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A few sources have been talking up Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford. PM does an interview [via]
I just wanted to make one point: There's knowledge work and there's manual work, and the idea that these are two very different things seemed very bogus to me. I needed to make the case for how much thinking goes on in the trades. . .This is a theme I've visited in the past, prompted in part by Clifford D. Conner's 'A People's History of Science', reviewed here by Jonathan Weiner.And the truth is that some kids who are very smart would rather be learning to build things and fix things, but they're being hustled off into office work. For me, the tragedy of this is a kid who becomes maybe a B or C student in college because he doesn't really feel like it's the right place for him, and then goes on to becoming a mediocre accountant. But that same guy might have become a crack mechanic because he's more engaged in what he's doing. There's a cost to this.
"GIVE thy heart to letters," an Egyptian father advised his son on a piece of papyrus more than 3,000 years ago, in the hope that his child would choose a life of writing over a life of manual labor. "I have seen the metal worker at his toil before a blazing furnace. . . . His fingers are like the hide of the crocodile, he stinks more than the eggs of fish. And every carpenter who works or chisels, has he any more rest than the plowman?"A problem this old is more than just a bum's rush into university in order to secure better financial prospects. The work of scribes is easier and better paid than that of laborers, but both Crawford and Conner dispute the notion that there is some brainy basis for the dichotomy. As Conner puts it:Laborers are "generally held in bad repute," Xenophon wrote about 700 years later, "and with justice." Manual jobs keep men too busy to be decent companions or good citizens, "so that men engaged in them must ever appear to be both bad friends and poor defenders of their country."
Clifford D. Conner thinks this kind of snobbery has distorted the writing of history from ancient times to the present, because historians are scribes themselves and it is a clean, soft hand that holds the pen. . .
Even the great scientists honor the great. "If I have seen further," Newton wrote, "it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." At the same time, Newton also stood on the backs of "anonymous masses of humble people," as Conner says, "untold thousands of illiterate artisans." An accomplished army of the anonymous bequeathed him their tools, data, problems, ideas and even, Conner argues, the scientific method itself.I worked as cabinet maker in my youth and while at university ended up doing such work for some of the professors who lectured me at my day job as a student. (not at the same time, no conflict). I was also their street connection and partied a bit with them so they felt more comfortable speaking openly with me. To them it was no secret that the only reason to be at university was for connections and credentials. Education has nothing to do with it so if that was what I sought I was wasting time that could be better spent in more focused pursuit of my objectives.
Easier said than done since it is access to information that determines much of the outcome of such pursuits. The trick was to get into the library. That's becoming less of an issue in the information age and IMV this would be the single most effective thing that society could do to advance itself. Accept no excuses or obfuscation from content providers, make the information widely and freely available and the benefits will far exceed the costs.
Consider A pair of posts from last month by Eric Drexler: How to Understand Everything (and Why) and How to Learn About Everything
My recent post “How to Understand Everything (and Why)” discussed an untaught, integrative kind of knowledge, and why is so important in science and engineering — how it can leverage specialized knowledge and improve the trade-off between bold innovation and costly blunders. I discussed the nature of this knowledge and how it can be applied, but not how to learn it.This is, of course, precisely the opposite of what goes on at university though it is what is required for real world problem solving, invention and application. Drexler advises this regimen:Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others.
This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.
I recommend that intellectually ambitious students invest considerable time in a mode of study may set off subconscious alarm signals that conflicts with almost instinctive impulses imparted by classroom experience:I would add that this is useful for everyone as a lifelong activity and applies to all fields not just science and engineering.The aim of what I’ve described is to learn an expanded language and to develop what amounts to common sense, but about an uncommonly broad slice of the world. Immersion and gradual comprehension work, and I don’t know of any other way.
- Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand. . Include Science and Nature.
- Seldom stop to study a single subject with a student’s intensity, as if you had to pass a test on it.
- Don’t drop a subject because you know you’d fail a test — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to accumulate vocabulary, perspective, and context.
- Notice that concepts make more sense when you revisit a topic, and note which topics provide keys to many others.
- Continue until almost everything you encounter in Science and Nature makes sense as a contribution to a field you know something about.
See earlier posts Science Class and Techne for expanded and related discussions.
My god... are you a brother I never knew I had?
As I've mentioned before, purely academic art training seemed to me so much like theory with little basis in practical matters, which is why I took the "commercial" path. I've always been just a touch more proud to call myself an artisan or craftsman, while I remain a bit uncomfortable calling myself an artist, though I've been one for over half my life. The practical knowledge or application of art was always the elevated form, IMO.
