Industrial arts classes popular in Oneonta

March 15, 2008 04:00 am

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Gentlemen readers, you know you're a "pack rat" when "¦ you find projects still lying around you made in shop class many, many years ago. "Industrial Arts" was a nicer name for shop class.

I hang on to a lot of things, but I'm not guilty of having any projects I made in the class at the junior high school when it was on Academy Street. To the best of my memory, the only thing I kept or lasted was a bird feeder I made in wood shop. After two years of being out in the elements and the squirrels eating much more than the birds ever did, that project made the kindling woodpile for our Ben Franklin stove.

Industrial arts, or shop class, wasn't my forte. For others, these classes later provided a good living for many graduates of Oneonta High.

The first classes of this kind were introduced in the 1932-33 school year in Oneonta. The Oneonta Herald reported it this way in the Nov. 16, 1933, edition:

"Not trade training, but a general working idea of wood, metal, and electrical craft, is the purpose of industrial arts courses at the Academy Street School, Clarence D. Schelleng, instructor, explained recently."

At that time, Mr. Schelleng had about 40 high school boys and nearly 150 seventh- and eighth-grade boys in his classes, studying the principles of mechanical work and learning to make things for their own use, as well as do necessary repair jobs around their homes.

By November 1933, the optional work in the classes had about double the attendance from the previous school year.

The Great Depression had set in, but the classes remained popular and eventually some federal funding allowed better facilities for classroom space.

"Airy, Well Lighted Machine Shop To Be Pleasant Place for Students" was the headline for an article in The Oneonta Star of Nov. 6, 1941. Ground had been broken on April 10 of that year. Labor and supervision for the construction were financed with National Youth Association funds, and the materials were provided by the Board of Education. NYA was a program in President Roosevelt's "New Deal," often described as "alphabet soup," which also included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Works Progress Administration (WPA), and National Recovery Act (NRA), among others.

Located between the high and junior high schools and having indoor connections with both, the shop was built with the same kind of brick, and the same style of construction as the school buildings. It was a one-story structure, 40-by-80-feet in size and had two rooms.

To the room nearer the junior high school, machinery and equipment from the junior high metal shop were transferred into the new building. This became a place where young men received training in the national defense program, while others would acquire part of their vocational education. They'd need it because in just about a month, things got chaotic over in Pearl Harbor.

"When this emergency is over, this room will be used for vocational training in auto mechanics," The Star reported. Plans were under consideration for mechanical drawing and blueprint work at that time.

Oneonta High grads used their welding and other skills almost immediately, and went to work in Sidney at the Scintilla Magneto defense plant, today's Amphenol Corp. Others likely went to Remington Arms in Ilion. Many workers weren't in Sidney long, because they received notice from Uncle Sam that they were needed in Europe and Japan. Women and many farm laborers then took up the slack.

After the war, industrial arts was still a favorite course of many. By the late 1960s and early '70s, Oneonta and other area school districts figured out that it would cost taxpayers a lot less if these classes could be taught at a single location, and attended by students brought in from those districts. The growth of the Board of Cooperative Education Services campuses for this and many other vocations began.

On Monday: Catskill Area Hospice and Palliative Care turns 25.

City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com.

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