Trade Schools Alone Won’t Solve Ford’s Crisis

You write that America’s lack of trade schools is partly to blame for our unskilled workforce (“

Why Ford Can’t Find Mechanics,” Review & Outlook, Nov. 18). A complementary explanation: We lost our ability to produce such professionals when we lost our cultural connection to manufacturing.

We are the nation that invented the assembly line in 1913, instrumental in building Ford Model Ts. We mass-produced aircraft, tanks and other equipment during World War II as the global arsenal of democracy. For much of modern American history, manufacturing was a cultural pillar and an institution for achieving societal goals. Children learned how their parents built the tools for a more modern America. Each generation passed on a sense of pride in the country’s ability to work together to produce important advances at scale.