I've evolved to designing and crafting musical instruments for the very reasons that they're an opportunity to not only express myself visually or philosophically, but also technically. Musical instruments are certainly considered tools in anyone's perspective. Toolmaking is like a secret, sacred knowledge to me. The cross-disciplines required to construct not only the "ordinary" tool but especially those extremely fine instruments blended with my individual steampunk style is perhaps the challenge that I'll face for the rest of my days.
When I started making "real" money as an artist, I invested heavily in books for my library. Everything I could get my hands on... Ernest Becker, Dennett, Pinker, Ridley, Gould, Dawkins, Campbell, Eliade... I can't even begin to list them here. Economics, philosophy, theology, physics, evolutionary behavior... you name it. To this day, I listen to audiobooks on a daily basis while I work. I listen to roughly 60-70 titles per year. Fiction makes up a good part of that, but the amount of non-fictional subjects available on every single subject imaginable in an audio format is staggering. Why would anyone not tap into this rich resource?
Posted by: Jeffrey at June 8, 2009 10:37 PMIn the day we called that feeling of shared but unconnected history, or whatever, "going to different high schools together".
Posted by: back40 at June 9, 2009 09:17 AMWith regard to manual work, take a look at the following if you haven't seen it:
Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs
http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
Thanks but I don't have the bandwidth for audio/video. I've seen his show. My reaction is usually that I wish he'd explore the thinking side of the dirty jobs, though I understand that this isn't the show's purpose.
For example, his show on insemination of dairy cattle focused on the squick factor of palpating a cow rather than the knowledge and skill of doing the right thing at the right time. Dairies fail because of lack of knowledge and management skill rather than because someone is too delicate to shove his arm into a cows rear.
If he did a show on office workers the emphasis would be on paper cuts and carpal tunnel injuries, the horrors of the shared coffee station, and the indignities of the daily commute. Those are real issues, and popular TV fare, but not the ones that intrigue me and not, I think, the point that Crawford pursues.
Posted by: back40 at June 11, 2009 07:57 AMI hear what Conner is saying and, of course, understand what he's talking about, but I also think that the nature of communicating historical information just can't approach the actual experience.
No matter how visceral or bloody the writer describes a shark attack, we the receiver aren't in the water. We're not even in the shark cage. We're watching it after the fact from the safety of our couch.
The squick of Dirty Jobs may indeed be considered a cheap wow, but that's because squick is one of the things that can focus our attention or move us.
We kids sat on the barn roof or the corral fence watching the vet inseminate our cows dozens of times and we still howled with delight every time he slid that long vinyl glove on his arm to stick up the cow's butt.
You know what my conservative Christian parents never told us, though? How they got the bull sperm in the first place.
Posted by: Jeffrey at June 11, 2009 09:04 PMIMO this 20 minute TED piece is well worth watching (wifi at Vejar's) because it is quite different from the show. He is quite thoughtful in considering his experiences while taping the show. The website has a full transcript associated with it but I haven't been able to link it separately from the video requiring the bandwidth.
He states that he has gotten a lot of things wrong about work, that those of us not doing manual labor often misunderstand and diminish it, that society is pursuing a "cold war" against manual work and that is why enrollments at trade schools (welding, plumbing, . . .) are declining and our infrastructure is falling apart. He also states that individuals doing manual work are the happiest he has met and that many of those "thinking out of the box", watching to see where the crowd is going and then go the other way do so to huge financial success. He gives the example of the hog raiser feeding food waste who turned down $60M for his operation and says he could give 30 others out of his 200 shows.
Posted by: anon at June 13, 2009 05:40 AMA friend did recently long-term-lend me a portable computer that could, in theory, be used that way. I may be able to travel to a spot in a few days when work allows. I know of one within my reach. I do often wish that I could access big stuff on the net, but given that I'm a venture altruist things come when they come rather than when I might wish.
I can confirm some of what you say. The very rich people in my neighborhood don't look like money, and may have rough hands. Money isn't the only measure of the intelligence or erudition of working stiffs, but those with some interest in it and that have entrepreneurial talent come by it easily. Well, they make it look easy.
P.S. What is Vejar's?
Posted by: back40 at June 13, 2009 08:11 AMhttp://www.vejarsonk.com/ :-)
Ate a lot of chili rellenos there. Whether they have wifi or not, I don't know. That was bti, before the internet.