Although I had no intention of becoming a “Future Farmer of America,” I spent my first two years of high school taking courses in vocational agriculture (it’s just what we do in Texas). During the winter months we’d forgo the usual sheep shearing and hog castrating to work on projects more typically found in a shop class. While we were allowed free rein to rebuild truck motors or craft wooden benches, I mostly spent my time in the corner dreaming nerdy dreams.
A course catalog from Rice University had inexplicably found its way into the classroom and I treated it as a travel guide to the strange and exciting intellectual world of college. Each day I’d sit there, fantasizing about taking classes (linguistics! anthropology!) that didn’t require dealing with a band saw or hydraulic fluid.
At the time, the ivory towers of Rice seemed a million miles away from the sawdust-covered shop floor of Clarksville High. And for me they were. I wasn’t smart enough to get into Rice (those kids were really smart) so I ended up getting a college degree while taking a long tour through the world of skilled manual labor—laying plumbing with irrigators, fixing pump-jacks with oilfield electricians, remodeling houses with carpenters, and making handbrakes with factory workers. The capstone of my career as a jack-of-all tradesman was a fifteen-year stint in the Marines as an aviation electrician.
During those years I met plenty of people who found such work intellectually engaging. I just wasn’t one of them. I wanted to work with ideas. My primary ambition was to one day have a job that included air-conditioning and excluded having to scrub my hands with Lava soap. My secondary goal was to work with people who crafted abstract concepts rather than wood and metal.
My career life now exceeds my wildest expectations. Although I’m still a member of the proletariat, I now rub virtual shoulders with a broad range of intellectual and cultural elites (linguists! anthropologists!). These people read books and articles about ideas—including books and articles about how intellectually fulfilling manual labor can be.
Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft is just such a book and his New York Times Magazine article, “The Case for Working With Your Hands,” is just such an article (the book expanded on a 2006 essay in The New Atlantis). While you aren’t likely to find them on your plumber’s bookshelf or your cabinetmaker’s workbench, you will find them on the reading lists of many of your conservative, academically inclined friends.
Crawford, who now makes a living repairing motorcycles, presents a compelling case for the intrinsic value of trade work. He forcefully argues (though it’s disappointing that such an argument even needs to be made) that manual labor requires intellect and creativity and can be both profitable and satisfying. Both the book and the article are worth reading, though his observations tend to be rather obvious (plumbers are well-paid and white-collar jobs can be dull) and as dry as an academic whitepaper (he used to work for a Washington, D.C.-based think tank). Of course, the manner is fitting since Crawford writes not for his fellow mechanics but his former grad school chums.
As every review and article about the book has taken pains to point out, Crawford has a Ph.D. in political thought from the University of Chicago. Presumably, we are expected to find this biographical fact surprising—the greasemonkey is a political philosopher!—but such a hook is to be expected. Who would publish a book on the value of manual labor if it had been written by someone who did nothing more than fix Harleys?
This is not a knock at Crawford who, from the evidence he presents in interviews, appears to be a genuinely interesting and amiable chap. He deserves praise for the insights he provides in his writings. But the buzz about the book is not really about the book. It’s about Crawford, or rather the idea that Crawford embodies: the intellectual who realizes an authentic and fulfilling life working as a manual laborer.
Like the agrarian who lives in Manhattan and reads Backwoods Home Magazine, the would-be mechanic gets to identify with Crawford’s authentic vocational turn without actually having to scrape the brake grease from under his own fingernails.
Manual laborers—who tend to have more traditional fantasies, like escaping to a life of ease on a tropical beach—will be amused by the workaholic “knowledge workers” who dream not of leisure but of trading their cubicle for the shop floor. They should not be surprised, nonetheless, since white-collar workers have long romanticized about appropriating blue-collar tropes. Academics and middle managers who want to associate themselves with the virtues of manual work are like the hipsters who wear trucker caps and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.
While this sort of fantasy is harmless, a more highly idealized vision of manual work can lead some to believe life really is better on the farm or on the pavement of the garage. It’s one thing to dream about moving to a quiet, rural small town. But actually making such a change means neighbors less like the agrarian supermodel Wendell Berry and more like Hank Kimball, the county agent in Green Acres.
