The task: design a high school for 21st century blue-collar America

An innovative Rust Belt school district prepares students for industrial jobs - but also competition from robots

The high school students clustered around a 4ft-tall red robot with long arms and cartoonish eyes. A so-called collaborative robot, programmed to work with humans at the Prent Corporation, a packaging company, it looked cute, not intimidating.

But on this "Manufacturing Day", which in the last few years has given local high schoolers the chance to don safety goggles and step inside factory walls, the robot delivered a not-so-subtle reminder that their teachers have tried to drill into them: the unskilled jobs that paid earlier generations so well are dwindling, gone offshore and to robots like this one.