Reviving the joy and honor of working with your hands (2015)

I wish education wasn't so split between "academic" and "vocational" (for lack of better terms).

In high school for my A levels I was able to take both Maths, Physics and Politics (with an academic focus) and Metalworking and Photography (with a more practical hands-on focus). I loved this, and feel like this was incredibly useful to me later in life.

But for some reason beyond school level you are mostly forced to choose between academics and hands-on work (at least in the UK). With the hands-on pathways being looked down on by much of society.

My father was a machinist for 25 years and then went into education and training for skilled trades, very much screamed about this for most my life. When I dropped out of college, he tried to get me to just enter an apprenticeship for a trade. It’ll be dirty, uncomfortable, sometimes painful, he said, but you’ll leave your work when you go home, and if you’re dedicated and half-good at it, you could eventually have your own business and crew before the physical stuff catches up to you. By then the lack of experienced tradesmen here will have turned into an crisis and I would be in an enviable spot. Here I am, 25 years later, worried I didn’t listen.

Hypothetically, I wonder how viable it is to switch to a vocation like electrician or HVAC in your 40s-50s.

I'm glad the "heavy" part of this is not understated. The big iron is out there, surprisingly cheap, and it usually stays put for quite a while because it is a damn bitch to move. Tear down a wall, and put it back later. And make sure your floor won't cave in.

If you ever get yourself into serious hobby machining, get ready for the average density of all your possessions to double.

This is why the Northern European countries have a tradition of teaching Sloyd Woodworing in elementary schools:

https://rainfordrestorations.com/2013/06/04/traditional-sloy...

>Students may never pick up a tool again, but they will forever have the knowledge of how to make and evaluate things with your hand and your eye and appreciate the labor of others.

Shop Class as Soulcraft essay (and book) continues on these points pretty well: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...

It's super cool to build things. I love talking to people at the makerspace. Lot's of people working on interesting projects. I can't imagine not having home ec either. I don't remember the teachers name, but I've made a quesadilla the same way since 5th grade.

Some tech skills are helpful too. I typically CAD projects so I know what size lumber and cuts need to be made.

I'm split on the topic. I think there is value in working with your hands on a service basis, but don't believe in trying to build things.

My father was a farmer for 40 years and built a business that was supposed to be his retirement. Then the government eminent domained his water rights without any compensation, destroying his life's work, and leaving him and all the other farmers in the area high and dry.

Now I don't build anything that isnt cashed out immediately.

Before the fall of Techshop, they offered me a setup where I could take all of the classes I wanted in three months. Muhahahahaha.

I already had a few advantages going in: a year of drafting in high school, a year of computer drafting in college (mind you the tools were long dead); the ability to think in parametrics; courses in engineering to go with my physics degree; and just being a general geek. Like a maniac, I took all but one class they offered.

Probably one of the happiest times of my life, scampering around the shop and churning out trinkets for friends and family, making weird art projects for myself.

I recently read a book called "Shop Class as Soul Craft" which talks about "the trades" and how it shapes the individual and the nation. I found it really enlightening and highly recommend it.

I have a few hobbies that are somewhat physical (whittling, calligraphy) and the shift from purely digital work to those are very relaxing. There's something special about involving more senses that just your eyes with a job.

I think the fact that essays like this one proliferate is showing a cultural reversion.

For the past few decades, there was a push for everyone to get a university degree, driven by a prmise that academic achievement would guarantee a prosperous life: A good salary and a high-status job.

We've seen that promise broken. Especially in the US, where student loans are a drag on people's lives. But even in Europe, where people will get degrees in things that are better taught on the job (i.e. graphic design) and still need to struggle getting internships and even badly-paid junior roles.

I think it's been known for a long time that you can make money in the crafts, often more than you do in entry-level office jobs. But I think an important part of making the crafts more popular is status.

If your dad is a lawyer and your mom is a professor, you might not get encouragement if you want to be a welder, chef or roofer.

There needs to be more respect for those professions. They, too should get respect for learning a complex craft and mastering it.

> It’s all part of the sharp decline in vocational education — shop class — in this nation that began in the 1980s as blue collars became unfashionable and the emphasis shifted to a college education.

Low supply?

> “There’s a huge need for people in CTE fields,” Kaine told me Friday. “The old stigma about CTE, or vocational education, that’s really disappearing and there’s kind of a renaissance going on.”

Big demand?

This would imply that machinists, etc., are enjoying a big surge in salary. Is this true?

> It’s all part of the sharp decline in vocational education — shop class — in this nation that began in the 1980s as blue collars became unfashionable and the emphasis shifted to a college education.

Yeah that's what happened. They became "unfashionable", rather than hopelessly precarious due to structural economic changes.

The maker movement is so dead in the US that it's been forgotten.

I had a TechShop membership for years, and a TheShop membership after that, right up to the bankruptcy. The gym business model doesn't fit. Gyms work because people only show up a few hours per week, max. A gym can have 10x to 30x its capacity in members. For a maker space, people show up more, and it's only 2x - 3x.

I went to the wake for maker spaces, a small meeting in Silicon Valley. Some guy from TechShop made excuses. The guy who bought Heathkit went on about their retro kits. Then we all went home.

