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“As educators prepare students to become ‘knowledge
workers,’ manual competence is out of favor. Hard-headed economists
point out the opportunity costs of making what can be bought, and
hard-headed educators say it is irresponsible to educate the young for
the trades, identified as jobs of the past, but how hard headed are the
presumptions that steer young people toward the most ghostly kinds of
work? Haven’t the ‘jobs of tomorrow’ become wedded to virtualism; a
vision of the future which we somehow take leave of material reality and
glide about in a pure information economy?
Consider: While manufacturing jobs have mostly left
our shores, the manual trades have not. If you need a deck built, or
your car fixed, the Chinese are of no help, because they are in China.
Yet, the trades and manufacturing are lumped together as fading ‘blue
collar.’
The pride of the tradesman is far from the
gratuitous ‘self esteem’ many educators impart to students. They can
simply point: The deck stands, the car now runs. The craftsman’s
deference is not to the new, but to the distinction between the right
way and the wrong way.” (by Matthew B. Crawford in the AARP
Journal, Summer 2007.)
Last week, Bill Bailey and I went out to interview
two craftspeople in the county. Both of these men talked of the pride in
their work and the opportunity for creativity. Tom McColley showed
baskets that have stood the test of time and are still in perfect
condition. We also visited Jim Labaw, a woodworker, who can take a rough
piece of wood and turn it into bowls, boxes and jewelry of individual
design.
This feeling of pride is evident in builders,
mechanics, stone masons, beauticians, and other so-called manual
workers.
Let us pass this feeling on to our young people. It
is a computer oriented world, but we still need to train our students in
skills of manual competence.
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