Shop Class as Soulcraft

In this first chapter, the author notes the precipitous decline in shop classes (such as welding, auto shop, machine shop, etc.) over the past two decades. Quoting one shop class educator, Tom Hull, who teaches in Oregon: “You can’t shove fifty students at a time in a shop class like you can a PE class” (11). As the author notes, these classes are being cut to pay for new technology to accompany the push for computer literacy. These courses are being branded as outmoded, despite the positive life experiences of graduates who report resoundingly favorable experiences in finding and retaining jobs they enjoy.

The author too finds manual work satisfying and feels that there is a deep psychic satisfaction especially in the electrician work he has performed. When he throws a switch and a light goes on, he is able to see where his efforts have gotten him. As the writer states: “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy” (15). He feels that manual work tells a person more about themselves than conversations about self-esteem has ever done because when tackling a concrete project, one has to face their successes and their failures head on. There are not myriad intellectual interpretations about the work to wade through. Either the light goes on, the car runs, the toilet flushes, or it doesn’t. 

Crawford also alleges that making and fixing objects gives one a different relationship with material things. A repair person, he asserts, understands objects far better than a consumer. A consumer views that object in a narcissistic way, as an extension of self, as an object that does something for the individual. A repair person, in contrast, truly considers that object: “The repairman has to begin each job by getting outside of his own head and noticing things; he has to look carefully and listen to the ailing machine” (17). The machine is not just an extension of the owner’s self then; it is a puzzle that needs to be contemplated and completed.

Additionally, the craftsperson sees objects different because unlike the consumer, the craftsperson is not perpetually searching for what is new and different. Newness is less compelling to the craftsperson than the unique backstory of an object—the details about how it was made, where, how and why. Craftsmen have a more distinct criterion for evaluating objects: “The craftsman’s habitual deference is not towards the New but towards the objective standards of his craft” (19). This, Crawford thinks, is drastically different than the general stock of knowledge one acquires following a college prep educational path. While craftspeople learn to do particular things very well, using very particular information, college prep education is meant to be generalist in nature to fit with the current managerial outlook in which having many different little skillsets is likely to make you the most desirable professionally in the white-collar world.

Crawford strongly pushes back against the idea that manual labor does not require cognitive demands. He notes that in Homer’s writing, wisdom was connected to the skills of the carpenter and that “pragmatic engagement” (21) with many forms of knowledge led to a concrete result. It was only much later, with thinkers such as Descartes that intellectual inquiry became more self-contained and far less tangible. Still, Crawford notes that the theoretical inquiry of academic study is often flawed. He cites an experiment performed by two cognitive scientists, Mike Eisenberg and Ann Niskioka Eisenberg, in which they attempted to fold origami following the detailed directions of a computer program. They found that these computations required revision when put into practice because there was a sizable gap between “the abstract, untouchable world of software objects and the homey constraints of human dexterity” (23). Crawford notes that this kind of fine-tuning and trial and error is a mainstay in his bike shop, where he feels he acts not unlike a surgeon, combining judgment that is “simultaneously technical and deliberative” (25). 

In addition to the psychic and intellectual rewards of manual work, Crawford notes the social satisfaction he gets from his occupation. His shop occupies a special role in his community, and he has connected with other local businesses. He feels a sense of satisfaction from seeing others wearing a shirt with his shop’s name on it. He is pleased and takes pride in being thanked publicly for the quality of the work he has done for others.

Crawford notes that historically, Americans have tried to grapple with their relationship over manual and intellectual work, most notably doing the Arts and Crafts Movement. During this early 20th century trend towards personally constructed objects, craftsmanship and a connection to the maker of physical things was celebrated. This was in many ways a reaction against assembly line work which was wrongly thought to be completely impersonal and mindless. Crawford notes that the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 was also an interesting milestone in American’s evolving attitudes towards manual versus intellectual work. The act granted funding of manual training “in two forms: as part of general education and as a separate vocational program” (30). Crawford notes that for more affluent students, these shop classes were meant as general enrichment, “making a bird feeder to hang outside Mom’s kitchen window” (30) while the children of laborers would be given instruction in standard practices and acceptable work ethics, both of which were perceived as a necessity for assimilating immigrants.

Crawford concludes the chapter by pointing out how often “the future of work” is discussed by contemporary economists, with the common theoretical trend being that most intellectual labor can be and eventually will be outsourced. Crawford cites Princeton economist Alan Blinder, who differentiates between “personal services” and “impersonal services” (33). Blinder predicts rising wages for construction because “you can’t hammer a nail over the Internet” but forecasts that 30-40 million American jobs are “offshorable” (34). In the end, the jobs that may last are the ones with the clearest human dimension, the manual labor jobs.

In this chapter, Crawford continues to examine how modern work began to take its present form, in which manual labor is devalued and thinking work is so elevated. In particular, he is interested in examining how thinking and doing became so separated. He believes this came about largely because of automation and assembly lines. He also pins a great deal of the fault on “scientific management” (39).

Scientific management, a term coined by author Frederick Wilson Taylor, in the early decades of the 20th century, was hugely influential with innovators such as Henry Ford. As Taylor wrote: “The managers assume […] the burden of gathering of the traditional knowledge which is the past has been possessed by workmen and then of classifying, tabulating and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws and formulae” (39). The goal of this new scientific managerial approach was to make sure “[s]cattered craft knowledge is concentrated in the hands of the employer” (39). This knowledge would then be given out to workers, but only the relevant pieces that they need to know to complete their particular assignment. Taylor, in fact, argues that “[a]ll possible brain work should be removed from the shop” (40) and unskilled workers should be hired over skilled workers, for the obvious reason of being able to pay them less. The assumption made by Taylor and his ilk was that skilled workers would simply “go elsewhere” (40). 

