High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educatorss prepared students to become
"knowledge workers." The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then
to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about
in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating
than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets,
build our houses.
When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that
they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work
may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur-the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come
to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the
suggestion of Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use," which concludes with the lines "the pitcher longs for water to
carry/and a person for work that is real." Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest in envy./.
This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics'
trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people
aren't buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But
there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect
of making the manual trades-plumbing, electrical work, car repair-more attractive as careers. The Princeton
economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with
more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their
work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries.
As Blinder puts it, "You can't hammer a nail over the Internet." Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in
India.
If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn't really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of
panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to
the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or
fix thinne Ona chon taachar conected to me that "in schools we create artificial laamino anvironments for our
Summary overall ?