FIMCO-MEISTER
06-26-2009, 06:01 AM
Saw this guy interviewed on the COLBERT REPORT. Have not read the book but he hit the nail on the head with an argument I have made with "white boys" that don't want to do manual labor. Talked to an irrigator the other day who has been in the biz 30 years like me. We talked about training young irrigators and passing on all we've learned about service work. He said what I knew to be true for this area which is you better teach in spanish. "White boys" (this is code for your nintendo generation) don't want to do manual labor. Henry thank the good Lord figured it out. He watched all his buddies go to College and either become clerks at Enterprise Rental Car or Best Buy or unemployed. Irrigation work can be a beat down no doubt. But finding a problem and fixing it or designing something and seeing it through from beginning to end is an unquantifiable elixir for our brain.
In the perfect world a young man learns a skill...adds some good social skills....stays away from drugs and too much alcohol...finds a wife with simple means.... Has 2 kids....lives beneath his means.
A self employed plumber making 75,000 is far more happy and a far greater benefit to society than a liar on wall street making 500,000 a year.
http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
This could easily be the most important book a parent or young adult reads this year.
Matt Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft touched a chord with me. Both his life and his book are a rebuke to the assumptions which govern modern ideas about work, economics, self-worth, and happiness. Crawford would seem to have lived the American Dream right into his twenties. He finished his formal education (which, to judge by the breadth of references to literature and philosophy in the book, wasn't shabby) and was quickly hired by a Washington "think tank". Any young, aggressive climber would recognize this as a coveted place from which to launch of career. But where others would see a rapid ascent up the social pyramid, Crawford sensed emptiness. He left to work in a motorcycle repair shop, where he got his hands dirty, fixed bikes, and used his brain. Where others might see "mere" manual labor, he learned the value of a tangible skill. He now shares with readers his thoughts on this value, how it is vanishing from modern society, and the implications for us as a people.
Crawford traces the evolution of shop class, its intended and unintended consequences, and its subsequent rapid retreat from our schools. He lays out the historical transition from individual craftsman to interchangeable piece of a human assembly line during the industrial revolution. Much more frighteningly, he reviews how the same approach is well underway in the "white collar" information economy. Whether one has lived the absurdities of cubicle farms first hand or only through Dilbert, it is not hard to see how the modern, homogenized college prep education and liberal arts degree leaves a modern worker predisposed to try to fit as a cog in a modern information assembly line. Crawford taps a fundamental part of the psyche as he reminds us of the inherent pride in being able to say "I fix bikes" when asked what he does for a living. Does a country really need every high school student to strive to attend college? Crawford makes the case that for many this will not only be a waste of time and money, but will ultimately land them in careers in which they have trouble seeing the value of what they do. Too many will, in the words my son once used to describe my job, "type on the computer and answer the phone".
In the perfect world a young man learns a skill...adds some good social skills....stays away from drugs and too much alcohol...finds a wife with simple means.... Has 2 kids....lives beneath his means.
A self employed plumber making 75,000 is far more happy and a far greater benefit to society than a liar on wall street making 500,000 a year.
http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
This could easily be the most important book a parent or young adult reads this year.
Matt Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft touched a chord with me. Both his life and his book are a rebuke to the assumptions which govern modern ideas about work, economics, self-worth, and happiness. Crawford would seem to have lived the American Dream right into his twenties. He finished his formal education (which, to judge by the breadth of references to literature and philosophy in the book, wasn't shabby) and was quickly hired by a Washington "think tank". Any young, aggressive climber would recognize this as a coveted place from which to launch of career. But where others would see a rapid ascent up the social pyramid, Crawford sensed emptiness. He left to work in a motorcycle repair shop, where he got his hands dirty, fixed bikes, and used his brain. Where others might see "mere" manual labor, he learned the value of a tangible skill. He now shares with readers his thoughts on this value, how it is vanishing from modern society, and the implications for us as a people.
Crawford traces the evolution of shop class, its intended and unintended consequences, and its subsequent rapid retreat from our schools. He lays out the historical transition from individual craftsman to interchangeable piece of a human assembly line during the industrial revolution. Much more frighteningly, he reviews how the same approach is well underway in the "white collar" information economy. Whether one has lived the absurdities of cubicle farms first hand or only through Dilbert, it is not hard to see how the modern, homogenized college prep education and liberal arts degree leaves a modern worker predisposed to try to fit as a cog in a modern information assembly line. Crawford taps a fundamental part of the psyche as he reminds us of the inherent pride in being able to say "I fix bikes" when asked what he does for a living. Does a country really need every high school student to strive to attend college? Crawford makes the case that for many this will not only be a waste of time and money, but will ultimately land them in careers in which they have trouble seeing the value of what they do. Too many will, in the words my son once used to describe my job, "type on the computer and answer the phone".