This morning on NPR, they had an interview with Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Richard Russo about his new novel Bridge of Sighs. Russo frequently writes about the blue collar class, and in his interview, he mentioned the loss of things in which the lower classes are able to take significant pride. We, as a society tend to place such a strong stigma on the activities of the blue collar working man (and woman) that we fail to note the pride they take in their work. The shame isn't their's for the dirt under the fingernails, but lies in the hearts of those who fail to see or understand and thereby diminish the significance of their contributions. Richard told of working with his father on a highway crew, and that every time his father would pick him up at the airport he would point out the highway entrance ramp they worked on together. "We did that!" he would state. Classism is a serious disease that we must overcome in our efforts to build a nation that makes full use of the diverse talents of our people. As long as hands-on learning is disconnected from the education of the academic elite, there will be little recognition in society of the contributions of our nation's craftsmen.

In the wood shop this afternoon we used one of our object launchers to produce a ballistics problem for the physics class to study. It was much more meaningful than working from a purely hypothetical model. From the angle of launch, and the distance the object flew, the physics class was able to determine velocity, height, and time of flight.