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Feb 26, 2006 13:58:31 GMT
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All this talk about Rob Norman has given me a couple of ideas.
For a lot of kids, getting a car is one of the most important things they can do, forget school, jobs etc, get a car ASAP.
I reckon this country could do worse if it taught basic drivers education and car mechanicing in school like they do in the US. Sure they couldn't drive on the road, but when they reach 17 they would be much better in their first few lessons, plus they would be much more technically inclined too.
Make it technical/academic too, that way it would encourage those who are practically inclined but not accademically gifted to have something to work to, and maybe do something to improve the curse word literacy levels, plus it would encourage those who are academic to learn a practical skill too and maybe open new horizons for them.
Between mechanics, bodywork, paint, electrical and electronics practical and theory, you could catch just about any kid at the right age and give them real work skills. If you put the right kids in teams, they could actually learn to restore the shell, tune the engine and convert it to run on a megasquirt that they actually built, and then learn to drive in it.
If they took it in turns to lead their group (bodywork person leads the team while the body is being done, mechanic leads while the engine/suspension/brakes are being built/refurbed/fitted, and the electronics person leads when refitting the wiring, converting to EFI and tuning, they all would get a share at team leading, and know what it is like to take responsibility.
Again more work skills for a position in management if needed, and to learn what it feels like to have to take the blame.
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RetroMat
Posted a lot
Column Shifting!
Posts: 3,444
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Feb 26, 2006 14:13:58 GMT
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They had some thing like this at my 6th Form, it was a sort of extra module you could take, about driving saftey and very basic maintanence and you got a certificate and something to put on your cv at the end of it. I would have loved to have learn more indepth stuff about cars when i was in school but this was the best we got.
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Feb 26, 2006 14:21:44 GMT
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they did something similar in my school for the fifth year,but only if you were shall we say 'academically challenged' they taught you to ride mopeds and fix engines etc but us normal (term used lightly) had to do regualr classes.i agree that it should be part of the general cirriculum.
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GJM
Posted a lot
Alloy engines; like communism- great in theory.
Posts: 1,393
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Feb 26, 2006 14:34:14 GMT
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Were you 'academicaly challenged' Andy? ;D
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Feb 26, 2006 14:43:22 GMT
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no i wasn't ,i had to sit in chemistry ,looking out of the window,watching the 'remedials' riding round the playground,or having to share a bench in metal work while i made a steam turbine out of a cocoa tin and an ally fan and they rebuilt an fs1e engine.
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Feb 26, 2006 16:04:08 GMT
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See if all kids had to learn the basics of an internal combustion engine both in theory and by stripping and rebuilding a simple 2 stroke engine first then moving onto something more complex, both groups of kids would have learnt something. The "normal" academic kids would have understood the joy of getting your hands dirty, and having something work, and the "remedial" kids would have at least understood why books and reading is both enjoyable and useful. Even if that joy only comes from knowing where to find the knowledge and how to understand it, to complete your manual task.
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Feb 26, 2006 17:01:20 GMT
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luckily i was in the air cadets and learnt a lot there instead,if i had left it up to my school,i'd be mechanically thick.
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Feb 26, 2006 17:30:30 GMT
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Same here. I knew the theory from an interest. But As I didn't pass my test and get a car until I was nearly 32, I didn't change a tyre myself until then.
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Feb 26, 2006 18:15:54 GMT
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i had a car before i'd even passed my test,it was all ready to roll once i had passed.some thought i was over confident and maybe i was but i passed first time.my stepdad taught me loads and it has really helped,at the mo' i've got the head off the imp and i'm about to replace the head gasket,when it arrives( two weeks and counting) if he hadn't been about i would be paying some herbert to do it for me,instead i'm steaming in and doing it myself.
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Feb 26, 2006 22:58:50 GMT
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As it happens, so did I. Had a few lessons when I was 19. My brother passed at 17 and had a ratty ex GPO/BT Bedford HA van. I bought it off him and did some practive then. Then, when 32, I bought the estelle half way through my lessons, and used it for extra practice. It got me arround after passing too. 20 lessons, plus about 2000 miles of extra practice. I loved to drive that old bucket. Really miss it, but didn't have the talent to keep it welded together.
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Feb 28, 2006 20:00:13 GMT
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What p's me off is that schools that tend to run these classes in car/bike maintenance try to shove the 'challenged' individuals on to them, as if they're a dumping ground for sub-normals.....no bloody wonder this country has lost decades of skilled engineers if that is the attitude of the muppets who are supposed to be our tutors!
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Rover Metro - The TARDIS - brake problems.....Stored Rover 75 - Barge MGZTT Cdti 160+ - Winter Hack and Audi botherer... MGF - The Golden Shot...Stored Project Minion........ Can you see the theme?
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Feb 28, 2006 20:47:29 GMT
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I think that manual trades have been seen as 'second best' for a while now... maybe since the '80s, when computers started to be a big thing. We now have the situation where we're (allegedley...) short of plumbers ect, so they're all coming over from Eastern Europe... When I was a kid, I had things like my Dad's old Mechano (still got it... ) and Lego ect, things where you had to use your IMAGINATION. I was always taking things apart to see how they worked. I had bits of old tellys to play with, all sorts of stuff. Plus my Dad and his mate used to repair and service cars on the side... At the end of the day, someone has to get their hands dirty...
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... the only injury I sustained was a bumped head when I let the seatbelt of without realizing the car was upside down and that's not really the car's fault.
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Feb 28, 2006 21:31:45 GMT
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Even back in the 80s when I was at school, the engine and bosy shop was filled with 'remedials'. Lucky buggers. We used their space for an art class and only got to see what they had done without having a go. Needless to say, I'm a designer car nut rather than a hands on car nut.
new drivers have to learn the basics of vehicles these days. Even to the extent of indentifying key components under the bonnet. Get it wrong and fail! I'm all for educating new drivers into the mechanical know how of the motor vehicle.
