Class, trip aim for social change through the bicycle

This really-oughtn't-be-on-Page-1 piece highlights a Prescott College program in which students work on bikes and learn about the economic and social effects along with the mechanicals. The comments seethe with bike-hate and PC-hate. It's entertaining if you enjoy that sort of thing.

What everyone seems to have missed is that there's a need for a college course on bike repair -- because most kids are growing up now with very little experience with tools and machines, and most of our secondary schools are no longer teaching mechanical skills.

So this course is not an indictment of the students, rather it's an indictment of our atrophying public-school system and American parents who never teach their kids (or don't know themselves) the business end of a wrench.

I'll tell ya, if a new Axis were to try taking over the world next year, we would have zero chance of building the sort of industrial machine that ultimately won that war. We no longer value the skills.