Teaching kids how to steal cars is a good idea

A recent workshop in Los Angeles offers something special for interested children: a class on the mechanics of car theft. Created by the non-profit organization Machine Project, the workshop is entitled “The Good Kids’ Guide to Being a Bit Bad: Cars edition.” It covers the topics of hot wiring, opening a locked door and getting out of a locked trunk… and we fully support the class.

Getting kids fascinated about “how things work” is a wonderful project, and when it involves cars, well that’s just a bonus. In this modern world, it’s so easy to overlook how things work on the inside, which makes it extra important for kids to develop a basic understanding of nuts and bolts while they’re young.

The instructors for the class also didn’t simply just talk about how a car door works, they showed the children and then let them try to open a locked door themselves. The same happened when showing the kids how to escape a locked trunk. The only lesson that wasn’t hands on was the hot-wiring of a car because of the risk of being shocked, which the instructor also demonstrated by shocking himself a few times.

The kids learned about some basic mechanical functions, got a dose of humor and hopefully the class created a desire in them to learn more about how the things around them function.