Dan Walters: Industrial-arts students get a State Fair snub

It's debatable whether the agrarian, perhaps even medieval, institution that we call a "fair" is relevant in a 21st century of global economic forces, mind-spinning technology and cultural fusion and confusion.

Nevertheless, even in a state as edgy as California, dozens of local fairs and a big State Fair in Sacramento continue to be staged, even if some fairs have evolved from showcases of agricultural and industrial production into mélanges of second-tier entertainment, dubious fast food, often seedy carnivals and low-rent commercialism.

One often has to wade through the cheesy distractions to find them, but somewhere, often in the back of the fairgrounds, one finds nuggets of the fairs' original purpose.

The industrial arts exhibit at the California State Fair has been one of those nuggets, drawing entries from high schools throughout the state, from furniture to electronic instruments to model homes to automotive hardware.

It has a gee-whiz quality – as in "you mean some high school kid built this?" – and tends to restore one's faith in adolescent ingenuity and pluck.

But the industrial arts exhibit has also served another purpose, reminding fairgoers that practical trades are economically important at a time when many school districts, on the fallacious notion that every kid is headed to college, are waging a virtual war on what used to be called "vocational education."

If State Fair officials have their way, however, the industrial arts exhibit will be severely curtailed this year. Even as students are building their ingenious entries, the State Fair wants to reduce the exhibit to a fraction of its former space, combine it with other features, move it to a less prominent venue and eliminate transportation for larger entries.

"Students all over the state have been preparing for the State Fair," said Lance Gunnersen, who teaches industrial arts in Davis and is the incoming president of the California Industrial and Technology Education Association. "We're very surprised."

Why the move? State Fair officials insist that waning interest among students and fairgoers mandate the change but offer very little proof.

"The feedback from fairgoers is they see the same stuff year after year," Greg Kinder, deputy State Fair manager, told the fair board the other day when industrial arts instructors showed up to protest. "If we don't give customers something to see, they won't come back."

So what would replace the students' exhibits? Another potato peeler salesman? Another hot tub sales pavilion? Another hypnotist?

Ironically, the brain-dead State Fair move is being made as vocational education, or "career technical education" as it's now called, is beginning to make a comeback. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a champion, and key legislators have joined the effort to stop the shrinkage in job-oriented classes in high school, recognizing that voc-ed can be an antidote to the state's scandalously high dropout rate.

A labor-industry coalition called GetReal has been formed to boost education in construction, close-tolerance machining, auto repair and other fields, citing a decline in training venues and looming shortages in key fields as baby boomer craftsmen retire.

As State Fair officials are preparing to shunt industrial arts exhibits into some obscure cubbyhole, the State Allocation Board is dispatching nearly $200 million in grants and loans to 174 school sites around the state to build and/or upgrade their vocational education facilities.

But John Chocholak, an industrial arts instructor in Ukiah, says his school's supportive administration invested heavily in new shops and other facilities, only to reduce vocational classes sharply because of a shortages of operating funds.

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• Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.