Rating:  -
I tend to agree for the most part with "D B Cooper 'Dan,'" however I believe that his last paragraph and specifically the last line of his review is spot on. Crawford unfortunately gives the impression that his view is right and the entire system most of us find our selves participating in is incorrect. Crawford sadly lumps all business or "educational regimes" as inherently created of poor design perpetuating intangible goals resulting in a morality that is confused and designed by the corporation.
This book is a work in impatience in which he voices his intolerance for the white collar world. Not one of his white collar jobs did he hold on to for very long. Certainly not long enough to truly understand their intricacies and thus be able to truly argue against the white collar world. Crawford has rushed through these brief stints in the white collar work force and then states his experiences as The Truth and evidence against ALL office employment.
In this impatience he has failed to take a great mouthwatering concept, one that could easily have created a movement, much as Michael Pollan is undertaking with the American food system, and instead Crawford churned out a rough draft-like rambling of his own misplaced anger and frustration for the office world in which he does not fit.
Crawford's largest failure in this book, I believe, is that he is missing his target audience. The scholars and individuals in academia eat this up, it's a theory, it's idea is great, and one that academics can fall behind and say, "job well done." Yet those individuals have little to no practical experience in either the white collar cubicle world or the blue collar trades. I think of my cousin who is exceptionally gifted with his hands, he is intelligent and he should have received a formal education in the trades, instead with the intense pressure from his parents he struggled to stay in college. After 8 years he finally graduated. My cousin is now struggling immensely with the white collar world. My cousin is the perfect example for Crawford to use in his book, yet my cousin would throw this book in the trash after the first two pages due to frustration because it is not written to or for him. If this book were to speak to those struggling or the parents struggling to figure out how to educate themselves or their alternatively gifted children then we would see a great work, instead the book is aimed poorly, it comes off as snide and disconnected to reality.
Crawford tells us that his experiences are The Example for why his word is the Truth, unfortunately contrary to what impression he gives, Crawford is just one-six-billionth of the Truth and his account of it does not equal any more than yours or mine.
Rating:  -
If you like spending time in the company of people who can think, try this one out. Crawford has not just a degree in physics, but a Ph.D. in philosophy. More importantly though, as he'll tell you, he fixes motorcycles for a living. This book is a meditation on intelligence, work, and morality that, while it owes a debt to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is actually deeper. One of the more interesting observations that Crawford makes is that intelligence should have a moral component, i.e. you should have the ability to take a step back and ask "is there something wrong with how I'm thinking about this problem?" This type of "metathinking" requires humility but it's also a mark of true genius -- sometimes it's useful to say "is there something wrong with how others are thinking about a problem?" Essentially, that's what Crawford is doing here about our society. We could use more of it. In any event, there is a lot of good stuff like this in the book.
Rating:  -
"Today, in our schools, the manual trades are given little honor. The egalitarian worry that has always attended tracking students into "college prep" and "vocational ed" is overlaid with another: the fear that acquiring a specific skill set means that one's life is determined." (19)
"Occupations based on universal...knowledge are more prestigious, but they are also the kind that face competition from the whole world as book learning becomes more widely disseminated in the global economy. Practical know-how, on the other hand, is always tied to the experience of a particular person. It can't be downloaded, it can only be lived." (162)
These two quotes pretty much sum up the focus of this book, that we have lost value and appreciation for craftsmanship and hands on work in this country in favor of a ridiculous belief that somehow the only work that is to be valued is work that is performed "intellectually" in a shirt and tie. Crawford left a political think tank to start his own motorcycle repair shop and this book is his reflections on how our country has come to view work, the values and unstated labels we place on "white collar" vs. "blue collar" work, and how our schools and government are partly to blame for our unrealistic beliefs that everyone needs to go to college to have a "good life." As someone who lost more then $20,000 a year in a "blue collar" job to happily go into the "white collar" teaching profession, only to specialize in teaching a majority of future "blue collar" kids, I have a passionate interest in this debate. I have and will continue to advocate for a revision of these destructive and condescending educational beliefs. Crawford believes, and I agree, that we have turned our schools into "square holes" with no room for our "round" non-college bound kids to fit into by eliminating trade oriented classes such as wood and auto shop in favor of more (less expensive) college prep classes. Crawford reflects on the Catch-22 of addressing or changing this situation by stating:
...any high school principal who doesn't claim as his goal "one hundred percent college attendance" is likely to be accused of harboring "low expectations" and run out of town by indigent parents. This indignation is hard to strand against, since it carries all the moral weight of egalitarianism. Yet it is also snobbish, since it evidently regards the trades as something "low" (32).
