Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, 2009.
The University of Chicago tradition of training scholars is alive and well, as Matthew Crawford's book demonstrates as he bends and dips between an esoteric philosophical exegesis on labor and his gear head biography. I doubt he would react in anger with the latter description of his book. Indeed, one of the goals of this little book (clocking in at 210 pages on such a nuanced topic) is advocating for the restoration of trade-based education, even if the skill does not determine a person's occupation.
Crawford borrows on Martin Heidegger and a slew of other philosophers to examine what "work" or "labor" consists of today as well as in the past. Stepping back to the scientific management of Frederick Winslow Taylor, in short order he traces the contours of American labor history before slicing apart contemporary jobs that departed from a skill-based profession. Knowing a skill or trade is not only lucrative, it restores agency and infuses our lives with meaning. Unlike his deadening job as an abstract writer or the head of a DC think tank, repairing motorcycles infused his life with purpose in the recognizable way that he hears in the motorcycles he fixed or the jocular rapport of a work shop. A culture that glorifies report card As and the knowledge worker is one of his principle enemies, and he persuasively explains why they've generated nothing more than people who fashion hollow products such as a grade or a promotion.
I'm stuck wondering if this work is dialectical or a simple exploration of a dichotomy. He achieves his goal of explaining why we should restore shop class to the nation's education portfolio. In doing so, he rescues mechanics and the working-class from an economy and learning environment that privileges the knowledge worker as the highest plain of professions. He picks that argument apart and reveals its bankruptcy, partially with his own story of being employed as a knowledge worker. He doesn't romanticize working, rather he celebrates the opportunities it brings to learn about yourself and the way of the world.
Now on to the problems. I find myself agreeing with Crawford rather than disagreeing, so my complaints don't target his argument. In fact, I know plenty of people who would agree with this book if he stated his thesis simply. This isn't a simple book. It's a philosophical treatment of labor and the value it instills. The prose is chalky at points and he veers a bit before arriving at a conclusion. It wasn't an easy read, despite the limited page count, so I think it bears questioning who is the audience? If he is reaching out to middle-class parents who want nothing more than their children to succeed and have fewer professional options than to send their kids off to college, then his approach is troubled.
Finally, for all the negative comments on academia and knowledge workers, Crawford is a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. I believe he still runs his motorcycle shop, and everyone needs to find gainful employment to survive so I don't think this smacks of hypocrisy. Nevertheless, he's gone back to the warm waters of academia that tend to shelter rather than an expose one to the unpredictable employment winds of working-class life.
My criticisms aside, his general elevation of trade based learning and professions is well argued, even if I question its accessibility. It certainly isn't for light reading and shouldn't be a vacation book.
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