Do you just ‘think’ for a living, or do you perform ‘real’ work?
I put the quote marks around “think” and “real” in the title of this blog post for a reason: I wanted to reflect the “real work” nature of a guest I saw interviewed recently on “The Colbert Report.” The guest was Matthew Crawford, and the topic was Crawford’s book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” In the book, and the interview, discussion centered around the dichotomy Crawford sees in our culture between knowledge or “thinking” work and manual labor. I strongly recommend you click the link and watch the video.
Have we, as Crawford maintains, spent too much time and energy directing “smart” people away from vocational training into “college prep” courses as he calls them? Does that mean there’s something good about white collar stuff and either bad or inferior about blue collar jobs? Why do we even make the distinction in our educational systems and our society as a whole?
I think Crawford’s probably onto a problem we’re failing to address. Take a look at our economic base in America, for example. We have ceased to be a nation that “makes” things, i.e., manufacturing, inventing industrial processes, creating industrial products, all that has really gone away. We’ve turned into a nation of laborers with a variety of service industries at the bottom and at the top, financial speculators/investors.
I’m sure a lot of this has been caused by a world of forces at work in our nation and world, from economic and business trends to politics. But I think a great deal of this shrinking of America’s industrial base may stem from attitudes created by this “thinking students” v. “vocational workers” dichotomy Crawford hits on.
Perhaps it’s worth thinking about.