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Peugeot 307sw - Suzuki SV650S - MX5.
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Feb 28, 2006 22:09:52 GMT
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in my test (less than a year ago) all they had me do was point to the oil cap and the water cap. the things they couldhave asked me to point to was: water, oil, washer fluid, how to check oil and other liquids. although i did get one wrong and she said no and i got another chance. got it right second time.
now i use the goaferboy technique. golf: 1. is the engine running a little hot? yes? top up water 2. has the heater stopped working? yes? top up water now!
buggy: 1. is the oil patch more of a puddle than usual? yes? best check the oil.
although i check it every time i take it out. just don't take it out that often plus i have to check petrol old skool. petrol guage doesnt work/is dangling down from the dash and i don't trust it
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Feb 28, 2006 22:12:47 GMT
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Heh, reminds me of my verifiable Dolomite technique at the moment: 1) Does it smell of petrol? Yes? Good, that means there's still some petrol in it, so let's go 2) Is the fuel gauge off the bottom? Yes? Oh look, the airbox is full of fuel again. 3) If fuel consumption is 25 quid to 5 miles, should you look at it? Yes? Fixed now. Almost. ;D
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Mr K
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,993
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Feb 28, 2006 22:18:01 GMT
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yea i got asked some of those wibblepoo questions, i got asked patronisingly how do i check the oil.... so i said, 'pull out the dip stick, whipe clean, put it back in, pull it out and check its between the two points'.... but he then told me that was wrong and went off on one about some curse word that i cant remember and then said the answer, then he said try again... so i just said the answer he had just told me which as far as i could tell was just the same as what i had said first time, then all was fine! wtf that was all about i don't know. When he told me i had passed, i was so exited i accidentally did a arm movement and said "YES!" in a tone of voice and style of action that it made me think of Alan Partidge strait away, and the instructor gave me a very odd look!
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Feb 28, 2006 22:45:14 GMT
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green with envy!there is no sort of workshop for cars or engines or anything at our school and i go to a brand new engineering specialist school!
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Feb 28, 2006 22:54:58 GMT
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This thread's highlighted a couple of things that annoy me about the British schooling systems, (the Scottish one runs independantly to the English one but it manages to share many of the major flaws), one being the snobbishness that it looks at many manual, non-acedemic subjects besides PE with, the idea that teaching kids mechanical abilities or anything else that involves using your hands and your iniative instead of copying notes to pass the exam, is somehow not education at all and not worth teaching, and that only people they see as unteachable cretins (who more often than not are just kids who've lost interest for whatever reason or else are just not so good at acedemic stuff) who should be shoved out of the road and kept busy. The combined result is that a high school kid can't be mechanically inclined and want to pass his exams, he has to pick one or the other, the result being the only mechanical training I ever got was helping my grandad fix the latest £20 banger he had bought down the Glasgow car auctions, or skidging off to go with my dad and helping fix and maintain the my dad's lorry and the lorries in the convoys we were travelling with, because to do anything mechanical I would've had to have been classed as unteachable and end up crammed into one of the tech classrooms where some harrassed teacher explained the same stuff every week. It wasn't so bad for me because I did have a motoring background, but the average young petrolhead in the schools in the working class areas of the West of Scotland who still wanted to get a couple of higher grades got no help at all to quench his interest.
This lack of training that involves your hands rears it's head in other areas too, as some of you will be sick of hearing one of my duties with the St Andrews Ambulance Corps, Inverclyde Company, is the role of Assistant Cadet Officer for the St Andrews Cadets, and one thing that you find about new cadets pretty quickly is that not only do they have no first aid training whatsoever, despite the fact that the schools are legally required to give them it, but the fact that they've never been allowed to do anything themselves or get their hands dirty, and have merely had to copy off the blackboard since they were four years old, most of the kids we get in start out with no initiative, no ability to improvise or work things out, no social or negotiation skills, and a total unwillingness to get their hands dirty and do things practically, plus no respect for the people in command, because they're not used to having a teacher show them how things are really done, they expect to sit at a desk and copy out notes while text messaging their mates about how useless the teacher is. It's quite annoying that because it takes up a great deal of extra time shaping recruits like that into a disciplined, knowledgable, outfit that can solve problems by themselves.
Really the same applies to new road users under this system. Having never had to look at an engine before let alone change the oil, and having never had to change a wheel, when it inevitibly happens that their new car that they bought for a couple of hundred quid or inherited from their gran doesn't work the way it should, or has a puncture or similar, many people don't have a clue how to hel[ themselves, and, particularly in the case of young women, can find themselves at the mercy of complete strangers that they can only hope are above board and not going to try anything. Basic mechanical competency really should be taught, if not in schools, but to everyone who intends to drive, a car is a piece of machinery, a potentially very dangerous one in the wrong hands, and a dangerous piece of machinery shouldn't be handled if it can't be maintained and handled properly.
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"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
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Feb 28, 2006 23:34:21 GMT
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When he told me i had passed, i was so exited i accidentally did a arm movement and said "YES!" in a tone of voice and style of action that it made me think of Alan Partidge strait away, and the instructor gave me a very odd look! jacka-nacka-nory! kiss my face!
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Last Edit: Feb 28, 2006 23:35:56 GMT by goaferboy
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Mr K
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,993
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Feb 28, 2006 23:38:14 GMT
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When he told me i had passed, i was so exited i accidentally did a arm movement and said "YES!" in a tone of voice and style of action that it made me think of Alan Partidge strait away, and the instructor gave me a very odd look! jacka-nacka-nory! kiss my face! WOAH! thats french for stop a horse....! Back of the net....
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