Slashdot Mirror
The Nation Is Losing Its Toolbox
Hugh Pickens writes "Louis Uchitelle writes that in Aisle 34 of Home Depot is precut vinyl flooring, the glue already in place. In Aisle 26 are prefab windows, and if you don't want to be your own handyman, head to Aisle 23 or Aisle 35, where a help desk will arrange for an installer, as mastering tools and working with one's hands recede as American cultural values. 'At a time when the American factory seems to be a shrinking presence, and when good manufacturing jobs have vanished, perhaps never to return, there is something deeply troubling about this dilution of American craftsmanship,' writes Uchitelle. 'Craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American self-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people.' Mass layoffs and plant closings have drawn plenty of headlines and public debate over the years, and they still occasionally do. But the damage to skill and craftsmanship — what's needed to build a complex airliner or a tractor, or for a worker to move up from assembler to machinist to supervisor — has gone largely unnoticed. 'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,' says Michael Hout. 'People who work with their hands are doing things today that we call service jobs, in restaurants and laundries, or in medical technology and the like.' The damage to American craftsmanship seems to parallel the precipitous slide in manufacturing employment. And manufacturing's shrinking presence helps explain the decline in craftsmanship, if only because many of the nation's assembly line workers were skilled in craft work. 'Young people grow up without developing the skills to fix things around the house,' says Richard T. Curtin. 'They know about computers, of course, but they don't know how to build them.'"
in Aisle 34 of Home Depot is precut vinyl flooring, the glue already in place. In Aisle 26 are prefab windows, and if you don't want to be your own handyman, head to Aisle 23 or Aisle 35, where a help desk will arrange for an installer, as mastering tools and working with one's hands recede as American cultural values.
Yes, I've also heard software developers complain that today you can use ExtJS 4 to instantly have a windowing option in your browser and now it's sad because all the UI guys are using something like this. These "prefab architectures" are so terrible because nobody actually writes JavaScript anymore. Well, I know how to put together a window sill, a window frame and put the pane in and everything (even know how to build the headers for load bearing regulations on houses). And I'll tell you right now my implementation of a JavaScript windowing system wouldn't be as slick or universal as ExtJS 4 just like my window would be pretty shitty compared to something prefabbed up. Both would cost my employers more time and money. I would wager that if you were someone that built houses for a living, you would be okay with someone else putting together factory made windows with a low defect rate. Unsurprisingly it saves you a bunch of money just like a lot of software libraries save me time and money.
Yeah, I can make a table. But I need a jointer and a planer and whole bunch of other tools. The barrier to entry is high. Or I can go down to Ikea and find some veneered particle board for comparative pennies. Welcome to capitalism.
'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,'
Oh, right, your ancestors were the farmers. It was okay for you to move on to something more interesting like building houses and cities instead of devoting every waking moment to growing growing growing. Now we've moved on and it's time to mourn the loss of ... what exactly? Am I supposed to feel ashamed that all four of my grandparents were farmers and none of their 14 children are? Or that my dad was a carpenter and cement pourer and I'm a software developer? It's funny, none of my relatives guilt trip me like this New York Times writer that probably hasn't spent a day of his life working in a factory.
From the NYTimes author's bio:
Mr. Uchitelle was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York in 2002-03 and taught journalism for many years at Columbia University’s School of General Studies. Before joining The Times, he worked for The Associated Press as a reporter, an editor and a foreign correspondent in Latin America. He and his wife, Joan Uchitelle, live in Scarsdale, N.Y. They have two grown daughters.
Hey, anybody know of a good factory job near Scarsdale for Mr. Uchitelle? Maybe one of those industrial revolution jobs with industrial revolution pay? Then I think I'll listen to him bitch and moan about how progress is losing our nation's toolbox. Afterwards, take him around to farms at night (you know, the ones where people are working after sundown and before sunup) and let everyone tell him their stories about how they were injured on the job. Every hard working farmer or carpenter has those stories. I still got all my digi
My work here is dung.
Odd, over here (the Netherlands) the opposite has happened, and DIY chains now sell more up-market fittings as well as the cheap stuff. With tools, it's the other way around: we now have a lot of cheap tools from China, of varying quality. And that's fine as well: power tools that used to be prohibitively expensive for the occasional user are now affordable. That Chinese drill motor with pneumatic hammer isn't going to be as nice and long-lasting as the one from DeWalt, but it's good enough for drilling a few holes to hang paintings or chisel old tiles off the bathroom wall, and it's only a hundred euros instead of 600 for a pro tool.
As for declining skills, I'd have to agree with the article's author. I think part of the problem is that being a craftsman isn't cool anymore... ok, perhaps it never really was cool, but at least good craftsmen got some respect, and it was a viable career choice for many. Nowadays, you can still make a decent living doing that sort of work, but if you enroll in trade school, people will think there's something wrong with you. The general sentiment seems to be that winners do knowledge work or at least get to boss other people around; if you actually work with your hands, you're a loser. And even trade school is changing to reflect the idea that everyone needs to be in "services", dropping classes that teach actual skill in favour of management crap or theoretical stuff, the idea being that everyone needs to be a knowledge worker to some degree.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
My mom taught primary school back in the day. She noticed that the kids (ages 5-8, depending on which grade she was teaching each year) who came from the apartment blocks down the street had no finger dexterity at all - their hands were like clubs because they had never had any practice _doing_ anything, never got to go outside and play, make things, but just watched TV. This was back in the mid-1960s. Many of them were 'latchkey kids' whose parents both worked, so these kids went to school, came home and sat alone in the apartment until Mom and/or Dad came home. It's been a problem for a long time.
Another part of the problem is the relative cost of parts vs. assembled units. I recall wanting to fix a toaster (about 1970) that had stopped working - the nichrome wire inside had burned out. The cost of the wire was only slightly less than the cost of a new toaster. I think it's even worse today as increasingly automated manufacturing makes assembled units so cheap. I've noticed that in general it's cheaper to buy a new bookcase than to buy the wood to build your own of the same quality, _if_ you're that good - it's hard to match the precision with which even Ikea furniture is made.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/