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The Case For Working With Your Hands
theodp writes "At a time when the question of what a good job looks like is wide open, a book excerpt in the NY Times magazine says it's time to take a fresh look at the trades. High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this a huge mistake? A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic instead of accumulating academic credentials is now viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive, complains Matthew Crawford, who took his University of Chicago PhD and opened a motorcycle repair shop. Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, 'You can't hammer a nail over the Internet' (never say never). Guess we all should have paid more attention to Nicholas Negroponte's landmark-in-retrospect Being Digital (ironically, no Kindle version)."
I am a chemistry graduate and I've always said that for a high science, chemistry is very blue-collar. Let's look at the facts:
We are on our feet all day and work with our hands.
Most people I know in the field have burns, scars, or callouses.
We listen to Radio 1 all day.
'course, I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I don't have any regrets with my path and have had a long happy IT career but if I had to start over I would definitely get a couple of trades. So many opportunities to start your own company and thrive if you are good at it. Lots of hard work but the possibilities are endless. Look at the big expensive houses in your area and I bet there are quite a few "company" pickups with construction company advertising on them in the driveway. Of course you have to enjoy what you do, but how many kids today would have loved this kind of work, but didn't consider it because they were discouraged to?
So, with an undergrad degree in CS, and a masters in EE, and just about to get an MBA... I still am a shit cook. That's right, I am a horrible cook. I know some of you out there are probably excellent cooks, but I also think there are a LOT of us who think we are really smart, but still can barely make macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, or grill some chicken properly.
Why has my entire educational experience skipped out on something so basic. Yes, it may seem that it is basic and a common activity that we should "just know how", but really.. sometimes you just need instruction on vital things that you wouldn't otherwise grasp. (such as hygene, or balancing your bank accounts, or.. maybe social etiquite or public speaking)
They make us great engineers, but they completely skip over the parts of how to be good, well rounded human beings.
A skilled trade is an excellent way to make a good living; and is a way to do what you enjoy. cars need to be repaired, plumbing fixed, houses built and repaired. Those skills are both valuable and not easily replicated if you do quality work.
Of course, many trades require a pretty solid eduction as well. Mechanics once needed mechanical aptitude and the ability to work well with their hands; today it requires that plus an understanding of computers and advanced electronics / electrical theory.
Unfortunately, people tend to look down as anything not requiring a college education as lesser work.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"the latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries."
No, no they won't. Sure it's not as easy to push manual labor elsewhere - that doesn't mean it can't happen: Look at the engineering and textiles industries in Britain. Sure, there were lots of them, and their staff did work "in person and on site" - but that didn't stop the industry being screwed over by workhouses in distant countries that could produce the goods for cheaper. While the British equivalents may well have 'survived' to some extent, the shops and companies wanting the goods produced weren't willing to pay the cash to produce in Britain, and bought their goods elsewhere (Chinese textile mills, for example). Voila: your job is gone, whether you're manual labor or working via a wire.
Before I was in IT I gathered work experience in running a cash register, detailing luxury automobiles, auto mechanics, every aspect of building and remodeling a home from building forms for concrete to putting an attic vent on the roof, landscaping and lawn maintainence, fast food, babysitting illegal mexican painters, and odd jobs doing things I don't even know what to call.
Now if I can just find my way to put all of this together like Steve Jobs did with his background, I'll be good to go.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
No one want to discuss the fact that "average intelligence" means that half the people are at and below average intelligence. The idea that everyone must graduate from high school and go on to college is the root of the problem.
A simple example......it used to be you could stop at a gas station and a couple of guys would come out, fill up your car, check your oil/water and clean your windshield. They didn't need a BA in business. What are these guys supposed to do now?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The reason education shifted to producing knowledge workers over trade skills is because those jobs were disappearing in the 80's and 90's. They haven't come back and are still shrinking as a part of the economy. When we had a construction boom, much labor was imported. Our desire for cheap meat means most of the employees at meat packing plants are immigrants. Automation and cost effective foreign labor is driving most factory jobs away. Technology in autos is creating a situation where you rely on computer diagnostics to fix cars. The slack from not having trade in high school is being taken up by community colleges, and most HS graduates need strong math and verbal skills to do the remaining blue collar jobs. Now that a large number of knowledge worker jobs can and are being outsourced because it is cheaper, we must adjust education again to create the next generation of workers once we figure out what they are. The early 80's made us shift education in the 90's, the late 00's will make us shift in the late 10's. We'll have to wait to see what innovations come out of this downturn to figure out what the next job boom will be. Sorry, there are just not enough plumber, mechanic, or carpenter jobs being created that we can all move back to the 1960's.
People who choose to become mechanics instead of accumulating academic credentials are only viewed as eccentric in certain circles. I'm sure the satisfied customers (one hopes) at Dr. Crawford's repair shop will view the situation differently.
