Even in the rural midwest in the early nineties you didn't get a big shop education in middle school, and I was on the academic track in high school. But we did a lot of woodworking in Scouts. Pretty much everyone grew up in families that worked with their hands. Some of us came factory work, the farm kids all learned how to use tools. And even the "rich" kids families owned small companies who worked in these areas.
Fast forward to the beginning of architecture school and we all had to draft by hand (which I had been doing in some capacity since 7th grade) and learn to and use the shop. We didn't learn to draft because it was a necessary skill anymore, but to learn 1. spatial thinking and in turn 2. how to turn ideas into real things you could communicate. Same with the making of physical models (even if you didn't use the shop).
These require the attention to detail and understanding of process necessary to break a sophisticated design idea down into individual actions (single lines, cuts, etc), and are of immense value even if you never touch a wood shop after undergraduate.
Even today, 25 years later and a time when we don't even necessarily teach 2d -CAD- drafting anymore we still require shop work, physical modeling, and hand drafting of ALL our students. So much that in a lot of places the first year of a 5 year professional Bachelor of Architecture doesn't even touch digital modeling of any sort.
If you want a foundational read that touches on deeper meanings around workmanship let me recommend David Pye's The Nature and Art of Workmanship[0].
Fast forward to the beginning of architecture school and we all had to draft by hand (which I had been doing in some capacity since 7th grade) and learn to and use the shop. We didn't learn to draft because it was a necessary skill anymore, but to learn 1. spatial thinking and in turn 2. how to turn ideas into real things you could communicate. Same with the making of physical models (even if you didn't use the shop).
These require the attention to detail and understanding of process necessary to break a sophisticated design idea down into individual actions (single lines, cuts, etc), and are of immense value even if you never touch a wood shop after undergraduate.
Even today, 25 years later and a time when we don't even necessarily teach 2d -CAD- drafting anymore we still require shop work, physical modeling, and hand drafting of ALL our students. So much that in a lot of places the first year of a 5 year professional Bachelor of Architecture doesn't even touch digital modeling of any sort.
If you want a foundational read that touches on deeper meanings around workmanship let me recommend David Pye's The Nature and Art of Workmanship[0].
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319901.The_Nature_and_Ar...