To celebrate this Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, May 1, we can channel the earthly father of Jesus and imagine his joy that Catholics increasingly see promise in a “tech school” education.

Americans have rediscovered the need to “get their hands dirty” for the sake of career progress, economic strength, and personal growth.

So far, Catholics have seen it happening at the long-lived Don Bosco Technical Institute, a college-prep high school run by the Salesian order in Rosemead, California. Founded in 1955, Bosco Tech is enrolling its first female students in 2026.

Harmel Academy, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, launched fully as a two-year Catholic college in January 2021.

The College of St. Joseph the Worker, a tech college, will open this fall in Steubenville, Ohio.

Also opened this year is Saint Peter Catholic High School in Galveston, Texas. It occupies the grounds of a former grade school.

Leaders say they’re considering a joint program in cybersecurity with Houston’s University of St. Thomas.

The schools were described in an Our Sunday Visitor article in March.  

This concept for Catholic schooling is just starting to build, you might say. But the emergence is concurrent with a rebirth of interest in vocational arts training in secular schools.

Such training faded years ago when high schools refocused on preparation for four-year college degrees. Those degrees have become unaffordable for many students, and they have become less suited to segments of the modern economy.

America’s huge “skills gap” has resulted in many essential fields being short-handed, according to “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe at his MikeRoweWorks website.

He cites the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report that “there are more than 7 million jobs available across the country, the majority of which don’t require a four-year degree.

The TV celebrity has been an influential activist, championing the education of more electricians, plumbers, mechanics, and welders, as well as technologists in medicine, energy, and construction, plus experts in carpentry, HVAC, computing and cybersecurity, architecture, materials, media, and more.

A post at Harmel’s website describes its Catholic roots:

“In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, St. John Paul II suggested that the key to social problems is a proper understanding of human work,” the college points out. “Above all else, Harmel Academy exists to help the working man develop an understanding of the dignity and adventure of work.”

The combination of teaching the Catholic faith and the skills for a trades career recalls the Benedictine motto, “Ora et Labora”—prayer and work.

As Father Dwight Longenecker wrote in The National Catholic Register, the life of Benedictine monks blends prayer and working with one’s hands. That’s in tune with the word “liturgy,” which means “the work of the people.”

Work is not drudgery when it “becomes part of man’s high calling and service,” wrote Longenecker.

A 2005 book, Saint Benedict’s Rule for Business Success by Quentin Skrabec Jr., touts the Rule’s “organizational genius, which has had wide application beyond monastic groups.” It offers insights into “some of the most difficult resource management in business” and a must-read for entrepreneurs and managers.

With all the insights on offer from this first, growing batch of trade schools, St. Joseph the carpenter would be proud—well, let’s say pleased.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Collective Commons designs.