There are still some maker spaces, but they're mostly 3D printers, sewing machines, and paper-folding, not lathes and mills. They're much more kid-oriented, with kids doing prescribed projects.

Stranger than fiction to me is the experience of generations who'll have less opportunity, less wealth, less of whatever makes life good, and progressively going down the ladder.

There's much ink spilled on civil rights and people who fight to gain opportunity, acceptance into society, good educations, employment and leadership.

And perhaps it's not so easy for the privilged folk to accept displacement or disenfranchisement in favor of in-groups. Because if equity and justice are done, every winner is balanced by a loser, because you cannot magically grow an economy to expand rights and include everyone, even with stable resources and game hasn't changed. It didn't escape my notice that there were murmurings of fleeing the city, prepping for disaster, going full granola and off the grid and kiss this world goodbye soon. Are we in the Matrix? Mom's basement with a kitkat bar? Are all the birds replaced by machines?

I've been studying a bit of philosophy and history and seeing threads that just can't be denied, where the struggle for power and privilege is claiming casualties as abortion, addiction, mental illness, homelessness and unemployment. It seems absurd to propose that we're a society enslaved by machines, or Life Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness aren't as equitable as we'd hoped.

But I am taking sick and perverse pleasures in simply hand-decorating Thank-You notes with a fistful of magic markers, and folding up paper and doing other things in meatspace, things that were unthinkable when my hands were welded to the Super NES controls or Type M Keyboard.

An open-ended question to HN: given the current rate of innovation in AI and the increase in popularity (hence more uni students studying CS), will learning a trade still be worth it 10 years down the line?

I think the protagonist of this article is as rad as the story is sad. I do understand the desire to frame the narrative as having the most possible impact, but I think the framing ("joy and honor?" "strengthen our nation") is ham-fisted and reductive. It starts to unpack something meaningful though...

It IS a huge shame to see wood and machine shop programs disappear. Even if you're not "blue collar" or a "craftsperson" there are massive benefits to learning the processes of working with your hands. At my undergrad architecture school you had to learn to use the shop in your first weeks. If you were familiar with the tools you had to go through the training and get re-certified. If you were never required to use them before, now you were. But power tools are such a time saver for always busy architecture students that you just did it anyway. Even if somehow you managed to avoid it you were still required to make physical models which requires precision, attention to detail, and care around sharp tools. In the 2000's there was a move toward an entirely digital pedagogy, but the pendulum has swung back - in architectural education today we require our students to make physical models. Many professors are less passionate about making still require a final model to "prove" your ideas. But as someone who bangs on endlessly about the lessons to be learned from craft I make my students use them as a constant and iterative process of prototyping and testing ideas.

There are some things that absolutely cannot be understood without having to struggle through how to represent them in real materials with real properties, in space, and subjected to gravity. Hand craft makes you plan your actions carefully - even in the small. There is no undo button on a hundred dollar piece of burl walnut. And unless you learn to always be constantly aware of your body and movements (heck, let's intellectualize and call it proprioception) a chop saw can get a little... choppy. Understanding that "let the machine do the work" is simultaneously safety advice AND a philosophical masterstroke is sublime.

I never took a shop or vo-tech class, but I grew up around machines and craft. My father was a union machinist making jet engines (and tooling), only retiring from poor health right after hitting his 30 years. His stepdad got him in to the trade, and was a career machinist turned manager. My dad's half brothers were gearheads - one has bought, revived, and sold literally more cars than he can count with nothing more than a vo-tech degree (but his first flip when he was 14). His day job is in machining consumables sales. His home shop would put most of his clients to shame. My dad's other half brother has an Associates in Electrical Engineering and has always been in high demand as an embedded and controls systems programmer. I changed my parents' oil for the first time solo when I was eight (for reference I also wrote my first simple computer program when I was seven). We all grew up working closely with machines. It was just what we did. To this day I'm the one in any situation who winds up fixing anything wonky. I can't explain it beyond "sometimes machines just speak to me." Sounds ridiculous but it's just a process of understanding through exposure how things normally should work and how to spot the things that are out of whack. Once you can understand the cues these complex machine systems want to give you it provides insight into ones you've never worked with before...

That's all to say even in the most intellectual modes there are lessons to be learned from understanding how to use (and not use!!!) machines. The death of shop class is unfortunate and short-sighted. Everyone across the political spectrum is guilty, all together for the death or flight of the industries that demanded these classes in the first place. I don't believe there's anything -intrinsically- redemptive about understanding these processes. (Knowing lots of building tradesmen will immediately put lie to the more over-the-top notions in the article.) But the ability to mediate between your brain and the outcomes of physical processes that comes with machine work is exciting (even joyful yes) and filled with lessons far beyond learning to face mill a plate or lathe a precise cylinder, etc.

You would think that at the very least our military would not tolerate having to build its machinery with parts from abroad. Can anyone speak to this?

Shit's tough though. Most tradespeople have lots of injuries... smashed hands, bad joints, have to breathe in toxic shit all day, bad hearing. My 35yo friend can hardly stand from back pain. And, it can be _very_ skilled. Business/shop owners can and do make quite a bit more than the standard software engineer.

Go I’ll