Shop Class as Soulcraft

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, published in 2009, is an often personal and meditative pitch for a cultural recommitment to the vocational arts. As a mechanic with a doctorate in philosophy, author Matthew B. Crawford has lived both lives—that of the “knowledge worker” of white-collar culture and that of the manual laborer who solves the problems society faces on a daily basis. He uses the space of the book to outline what we gain from working with our hands on tangible tasks and what we stand to lose if we continue to devalue this kind of knowledge. 

Crawford begins by providing some necessary overview as to how society now maintains a drive towards college prep education yet little opportunities for mechanical education. Crawford notes how influential thinkers such as Frederick Wilson Taylor and Henry Ford undermined the idea of skilled labor by implementing a management style that consolidated craft knowledge in the hands of bosses and relegated employees to single task assembly line work. He discusses the ways in which tools have become more esoteric and difficult to locate, making it harder for people to perform their own repairs. He argues that electronics have obscured our connections with mechanical operations and we are becoming progressively more distant from the objects we own.

Crawford shares his own professional experiences to illustrate what he sees as noble about the vocational arts. He talks about learning problem solving and “unselfing”—stepping out of his own identity to listen to the object he’s repairing. Crawford sees massive problems in corporate culture, problems he had to contend with while writing abstracts for a living. Although the terms “creativity” and “accountability” are bandied about, he sees neither in workspaces—which he views as assembly lines of ideas with no real “knowledge work” being performed.

Crawford advocates for a recommitment to the vocational arts, in education and in life. He would like to see schools point students in the direction of their dispositions, rather than relegating everyone to a college prep tract. He would like to see people get reacquainted with the process of “knowing how” things work and not just dealing in a “knowing that” type of abstract thinking. Crawford believes it is an essential human need to create or fix, and now is the time to foster habits that empower people to be self-reliant and truly masterful in their field.