I deal with kids everyday in my high school intervention classes that exhibit what happens when years of passive aggressively telling kids through our educational actions that their interests and their skill sets are not as "good" or "valuable" to our community as those of the college bound kids. My kids repeatedly tell me that high school has absolutely no purpose or use for them and looking at what they are up against I can sympathize with their frustrations. When students believe this about school it only results in negative self images and frustration which then, over time, turns into behavior and truancy issues as these "round kids" struggle with being forced into our school's "square holes."
I wish school boards and administrators would take the time to read and think about the issues that a book like this raises so we can begin to give the trade and non-four year college track kids the respect and dignity they deserve, and more importantly, are entitled to. After all, these are going to be the only truly secure professions in our growing global economy. As Princeton economist Alan Binder states in the book, "you can't hammer a nail over the Internet" (34).
Rating: -
President Obama is on board with the idea that everyone should go to college. For someone who teaches college, that should be welcome news. I'm not so sure. I worry about whether the jobs they were hoping to get will be there when they get out. I also worry about all the "conventional wisdom" they get that will harm their career chances.
Matthew Crawford begins his book decrying the disappearance of shop classes in the public schools as emblematic of a culture that seeks to "hide the works" or become detached from the operation and maintenance of the world of things on which we rely. He cites cars with electronic monitoring systems rather than oil level dipsticks and where the engine components are hidden under sheaths.
It raises the issue in my mind that a country that disparages practical and essential work will get the plumbing, auto reliability, and electricity it deserves. Do we really want Moe, Larry, or Curly as plumbers, electricians, and auto mechanics?
It is the final stage in which much of the industrial capacity of the U.S. has moved off shore and jobs are disappearing. So, schools and colleges are preparing their students to become knowledge workers....oh, but wait....aren't those jobs being sent to India where they are also preparing their students to become computer programmers, accountants, call center debuggers; at much lower wages. I'll bet those Indian students are a lot better at math than ours. Matthew Crawford wryly notes that doctors, dentists, and motorcycle mechanic's jobs can't be moved off shore because of the need for face to face contact.
So not only are the assembly line jobs going overseas but so are the "Dilbert" jobs. What's next? Perhaps, according to Crawford, it's time to take a second look at the Arts & Crafts movement of 100 years ago. Once again, we should return to work that is satisfying as well as securely situated. This was part of the progressive movement against modernism, according to Crawford. (I think the Progressive movement was motivated by revulsion against the corrupt excesses of Gilded age politics.)
Crawford also outlines the various business workplace movements such as the older Fredrick Taylor's Scientific Management and the newer "team building" approach to supervision. He describes the modern workplace as becoming a psychological minefield, with no objective standards of performance. He also talks about corporate efforts to take the real decision making out of the work and putting in fake or cosmetic choice making. His arguments on these issues resonate with my experience and what my friends tell me.
Part of the appeal of this book, for me, is the very eclectic life and childhood of Matthew Crawford. He was raised in a commune in Berkeley in the late 60's. While there, was taught to be an electrician as a child. As a teen, he became a mostly self taught mechanic working on his own Volkswagen in the back of Berkeley speed shops. He received a BS in Physics and a PhD. in Political Philosophy. He worked for a Washington D.C. think tank and grew disillusioned with his work. His current business is a kind of marginal business fixing very distressed motorcycles.
My background and childhood was eclectic too although not quite that eclectic. I've always been drawn to people who were able to survive on the margins. A successful but marginal business I remember fondly was Don Brown's Jazz Man Record Shop in Santa Monica, California. He sold used 78 records, mostly Jazz, Swing, Blues, and Country. He conducted auction newsletters as well as selling them in his store. He also sold 33 1/3 LP reissue records of music from that era. He was able to pay the bills and live a modest middle class life style. He also had a radio program called the Cobweb Corner on KCRW at Santa Monica College. Don had mail order customers from all around the world in those days before the internet. Jazz Man Record Shop was a great gathering place for 78 collectors like the Speed Shops that Crawford talks about in his Volkswagen days in Berkeley.
People on the margins are more interesting than most businesses, which if successful, are usually boring. What is essential to any business, more than anything else is profit. Without a sufficient profit, the business dies. Unfortunately, Don's business was more interesting than profitable and when the demand for commercial rents soared in the 1980's in the West L.A. Santa Monica area, he was in trouble. When his lease ran out he was outbid by a Greek Restaurant. Whether or not greed is good is not the issue; not enough profit, no business.
I think the Shop Class as Soulcraft falters somewhat toward the end. Crawford calls for "progressive republicanism" as a solution to avoiding the actual "Dilbert" workplace and having your job outsourced. I can only guess at what he means. He worries about corporate power but has little to say about government power. He may see government as a counter balance to corporate power but doesn't explicitly say so.
