Making the Case for Manual Labor

I just finished reading the book Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford. I have to say, I knew nothing about this book when I first opened it. I selected it purely because of the title. In fact, I thought it might have something to do with the sort of projects you find in the magazines Readymade or Make. Silly me. But, boy, was I glad that I read it.

Matthew Crawford holds a PhD in Philosophy, and now supports himself doing motorcycle repair. Shop Class is a difficult book to classify. Part autobiography, part pornography for motorcycle geeks, Crawford makes a very strong case for manual labor. He begins the book by talking about the history of "shop class" in the twentieth century and the dismantling of most high school shop programs in the eighties and nineties, as everyone was supposed to become "knowledge workers." He shows how disastrous this trend has been for American workers as more and more jobs have been shipped overseas where labor costs less, and points out that your x-rays can be read by a technician in India while plumbers, on the other hand, must be local.

Crawford discusses the disconnect that so many workers feel in white collar "knowledge" jobs where they never see the results of their work, compared to jobs in the trades where there is a very clear connection between the work and the results. (I was pleased that he included teachers in that second category.)

Yet the trend continues, where high school students are steered toward 4-year colleges, 2-year technical colleges are offering more "college prep", and the trades -- some of the most stable professions around -- are stigmatized. (This is personal for me as I watch my daughter struggle to pay off the $30,ooo loan she accrued in just one year of college, and people don't understand why she "dropped out" to work in a restaurant.) I found it curious when I watched President Obama address the nation's schoolchildren, that he encouraged them to go on to college, to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, join the military … and he did not say a word about entering the trades!

My one criticism of this book is that the writing was fairly dense -- or maybe just too geared toward gearheads. I am neither a motorcycle mechanic nor a rider, and there were points where my eyes glazed over and I skipped whole chunks of the text. But the overall theme resonated so strongly with me, and I had a hard time putting it down. In fact, I will be buying this book to re-read and mark certain passages. This is a very important book -- highly recommended.