Teachers Like This Are the Only Hope for Auto Shop Programs

From the March 2017 issue

Every other Saturday around 8:00 a.m., Robert Roach rolls up the doors of the cluttered auto shop at Carson High in south Los Angeles and welcomes anyone who wants to stop by. During the week, Roach teaches auto shop at the school, and on odd weekends the Boys and Girls Club of Carson kicks in a few bucks to sponsor “Cars & ­Guitars,” Roach’s informal name for these Saturday gatherings. When I poked in the other day, about 15 young people were there, both current students and alumni who have moved on but are still drawn back to friends and comfortable surroundings. A pair of teenagers dabbed paint on a metal stand on which an old Buick V-6 had been partially stripped and its parts labeled for learning. Another was pulling the front springs off a well-worn Studebaker pickup. And, sure enough, a couple of kids were strumming guitars. Oil changes, brake jobs, and pet go-kart and ATV projects are common activities on these Saturdays.

You may recall Roach from a column I wrote back in 2012 about the decline of high-school auto shops and the failure of public education to recognize that America needs people who can make and fix things as much as it needs English-lit majors. Every so often, Roach emails me with the latest twists and turns in the fate of Carson’s auto shop. He spends a lot of his free time writing grant proposals and talking to car companies and others about donating castoff stuff for the kids to learn from. He’s excited about a grant proposal that he recently ­submitted to the RPM Foundation, which supports education in restoration and preservation.