We had a metal lathe in our high school shop class. I still can’t believe someone didn’t kill themselves on that. I think wood lathes are fine, but honestly that should be kept out.
Wood lathes are much more dangerous than metal lathes IMO!
They run at high speeds, the workpiece is typically less secure, the material has a grain structure prone to catching the tool and digging into it, ventilation is required, and most importantly, the cutting tool is gripped in the operator's hands instead of being secured on a toolpost.
A metal lathe is the fundamental machine tool. You learn how to calculate feeds and speeds, plan depth of cut, thread cutting, parting, etc. You learn about surface finish, chatter, cutter shape... Why rob students of this? Should nobody learn basic machinist skills? It's no more or less dangerous than any other shop tool.
These things aren't actually as dangerous as Reddit and the white collar internet make them out to be. The "being dumb" to near miss conversion ratio isn't that high and the near miss to someone gets hurt conversion ratio is abysmal.
In metal shop, one kid left the key in the chuck and turned the lathe on. It punched a hole in the wall opposite it. It would have killed anyone in its path.
Wood lathes, and generally woodworking tools like saws and routers are substantially more dangerous. Especially at the scale of machinery you have in vocational classes.
They run at high speeds, the workpiece is typically less secure, the material has a grain structure prone to catching the tool and digging into it, ventilation is required, and most importantly, the cutting tool is gripped in the operator's hands instead of being secured on a toolpost.