It’s not that these good country workers and manual laborers are dumb—far from it—it’s just that the mental engagement in full-time labor is not the same as the intellectual fulfillment that comes from a devoted “life of the mind.” Manual labor tends to rely on dexterity skills and concrete intuitions, while knowledge work tends to rely on language facility and concepts in the abstract. While there is some overlap between the two types of vocation, they are not interchangeable.
The differences are most profound in the way that members of the two professional groups talk about their work. There is an almost insurmountable language barrier between manual laborers and word workers. For example, my favorite outfit promoting agrarian localist thought, Front Porch Republic, once dedicated an entire week to analyzing Crawford’s book. Not surprisingly, their discussions are nothing like what you’d hear at the water cooler at your local garage. Their articles tend to read like this section, from an intelligent and thoughtful reflection by Susan McWilliams:
It seems that our national inclination to value “knowledge work” – at least as it is currently practiced – over the manual trades may, almost paradoxically, be disconnecting us from some of the most meaningful human knowledge, which is knowledge how to use speech with others to seek the truth. So to revive respect for working done with hands, as Crawford does here, may do more than that: It may revive respect for talking done with heart.
As your favorite motorcycle mechanic (the one that didn’t attend an elite college) might say, “What in the world is she talking about?” Such discussions are common on sites like Front Porch Republic and First Things, where people spend their working lives in idea factories. But as a general rule, people who work in bike shops and have names like “Joe” (which, as in my case, is not short for Joseph, but short so that it fits the little oval patch sewn on Dickies work shirts) don’t talk like that. As even Crawford’s own shop mate said about him, “Matt talked constantly about ideas while working on bikes . . . Sometimes it became hard for us to get any work done.” Indeed, such philosophical musings are often antithetical to the practical work—and earthy chit-chat—associated with real manual work. The work of the hands requires a different type of thinking than the leisure-induced musings of philosophers.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting to talk about ideas, even the idea of how manual labor can lead to an intellectually fulfilling life—a theory I fully endorse. But the ideas about work proffered by agrarian academics and garage-dreaming cubicle workers are hardly the same as those of real farmers and trade workers. If we ask manual laborers to speak for themselves, we may find that they view manual work as work and shop class as a place for crafting stuff, not souls.
Joe Carter is Web Editor of First Things and the co-author of How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator. His previous articles for “On the Square” can be found here.
RESOURCES
Matthew B. Crawford, Shopclass as Soulcraft (book)
Matthew B. Crawford, Shopclass as Soulcraft (essay in The New Atlantis)
Matthew B. Crawford, The Case for Working With Your Hands
Susan McWilliams, Working with Words
Comments:
A person inclined to contemplation will contemplate while working. The task can be quintessentially mundane, tedious, insignificant. The mind, abiding elsewhere, is absorbed with sublime matters which shape the soul.
Another person may be seemingly engaged with the most elevated things while possessing an impoverished soul.
Maybe. But the more thoughtful, reflective ones would rightly reject such a dichotomy. I'd wager the less introspective ones would agree after a conversation as well.
Mr. Carter is lucky in that he grew up with an appreciation for manual labor, and saw that the other half of his life, ideas and the development of his mind, was lacking. So he sought to create balance in his life.
Was not St. Benedict's motto "Ora et Labora?"
I think you are definitely on to something in your observations about the idea of manual labor versus what a life of it actually looks like, and the dangers of fantasizing about such a life. I'm an attorney and my wife's father is a farmer/schoolteacher. I find works such as Crawford's and Berry's very compelling visions that speak to something my life is missing. But My father-in-law views it all as romantic broo-hah that has little to do with what farming is actually like.
All of that said, I think you're glossing over Crawford's deeper two points.
The first is that some smart people really are suited for complex manual labor and that those people are currently discouraged from that kind of work by their schools/culture on the premise that white collar work is what smart people do and manual labor is for those not smart enough. It may not fit with your experience, but as a middle-class suburban high school graduate, I can tell you those prejudices abounded (for the record, I think I am tempermentally well suited to be a lawyer, and have no regrets about not being an electrician).
The second is that, as PaulR notes about, Crawford does not present an either/or situation. Rather, his book speaks to the deeper point that we are not dualists, we are, in part, our bodies (see Aquinas' "My Soul is not Me") and our bodies were created to work. As someone who spends most of his life happily thinking and reading and writing, I know that I encounter something fundamentally human when I work in the garden or help my FiL bale hay, something that I need. What Crawford's book does, I hope, is remind the majority of us engaged in white collar work that we need actual work too.