If a resurgence occurs in the vo-tech schools, it ought to include some kind of component of entrepreneurship. I don't run a business myself, but I think this would include a larger helping of the academic subjects (a more math-intensive business program, with a calculus basis) than it does now or has in the past. My main issue with vo-tech programs is that they seem to prepare students to be easily supervised, but don't provide much in the way of mobility or independence.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
There were two problems with HS in the late 90's I know I was there. The first problem was this weird stigma attached to anyone who was interested in the industrial technology or shop courses. They certainly were viewed in a negative light by most of the administration. The instructors of those courses were treated badly compared to the other teachers as well. The pervasive view was that that those courses were offered for people who could never complete enough credit hours in academic courses to graduate any other way. This certainly was true for some of those students, Having told my parents and guidance there pleas to avoid these subjects were falling on deaf ears, I know that there were plenty of other plenty smart people in those programs who like me could breeze through just about and HS course except maybe a subject or two that did not come entirely naturally.
The next problem was that they scheduled shop courses so they were only offered in periods that would conflict with the upper level academic courses. You could not take honors English and drafting, for instance. There was no way to schedule electronics and AP physics ( which ironically cover much the same materials ). The entire system was built to separate students into two groups and make sure that they never met again.
Well after being on the college preparatory side of the wall for the first two years, in possession of a 3.9+ GPA, I elected to jump the shark. I am not going to pretend there was not some adolescent neo-punk motivations as well driving me in what I was being lead to think was a radical direction. I could always read whatever literature the honers English group was working, all you had to do was visit the library. I did that, I still had friends over there so I knew what they were doing. I could not as easily afford a serviceable O-Scope or a drafting table and tools. It made far more sense to me to "run with the tough crowd." I could just as easily grab a calculus book from the school library and build on the math skills I had. Which again I did because it let me understand things in my electronics course.
I found most of the instructors of those courses were better teachers too. They had lots of problems the other instructors did not have. The biggest being all those kids who did not want to be there that had been put there for under performing in the other programs. Still if you were interested they were largely willing spend some extra time with you and go into the subjects in greater detail or let you work on your own more advanced projects for credit. They also were tell you when you made a mistake. They had all been there forever had tenure and nobody they could impress even if they were trying except us students. It was a much more honest and much more educational environment if you were as a student willing to participate and invest a little in it.
Despite the warnings from the establishment, shunning for the other prep students, I turned out ok. I went on to attend a good liberal arts college, where I graduated with honors. I never regraded or felt I had done myself an disservice by my decisions in high school, much the opposite.
We as a society need to learn some egalitarianism about knowledge. Its always good to know things. Sometime its more useful to spend your time learning one thing than another but knowledge is never bad. I am not some sorta hick because I can rebuild an automobile engine, frame a house, or any other odd skills I might have picket up. I can know those things still write SQL as well as one while I grow pale sitting in an office chair.
People are generally better at things they are interested in doing. It takes all kinds to run a society and we should value all skills.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The trades weren't pushed out of high schools because they were "retooling" they were pushed out because there was no money to teach them. Teaching trades requires expensive equipment that must be kept up and insured against accidents. Teaching IT requires obsolete donation computers that cost nothing and have very little upkeep. If Moore's law slows the donation computers will probably dry up too and then there will be nothing at all.
Too many IT people have no clue when it comes to basics like stacking equipment, safely handling heavy loads, threading cables, or airflow. Worse, they're positively dangerous with screwdrivers, wrenches, or wire cutters. And basic mechanical skills lend awareness for programmers to the concepts of "big bulky modules that you have to leave space for", "leave enough slack in the interfaces for you to be able to put things where you need them", "leave in accessible test points where you can check your signals". And I'd vastly recommend basic electronics classes in "why clock signals lie" and "why you use _one_ voltage, _one_ data format, and synchronize to _one_ clock signal throughout your system". The lessons of "why would I do this as a bulky, parallel transfer rather than a serial transfer" are also illuminated by having to run your own wires.
Like system security, such physical constraints are best learned early, rather than brought into the design after the fact when you've already laid out your circuits or your data flow.
I mentor HS students. Most that I deal with are so incredibly incompetent that I am truly afraid for our society- these babies will be asking their parents to carry them out into the world with no prep.
There are kids that don't know what a screwdriver is or how to use it. Seriously. I had to hold a session on how to use a screwdriver. Gave them a drill with a bit in it and they could not figure out how to drive the screw into the wood.
This is also the group that would intentionally break their cell phones so their parents could pay the 50$ 'insurance fee' to get a new one. Just repeatedly drop the thing over and over and over and over.
I also watched one of them stare at the table saw blade as it was rotating- asked him what he was doing- and he said he knows he's not supposed to but he was wondering if he could tap the blade while it was spinning- if he was fast enough (look up table saw finger injuries- you'll understand why I was sickened).
