The US does not have anything like this in its mandatory public school curriculum that I know of. My experience in a good public system was that if you had time in your schedule to take a shop class (wood and metal working) it was because you weren't taking a foreign language or music class. Same problem with art -- there was no room built in to accommodate those classes in a typical student's schedule.
I went to a regular public school and we had a mandatory program called 'Life Skills' that served roughly this purpose in 8th grade. It wasn't a full class though. As I recall it was 2 hours each Friday afternoon for a semester and everyone rotated through a few sub-classes: cooking, wood shop, sewing, and mechanical drawing.
Hmmm. Odd. I took all the above. Maybe our classes were shorter (~50min each)? Or we had longer days (7.30am to 3.30pm and then the extracurriculars started)?
I and the other students from the AP classes at my school effectively had no electives -- we all took math, science, English, history, a foreign language, and at least one music class every semester of every year throughout middle and high school. With 6 classes a day and extra curricular sports, robotics and music there was no way to take a shop or home-ec class, and that's after getting arts and gym waived.
> and at least one music class every semester of every year throughout middle and high school
Seriously? I'm all for music in schools, did a fair bit myself, and went to a public school with a strong program... but 14+ semesters of required music seems like overkill for most people.
We had a shop class. What we didn't have was time to take it without skipping out on another core class. This should be required curriculum -- that was the point I took home from the article.
States and school districts still have a fair amount of control over curricula, so "the US" does mandate hands-on classes in some places. My high school had a mandatory shop class (student's choice of woods or metals). Middle school had mandatory home ec for all genders.
We didn't skip out on another class, it was just part of the curriculum. This was 8th grade, and I transferred out after that year, so I don't know what they did in High School.