That's a great point that I should have addressed in my essay. It drives me nuts when people (mostly parents) assume that "smart" kids go to college and take white collar jobs while the "dumb" ones go to vo-tech and manual labor jobs. The skillsets are different but it has little to do with intellect. Many of the manual labor guys I have known have much IQs than me. It's not about brains, but about temperament.
My farm is only viable because it enjoys common grazings on the moor and I find working with animals particularly satisfying. I am more flattered, when my neighbours ask for help with their lambing (I am reckoned to be good at cross-births) than any professional accolades I have received as a lawyer.
The only thing my two careers have in common is independence (Scottish advocates are not allowed to join firms or partnerships). I do not think an academic career would have suited me at all.
He later had a successful career as a Montreal anaethetist and professor, but he channeled his love for the outdoors and brute strength into clearing and landscaping the summer cottage. In his case the opposites were complementary.
I have been angered for many years by the elitist condescension people who make a living with their hands get from those with a bunch of degree initials after their names.
It's probably coincidental, but this is the second time I've read about this subject since Monday the 13th. That was when I read an article about the growing recognition that our obsession with college and degrees and our national prejudice against vocational education are doing to our future.
If you haven't already seen the article, I think you'll find it very interesting,
Here's a link
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110613/ts_yblog_thelookout/vocational-education-advocates-battle-enormous-prejudices
I was puzzled, though, by your statement that "The differences are most profound in the way that members of the two professional groups talk about their work. There is an almost insurmountable language barrier between manual laborers and word workers." Well, yes. But the language barrier is just as insurmountable between different academic fields, and there are similar barriers between different trades. A farmer has the advantage of knowing a little bit about many trades, just as the philosopher and theologian should know a bit about the other academic fields, but a trim carpenter will no more understand the "shop talk" of a pipefitter than he will the "shop talk" of a sociologist. Along the same lines, my colleagues in the business school can no more understand my literary "shop talk" than they can comprehend the shop talk of the pipefitter. All specializations have their own languages, which are generally only partly comprehensible to the uninitiated.
I am glad, though, that you pointed out that "the mental engagement in full-time labor is not the same as the intellectual fulfillment that comes from a devoted “life of the mind.”" Indeed, the quality of satisfaction I have in explicating a difficult poem is not quite the same as the quality of satisfaction I have when I install a new bathroom fixture or get the garden tilled. But that is all the more reason for me to pursue both kinds.
Lastly, I would just like to point out although there is certainly a difference between the material products of a workshop and the abstract products of an academic argument, those abstractions don't exist independently of the material world. Usually they are communicated in words, or sometimes in mathematical symbols. And words are physical things. They exist in time and space, and we make, arrange, and manipulate them with our bodies. At least in my field, in which our objects of study really are physical objects, the essential difference between shop class and English class need not be so great as it might seem.
In 1987. At the time, about a quarter of my graduating class went to college in Commerce.
As one who has experience in almost every construction trade available, a Master's degree in International Relations, and is currently working in IT, I can relate to all of these thoughts. Perhaps one useful maxim for people of all vocations and dispositions is quite simply that we enjoy work that we choose much more than work we don't choose.
I also went to a Texas high school, a dismal place called Flour Bluff near Corpus Christi. I was sentenced to three years there due to the fact that my father was stationed at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. I was the science nerd who got up at 5 am one morning in October 1957 to see Sputnik One sailing through the Texas skies. Not even the science teachers at Four Bluff High had any interest in it, though. The environment at Flour Bluff, as well as my own family, was solidly working class. I was the outlier.
I later ended up in Berkeley in the 1960s, and got entirely lost and disoriented in metaphysical speculation. Part of the cure, I finally discovered, was not only establishing profound spiritual roots as a Christian, but cultivating the routine habit of doing skilled work with my hands. It was a crucial element in my recovery. I developed a career in electronics, and I became the handyman in my home. I became an avid fan of old VW beetles and even rebuilt an engine in my garage. The deepest satisfaction, though, came from photography. I began doing photography and darkroom work in West Africa with the Peace Corps, and have continued it to this day. It's an area where art, technology, and precise manual work come together in an almost meditative practice. Avocations like this are a crucial antidote to the tendency, too common in modern society, to live entirely in our heads.