The unions would never allow this to occur, but if we want things to change it is where we have to start.

“Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing.”

At home he had a machine shop, pieced together over the years. Some of which was bought off of the guys who were retiring from the slaughterhouse and glue factories. See, in those days, as I’m told, when the machinist retired, the tools were his. They were his prize for decades of hard and dangerous service repairing the factory equipment. Back then, and I don’t meant that long ago, they made the parts to fix the machines on the spot whenever possible.

Anyway, my father always wanted to be a machinist. He taught himself how, in his spare time. He was also a mechanic, but not by trade. My older brother had two VW beetles: One was the working one, one was the One Bring Repaired. (There were a few parts cars too.) Through the week the two of them would work on one, while my brother drove the other 500 miles a week to go to work.

They were able to pull one engine out, an put another one in in less than 30 minutes. He knew how repair a broken drive shaft, or repair stripped out spark-plug threads on an engine block.

My father was never a machinist, or a plumber, or a electrician. But he could fix all of those in our house, and did. He built most of our house from scratch.

My brother is now a contractor. He rebuilt the upper floor on my house, including framing, plumbing, electrical, sheet rock, and paint. He even refinished the hard wood floors. (I paid him, of course.)

I’m 16 years younger than my brother. I was too young to learn the machining and auto repair as well. I can fix many things in a car, but I usually don’t. I take it to the shop. I don’t have time, honestly.

I program computers. It pays well. I can mostly afford to have someone else fix my car more than I can afford to take the time to do it.

But, I don’t want that to happen to my kids. When they’re old enough I’ll buy them each a go-kart and we’ll take it apart, like my dad did with me. We’ll take their bikes apart too, like my grandfather did. We’ll fix them, improve them, and put them back together.

And we’ll do the same with their computers, and phones, and tablets. We’ll start with their toy cars. They’ll know how a H-bridge works as well as what a cotter pin is.

They can be plumbers, if they want. Or computer programmers. Or photographers. Or hairdressers. Or scientists.

As long as they know and can teach *their* kids about how these things work, and that they can fix them, or improve upon them, or invent new ones.

It’s the best I feel I can do.

I should have chosen my words more carefully. You’re right. I should have said “starting” to close the skills gap is available. It certainly doesn’t amount to years of apprenticeship.

I don’t agree with you, however, that my perspective is the same condescending problem. I agree with you that we have a cultural problem. I came to that personal realization over a year ago, and have spent the time since then trying my best to rectify it. Because of that, I have gained a whole new level of respect for craftsmanship and the trades. I look up to tradesman more than anyone.

I never disparaged trades people. I would never do that. My big quip is that Mike is packaging it wrong. Saying that these are dirty jobs and somebody has to do it is, in my opinion, a bad way of getting people excited and involved. Restoring the cultural value on hard work and craftsmanship is going to involve making them more exciting options with lots of opportunity, which they are, I think. Giving people access to the gateway tools like 3D printers and laser cutters, something screen-addicted folks are very comfortable with, seems like the best first step to me.

As I’ve said in other comments, I think it’s easy to complain and difficult to offer solutions. What ideas do you have for restoring the cultural value on manual work?

Personally, I don’t think waiting on congress to solve this issue is the answer.

Your points are based on the same condescending attitude that is discouraging anyone from entering a trades apprenticeship.

to quote “Closing the skills gap is doable for anyone, like, right away. It doesn’t take a new college degree – just spend a few weekends a month at your local hackerspace.”

Yeah, a few weeks practice is the same as a multiple year apprenticeship (Hell, no!). I re-plumbed a bathroom by myself. I know how to sweat pipe, glue pvc pipe together, etc (not by training). The job took my spare time for about three weeks, a skilled plumber would have spent a day at most doing the same work. Being shown how to do things in bits and pieces is not a substitute for a trade apprenticeship.

to quote
“These are not our grandparents tools and we need to stop preparing people for our grandparents economy. The maker jobs of tomorrow are not the craftsman jobs of yesterday. The tools have changed – rapid prototyping, social media, crowdfunding, etc – and there’s such a grander opportunity. It’s not about re-skilling people to be plumbers, it’s about inspiring them to re-invent the toilet.”

I read the toilet article. The two winning designs are ones that are self contained, they still use water, and ones has a solar powered doohicky to treat the waster. Could I point out that my grandparents and parents had self contained toilet systems. My grandparents/parents had a well on one side of the yard and a solar powered septic system on the other side of the yard. My own household system is both simpler and more complex than my grandparent, my system depends on being supplied with treated water from a remote source, and my waste is sent to a remote treatment plant. The winning toilet designs move the septic treatment back to my house, the impact on needing a plumber is likely to increase with the new design. New toilet designs will still need skilled plumbers to fix and maintain them.

I do not want someone showing up to my house who while working on a non-functioning toilet, wants to prototype a new septic flange, or talk to his buddies about the problem he is having, and wants me to talk to my neighbours about paying him to design a new toilet; I just need him to fix the toilet.

Stop disparaging trades people and stop thinking that a few discussions with makers is equivalent to formal skills training.