Shop Class as Soulcraft:
The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the
world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, because he has no real effect in the world. But the tradesman must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one's failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away. His well-founded
pride is far from the gratuitous "self-esteem" that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.
Sure, it feels good to have made something good, but I’d ask this author: 1) why are there so many bad tradesmen that are apparently not that attracted to this feeling and 2) how do they feel about jobs in which their skill has little to do with how something turns out (and products are being produced all the time that factor out labor)?