I think the issue of corporate power is irrelevant to his or Don Brown's situation. Crawford's motorcycles are the ones the dealers don't want to fix; Don Brown's record buyers weren't even on the record companies radar.
Government regulatory power does not help small businesses, and often actually does great harm. I don't know about Berkeley, but in coastal Southern California, the California clean air act put the speed shops out of business in the late 1970's-early 1980's. Most of the performance equipment became illegal to sell in California. The auto manufacturers had the money and resources to get their cars certified in California but the small manufacturers of the speed equipment did not. The Air Quality Management Board threatened to shut down all of the small barbecue rib joints in South Central Los Angeles because their smoke was a violation of the pollution standards. It was a real threat until one of the oil companies stepped in and either paid their pollution credits or donated scrubber technology (I have forgotten which.)
When government regulates business, big, profitable businesses usually have the money and the power to shape the regulations. They can hire the lawyers either from the agency or from the congressional staffs who wrote the legislation. They can remind their representatives in Congress that the regulations might result in the loss of 10,000 jobs. That usually gets attention. "Too big to fail", becomes the cry.
In a more recent example, when the government bailed out Chrysler and GM (it was really the UAW that was bailed out), it was the small town car dealers who took the hit. They were left naked by the government.
We've had 100 years of Progressive era political reform, which I believe has ended with McCain's Presidential campaign. He followed the McCain-Feingold law, and Obama said that he would and then did not. The issue was of no consequence to the voters. In any event, the Progressive reforms have largely failed in taking money and corporate power out of politics.
Crawford doesn't address another problem: runaway legalism. Runaway legalism is sucking the guts out of our civic institutions. Girls are getting kicked out of school for having an aspirin in their purse. A little boy brings a cub scout knife to school (to eat his lunch) gets sent to reform school. Zero tolerance programs take decision making out of the hands of employees and the source is not corporate power but trying to solve every problem with a judicial sledgehammer.
That said, if Crawford actually means a return just to the Arts and Crafts elements of the Progressive movement, I think that is a good idea right now. Much like Matthew Crawford's father and his mathematical formula for getting a knot out of a shoelace, our neo-Keynesians are applying their abstract macroeconomic mathematical tools to the economy and it doesn't seem to be getting down to you and me. That was also my experience in the 1970's. Therefore, we will need the mental tools of the Arts and Crafts movement to follow Justice Brandeis's advice and "tend to our own garden" (as quoted from Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man.)
This review is too long, but the book left me full of many more things to write about. I gave it five stars not because I agree with everything he said but because it caused me to think about many things in the world of work I hadn't thought about in some time.
Rating: -
Matthew Crawford is a philosopher-mechanic. This book arises out of his reflection on his own academic and career history. His journey has taken him from being an electrician's apprentice, to a Ph.D. in political philosophy from University of Chicago, to leading a Washington think tank, to being the proprietor of an independent motorcycle repair shop. As a result, Crawford is in a position to ask some important economic and psychological questions and offer answers grounded in both personal experience and a solid grasp of others' thinking on the topics.
Crawford begins with an exploration of why shop class has nearly vanished in America. In contrast to the idealism of a post-industrial America where everyone must go to college, he points us to the reality of economic dislocation of knowledge workers and the rising supply-demand gap for skilled tradesmen. At the same time, he avoids a sentimental approach to craftsmanship, in favor of a pragmatic, earthy point of view.
One of the most important cultural conceits that Crawford argues against is the idea that the skilled trades are not intellectually challenging. As anyone who has messed about with mechanical contrivances knows, there can be a great deal of puzzle working and problem solving involved with completing a task. He contrasts this to a job he had writing abstracts of academic articles, which was almost entirely formulaic and mindless.
Instead, Crawford argues that the intellectual orientation of mechanical competency differs from the current approach of schools. Schools tend to emphasize the universal over the particular, facts over skills. For Crawford, this is a contrast between "knowing how" and "knowing that".
In addition, Crawford suggests that a person who has learned a skill has an entirely different approach to life. The skilled individual is simultaneously more aware of the external constraints that affect his desires and more capable of transcending those that are artificial. The mechanical individual learns attentiveness, patience, and respect for his work. Crawford correctly identifies work as a factor in our moral education.
Despite his assurance in an end note that he has no desire to idealize the trades, I think he does go a bit overboard. There are types of knowledge work that do provide some of the same opportunities for positive psychological development and useful productivity. Likewise, there are plenty of folks who fail to achieve the character benefits that working in a useful trade ought to engender.
So far, this is the best book I've read this year. Anyone who cares to think about the nature of work, education, or character will find it engaging and enlightening.
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