Shop Class as Soulcraft

“A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our relationship to our own stuff: more passive and more dependent.”

In addition to being concerned about contemporary individuals’ inability to create on their own, Crawford is also concerned about individuals’ inability to repair. He notes towards the beginning of the book that increasingly more cars require esoteric screwdrivers and other hard to locate tools that make repairing the job of an expert rather than the owner of the vehicle. 

“The craftsman has an impoverished fantasy life compared to the ideal consumer; he is more utilitarian and less given to soaring hopes. But he is also more independent.”

Crawford argues that those skilled in creating and repairing have a different approach to purchasing new goods than more consumers. A pure consumer is interested in what is new, thinking that newness is always an improvement. A craftsperson, by contrast, is able to apply an objective set of criteria to evaluate how well made and useful a product truly is, whether or not it is shiny and new.

“Craftsmanship entails learning to do one thing really well, while the ideal of the new economy is to be able to learn new things, celebrating potential rather than achievement.”

Crawford sees many differences between college prep and vocational training. An advantage he sees in vocational skills acquisition is that an individual gets to truly master a skill and feel and see a tangible achievement before them. He finds this specificity lacking in college prep education, which is versatile at the expense of mastery and perhaps even real accomplishment.