Shop class, like gym class, should be mandatory for all students. So what if all they turn out is a crummy pencil holder- they did it. Want to make shop more interesting? Show them how to do CNC on wood- that's programming and wood working all in one go.
Right now this generation is nothing but consumption- they'll play their ipods, their little online games, and they go on to college coddled the entire way without a single original thought in their body.
Then again, perhaps I only see the stupid ones.
No matter what your profession, it seems that working with the hands improves anyone's problem solving skills. Boeing and NASA are now requiring R&D personnel to have experience working with the hands, no matter how strong their academic record is.
Watch this video - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.html
(20 minutes)
The research linking the hand to brain development is found in the book - The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. By Frank R. Wilson.
Here's another article about handiwork and education (left sidebar - Why should a kid build a catapult) http://www.catapultkits.com/
In my work I regularly get feedback from teachers who say that nothing has inspired their kids to *want* to study math and physics more than the catapult project they did.
Considering the daunting issues we face as a culture, with Global Warming and the problems with fossil fuels, we need more and better problem solvers in the world than ever before.
If it was up to me, shop class would be mandatory in every high-school, and it's curriculum would be coordinated with the physics and math courses too.
I for one wish every Engineer, and every Mechanical Engineering student had to spend a year as a mechanic. Once you realize how bad some things are designed from a repairability aspect, it changes your perspective on design. I've torn into many a machine, and seen bad designs first hand. Overcomplicated parts, too many parts, too many different size bolts and nuts, parts placed so close together you have to remove 10 things just to change a belt.
The same could be said for any designer. I feel before you're able to design anything, you should be forced to use it, fix it, and understand the consequences of bad design. It would improve the quality of things that do get built.
Is colleges think so elitist sometimes that they look down on even teaching people how to TEACH people how to do trades. My college (Montclair State University) had one of the oldest tech-ed/vocational-ed programs in the country when I joined. The president erased the ENTIRE program and created a "Fine Arts Masters" program, breaking up our shops and labs into mini rooms that each FAM student got full use of, shunting tens of thousands of dollars of wood and metal shop equipment into those labs for FINE ARTS use only, most of which we as a department had paid for ourselves though the auto shop the school closed on us 2 years before.
And what was their justification? Well NJ that year had changed the wording of the standardized curriculum from Fine AND Vocation arts to Fine OR Vocation arts, and since Fine arts was easier to teach in high school, there was no need for vocation arts anymore. The other justification? The US is not a industrial nation anymore so there is no need to teach kids how to work that type of equipment or in those trades. This was 2002 BTW.
Oh and that curriculum change? The next year NJ changed it back, making only one out of ALL of its state schools, 3 of which had programs that dated back around of even before WWI capable of churning out teachers who can actually teach Tech Ed. Now NJ has to back door most of its vocation teachers and even then, nearly half the jobs are being left unfilled with more retiring every day.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
The article goes on at length to (rightfully) decry the chasm between work and the management of it, how actual tasks that are useful tend to get divorced from policy, procedures, and presence on the management radar. At its root, this attitude is what makes it possible to outsource to other continents. There's no longer a feeling that management and directing vision need to coexist in the same space in order to stay aligned and keep working well and synergistically. (And that may be the only time in the last few years I'd consider it appropriate to use that management-jargon-co-opted word.)
Since the author is a motorcycle mechanic, I thought I'd toss this out. When I was a young man, bike enthusiasts were decrying the fall of Triumph. That once-great motorcycle company was dying. They sold few bikes. They had run through many unsuccessful models that weren't very good bikes when they were working well and didn't work well very often because they were poorly assembled. It was enough to make an old gearhead shed a tear.
And then a story came out, perhaps apocryphal, that pinpointed the precise moment when Triumph stopped their forward progress and began their long fall. Some time in the early 1960s, so the story went, the upper management had gotten so successful that they started looking like upper management. They were driven to work. They dressed in expensive suits. They came to view themselves as businessmen. Or, rather, as typically happens with businesses as they become big, the guys who were bike lovers gradually got replaced in the executive suites by guys who were supposed to be good at the business of business, guys for whom the actual product was unimportant.
Finally, one day, there was a big, routine board meeting and one of the last of the old guard, who had ridden his bike that day, showed up to the meeting room in full leathers. He was informed that such was not appropriate. A rule that "proper dress," specifically meaning "no leathers," was required at all business meetings. The break between management and the iron on the road was now complete. Management had been outsourced to people who were distant (mentally, emotionally, and philosophically, if not physically) from the actual work.
At that point, Triumph was toast. It took years for the motorcycle brand to die. I remember one of the (perhaps the very) last bike they produced, a brilliant triple in sporting trim. I remember thinking it was a death rattle, the last gasp of a company that didn't know what in the bloody hell to do to stay alive and had, in desperation, actually let the engineers and bike lovers have a crack at producing something. It was far too little, far too late.
