Review: Shop Class As Soulcraft

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Next time you wash your hands in a public restroom, remember this book.

Is the faucet where you wash your hands a newfangled, infrared hand-sensing faucet that, as author Matthew B. Crawford writes, works to infantilize and “offends the spirited personality,” by putting your hands at the mercy of the sensor? Or is it a faucet of an earlier time, where the water ran normally, and people were trusted to turn the lever off after they got done using it?

Crawford’s book strings together these examples, along with a detailed look at his work experience as a writer of academic journal abstracts and a member of a Washington think tank — two jobs he found to be intelligence depriving and unfulfilling. He also looks at his time as an electrician and a motorcycle mechanic — jobs he finds provide more intellectual stimulation and a better sense of community — and how these are being neglected in the rise of the “knowledge workers.”

Yes, Crawford does make these points by writing them down and having his published work in bookstores. Yes, he does share shelf space with self-help books, management manuals and other tools that attempt to make the process of something more important than the product. But his assessment of college office culture and what middle management has done works to strike an internal chord. Crawford will strike a chord to anytime you’ve felt intellectually bored in work that you once thought was intellectually stimulating, and provides context to recent phenomena such as backyard vegetable gardens (it’s not just because everyone wants cheap vegetables). It’s a brilliant assessment of what joy a motorcycle repairman job gives Crawford, who also holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy.

Crawford doesn’t advocate the end of commerce. Rather, he argues that jobs such as motorcycle repair and plumbing aren’t dumb-peopleblue-collar jobs. He argues for the return of shop class in high schools, which he says is often the first to go in schools that demand 100 percent college prep.

I recommend this book, which will most likely sprout a self-assessment like it did for me. Oh, and demand manual faucets and paper towels in public restrooms. You deserve some mental stimulation.

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Reviews

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