According to Crawford, “[t]he clearest example of abstract labor is thus the assembly line. The activity of self-directed labor […] is dissolved into parts and then reconstituted as a process controlled by management—a labor sausage” (40). Crawford argues that this reconstituted process fails to utilize the real skill of laborers. He notes the ingenuity of one individual, George Sturt, who intimately knew all the steps involved in making wheels for carriages before the advent of the automobile and noted them in thorough detail in his 1923 manual, The Wheelwright’s Shop. Although people with as much in-depth skill as Sturt sought employment at Henry Ford’s assembly line, these skilled workers quickly. Crawford references a biographer of Ford who wrote that skilled laborers were so unhappy with this new system of work that “every time the company wanted to add 100 men to its factory personnel, it was necessary to hire 963 (42). The only way Ford could redress this issue was to increase wages.

In addition to the assembly line conception, around this time in the early 20th century, innovators were busy advocating for the concept of consumer debt: “Through the installment plan, previously unthinkable purchases became possible” (43). Ford and other employers of workers performing this piecemeal laborer needed consumer debt to keep workers showing up at the assembly line. Prior to the idea of debt being acceptable or even desirable, workers performed enough labor to address their fixed needs:“Consumption, no less than production, needed to be brought under scientific management—the management of desire” (43). Indebtedness, managers noticed, kept laborers disciplined even if they were unsatisfied with their work.

Crawford argues that today, white collar work is undergoing the same kind of treatment in which real thinking and knowledge is in the hands of the few and everyone else is simply following orders. He cites the “[s]tandardized tests [that] remove a teacher’s discretion in the curriculum” and the “strict sentencing guidelines [that] prevent a judge from judging” (45). The real cognitive work is being appropriated by a minute group and then handed back in small parts to this new class of workers who Crawford sees simply as “clerk.” Crawford bemoans this “rising sea of clerkdom” (47) in which workers follow orders under the flimsy guise of doing real knowledge work. 

Crawford is concerned about the way creativity is mispresented and misunderstood in our current environment of fragmented knowledge and separated knowledge and thinking. He critiques Richard Florida, who uses his work, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life, to insist that corporate culture such as that observed at Best Buy is rife with creativity among its lowest paid employees. Florida celebrates the teenagers and immigrant workers who increase outreach to non-English speakers or toy with a sales display to improve it. Crawford takes issue with this wanton praise, which he sees as not authentic creativity, as it doesn’t draw on honed skills or mastery of knowledge. Instead, these little innovations made by low paid employees serve to further the professional goals of higher ups on the management chain who “push details down and pull credit up” (50), in essence doing little of the on-the-ground work but taking credit when positive achievements are made there. 

Crawford rounds out this chapter by defining what he sees as the stoicism of trade work. He argues that “[f]reedom from hope and fear is the Stoic ideal” (53) and that trade work offers this kind of freedom, as one is able to live by the fruits of their own labor in a more simple and honest way. He encourages students to look beyond the prescribed education designed to make them into “a cubicle dweller tender of information systems or a low-level ‘creative’” (53) and instead learn a trade, even if just during the summers off. This, Crawford feels, will empower “anyone who would live by his own powers, free from the dealing abstraction” (53).

In this chapter, Crawford considers our relationship with the material objects that dominate contemporary life. He begins by considering earlier versions of the motorcycle, which required a great deal more work and monitoring by riders. The kick starter, engine, and fuel levels had to be vigorously monitored and adjusted. This, Crawford argues, required a great deal of the owner in terms of intimate knowledge of the machine: “[T]o be master of your stuff entails also being mastered by it” (57). But the author does not see this as negative, as intimate knowledge of the objects in our lives draws on real creativity and prompts true engagement: “Old bikes don’t flatter you; they educate you” (59).

Crawford sees this education as generally missing in so many contemporary consumer goods. He notes new Mercedes Benz models that are now sold without a dipstick and with a light that alert drivers when they need to get the car serviced to change the oil. The car is branded as “completely intuitive” (60). This, Crawford see as regrettable as the “computer interface […] adds a layer of abstraction as it screens the user also from the human generated logic of the program running the software” (60). As consumers, we are dependent, unable to understand the inner workings of the objects we own and sometimes depend upon. We are sold on what Crawford alleges are false notions of freedom and autonomy in these new goods. We may save time in not having to pop the hood to change the oil, but we also lose the potential knowledge gained in that act. 

Crawford asserts that we also lose more than that, more than the potential expertise we might have if we had a more intimate and interdependent relationship with our stuff. We also lose active engagement and a sense of self-expression that can be realized by things made by hand. Crawford cites Betty Crocker’s cake mixes as an example of this: “Betty Crocker learned quickly that it was good business to make the mix not quite complete. The baker felt better about her cake if she was required to add an egg to the mix” (67). This same need for self-expression and personalization is what Crawford sees behind luxury vehicles—cars designed with custom accessories to make the fully automatic, assembly line constructed vehicles feel somehow personal. Marketers realize this deep psychic need, Crawford believes; hence their attempts to sell wholehearted engagement with objects, masking distracted consumption just below the surface.