What I'm saying is the same as, in part, the article. Not only is working with your hands a good thing, when any company is run by people who are *incapable* of hands-on work or, at minimum, hands-on appreciation of that work - the company is doomed.
How do you outsource the electrical and plumbing of a building project in your city to India?
HTH.
Deleted
I can think all day about how the electrical in my house works, and understand the theory behind it. But can I wire my house so that everything works, and I don't burn it down? Maybe, but it is in my interest to have an electrician look at it to make sure. Not necessarily an electrical engineer.
My father is an electrical engineer, and I am (among other things) a licensed electrician. The stories my mother has about him trying to do his own electrical work are hilarious ("how hard can it be? It's a simple AC circuit!")
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I left my IT job of running a small non-profit doing video production, creating web apps , pretty much whatever we could come up with to assist small manufacturers compete in the govt. procurement supply chains.
It was a *great* IT job, but I chose to leave it to rehab/restore/remodel older homes and pursue carpentry.
Honestly, it gives me a satisfaction I just wasn't getting in IT. My families reaction was, are you fsking daft??
I redid a first floor full bath for some friends and since then, every morning when they wake up they step out of their second story bedroom, pass by the master bath right across the hall and go downstairs to the bathroom I made to do their morning routine and get ready for their day.
*Nothing* I have done in IT *ever*, has given anyone that much enjoyment.
"High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this a huge mistake?"
Machines need maintenance. Buildings need building and repair. Pipes need plumbing. Trucks need driving. Plants need growing. Packages need delivering. Photos need taking and film needs developing.
Hell, somebody needs to make a mug so I can put tea into it. Oh right, somebody needs to make the tea, too. And build and maintain the infrastructure that lets me get water out of a tap, start a fire under a pot (that I bought at a store that somebody built and somebody else stocks and inventories and keeps records for...), take the tea bag wrapper and put it into a landfill (assuming I bought tea bags this time)...
Sure, theoretically we can automate all that. But who is going to build the machines to supply the automation in the first place? Somebody has to sling a wrench.
What happens when 100% of our children are knowledge workers? Well, then we get 100% unemployment, because nobody is building the bloody computers for them to work on. Oh, they'll have to haul their own garbage, too...
You could say that I think this is short-sighted and ignorant. How about bloody stupid? No, but you're getting close.
See me? I'm an embedded software engineer. Firmware programmer, if you prefer. See, I like to work right down to the bare metal, and that means that I work with the hardware, too. I know how to solder and use multimeter and a 'scope. And wire-wrap, which is passe these days.
And what did I just finish doing 15 minutes ago? I fixed the screen door so it would close properly so the dog couldn't just push it open and get out. Guess what body parts I used for that? No, go on, you'll never guess.
I think EVERYBODY should have some shop time. Elective, my ass, at least a minimum should be mandatory. And what we used to euphemistically call "home economics" should be as well, everybody should get at least the basics of cooking and sewing and so on.
I don't particularly enjoy sewing, but I can do it. By hand or by machine. And I'm no chef but I can make a few simple dishes and follow a recipe. Want my recipe for Bachelor Chow?
What are we going to do, give all the non-knowledge jobs to illegal immigrants?
Even if we do, I want to revisit my earlier remark about the unemployment rate. So for a few years there's a big surge in, hmm, let's say, yoga. "Yoga's the big thing, that's where all the money is! We can't see an end to it!" Advisors start directing everybody towards being a yoga instructor. A few years later we get a graduate class of nothing but yoga instructors, and guess what? THERE'S NOBODY TO INSTRUCT. Why? First, because the fad passed and everybody is doing Tai Chi. Second, because EVERYBODY IS A YOGA INSTRUCTOR AND DOESN'T NEED TO BE INSTRUCTED.
Sheesh. It's like our entire society is suffering from clinical depression or something. Think, people! We need all kinds of thinkers and workers, not just one kind of person. OK, today we need a few extra specialists, but things are constantly changing.
And not everybody can be good at the same thing. One problem you get when you turn everybody into a specialist at one thing is that you get a lot of really mediocre specialists. The ones with the native proclivity will take the best jobs and the rest will end up unsatisfied or unemployed.
Don't plan for a specific future. When it doesn't happen, you're going to be stuck high and dry. Find out where your skills are, hone them as best you can, and find a place to use them to their best advantage. Not just your top skill or your favorite, but all you can find. Narrow specialties can be very lucrative, but if there's no call for yours, it's good to have a fall-back. And most people prefer a life with some variety.
And I don't mean flipping burgers.
How can such smart people be so incredibly stupid? Open up the damned shops again. Get the kids working with their
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.