says, “I would take some sort of blue collar class, I think it would be like a different thing to do than like other typical classes and a fun thing to do during the school day.”
So let’s take that step, level up, and reintroduce blue-collar classes into Wilsonville High School’s academics.
