The Real Knowledge of Hands-On Work

This past summer I took on a home improvement project that I wasn't absolutely sure I would be completely successful in completing.  My wife Conni ordered cork flooring to replace the dog-shredded "white" carpet that was in our family room.

Seemed easy enough as described on the internet video.  And then I went to work and found a whole lot of problem-solving that I didn't expect at the outset.  How do I level out from room to room uneven floor height?  How do I cut around radiator pipe?  What is the best way to leave holes in the floor to run television and internet cable through?

So what I thought might take a couple days tops took me a solid week of working straight through with several trips to the hardware store between.  Thank you YouTube and Google Search for helping me through the project!

I've spent my career as a teacher of skills and ideas.  As an educator, I don't necessarily produce anything tangible that you can wrap up and take home - my students do that.  I guess I am in some ways one worker on a kind of "educational experience / skills development assembly line" that students go through.  This is not a criticism of my work, nor may it be a popular metaphor to attach to schooling, but in some ways it is true.  I get students at "Stage 10" in the 12-stage process and do "installations" of reading and writing skills that augment the "product" on the line. 

I am intrigued by Matthew Crawford's thesis in his book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work.  Crawford views the world and the world of work as a place increasingly dependent on ideas and intangible skills.  The "product" of much of our work now appears as temporary words and figures on a computer screen - flashes of light meaningful only in the meaning we grant them.  Crawford delves into the idea that there has been a movement away from the practical arts - actually he challenges the idea that so-called desk jobs are intrinsically more valuable than jobs in which you work with your hands: electrician, machinist, carpenter, mason, plumber, HVAC repair, mechanic.

"A repairman...puts himself in the service of others, and fixes the things they depend on.  His relationship to objects enacts a more solid sort of command, based on real understanding."

I've always admired those who are really able to accomplish something in a practical and permanent sense - the auto mechanic who is able to diagnose the issue with my car's brakes and rotors, the sewer repairman who installs an outdoor access pipe, the HVAC installer who makes sure I can heat and cool my house efficiently.  It's not until I dabble with a more involved home-improvement project that I get the sense of pride in permanence that Crawford expounds upon.  Even more intriguing is the sense that we are becoming less and less familiar with the objects we depend on, and even more dependent on those objects we don't understand.  And by extension, we become more dependent on those who repair those objects we depend on. There's real value in the understanding that goes with the practical arts.

Here's an interview of Matthew Crawford talking about Shop Class as Soulcraft on The Colbert Report: