I saw a meme on Facebook the other day that said something
like, “When you walk past a construction site and tell your child ‘that’s why
you go to college,’ you are not teaching her to value education but rather to
devalue the trade worker.” This struck me as a fresh perspective – and a
brutally honest one. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “that’s why you go
to college” from various people in my life and I, like many people in my
socio-economic bracket, have a built-in distain for physical labor and trade
work. My self insults me!
The puzzling thing about this perspective is that, despite
the social construct we all give into, the trade worker doesn’t inherently have
less value. While I like to think that I have always had a high level of
respect for tradesmen/women, the deep-rooted hierarchy is still present in my
middle class psyche. Coming from a white-collar Suburbia, the blue-collar
worker is looked down upon as not having the mental capacity to acquire a
higher-paying, less-strenuous job. The truth is, the tradesman/woman probably
has more real life skills to sustain him/her through a lifetime and the (highly
educated) white-collar worker needs the tradesman to function from day to day –
when the opposite might not be true. I realize I’m simplifying the situation
(as many white-collar workers, such as my father, are also handy with basic
tools, etc.), but I think the reality check is necessary.
This week was my first week working on the new farm in
Montana. While I endured my first venture into construction, my fellow
apprentices and I had a conversation where we asked ourselves what kind of real
skills we have if we suddenly needed to be self-sufficient (i.e. zombie
apocalypse or total economic crash). The answers were scary. I CAN: write a
decent essay, sing fairly well, run for about 30 minutes before I need a break,
operate both a PC and Mac, read news articles, change the oil in my car, make a
phone call…you get the picture. I CANNOT: build a weather-resistant structure, do
anything under the hood of my car (besides change the oil), operate most tools,
complete an electrical circuit, hunt my own food, etc. I rely on other
highly-skilled people to do all the things I cannot do for myself – people who
are generally seen as less education, and therefore less valuable.
For our farm apprenticeship we were asked to read Joel
Salatin’s new book, Fields of Farmers:
Interning, Mentoring, Partnering, Germinating. Salatin is a well-known
farmer in North Carolina and model for all current and aspiring farmers. The
book is about the intern/apprentice-mentor relationship. He begins the book by
detailing the importance of trade work and the vital role both apprentices and
mentors play in keeping trades alive and skilled. While his view on education
is bit more drastic than mine, he points out the absurdity of modern liberal
arts education where we sit in class rooms and discuss philosophical writings,
debate social constructs, and recite countless facts – but we don’t learn
anything “real.” We don’t learn how to reconstruct a burst pipe or fix a blown
car radiator or slaughter a rabbit. Salatin argues that true education and
learning happens with practical, hands-on activities where the connection
between knowledge and skill can be cultivated. For example, he cites a child
learning fractions and geometry by helping to build a tool shed. This is
valuable education and should be treated about as such – the child who chooses
to assume an apprenticeship or go to trade school should be valued and
encouraged in the same way as the child who chooses to attend a traditional
college.
To put this all in perspective, as I mentioned above, I
spent my first week on the farm helping to build a high tunnel. A high tunnel
is like a green house that is built over bare ground so crops can be planted
directly into the ground while being covered and heated. While it’s not a
completely permanent structure, a high tunnel requires basic construction
skills and lots of power tools. My very brief encounters tearing down musical
sets in high school and college proved useful only in the correct handling of
an electric drill. We were cutting metal tubing (bending and breaking metal
grinders), using self-tapping screws (thanks a bunch to whoever invented those
little devils!), measuring (and re-measuring), leveling (and re-correcting),
improvising (and making mistakes), and learning more than I ever could have
imagined. To my classical education’s credit, my well-tuned creative
problem-solving skills were put to the test when we accidentally cut four
pieces of metal tubing too short and had to recalculate the measurements for
the rest of the end wall.
All in all, we finished the high tunnel Saturday morning
when the weather was nice enough to pull plastic over the entire frame. I felt
a sense of accomplishment alongside my fellow apprentices and mentoring farmers
as the plastic was fastened into place and I was overwhelmed by the amount of
knowledge I had accumulated over the previous four days. Two funny things
struck me at the same time. One, our mentoring farmers had already built
another high tunnel and the first two-thirds of the one we finished – by
themselves. Second, a hired construction crew was (and still is) building a much
more permanent structure on the property. As we, the new apprentices, struggled
to finish an end wall of a simple high tunnel, a crew of true tradesmen were
pouring concrete, structuring the plumbing and electrical networks, and
completing a whole list of tasks that I can’t begin to name. What skill! What
knowledge! What practice and mastery! These are people who are walked past
every day and pointed to as “reasons to go to college.”
One of our mentoring farmers is a former accountant and
wildlife biologist and also has a wealth of practical knowledge (in
construction and electrical work, mechanical work, etc.). I asked him how he
learned all these things and he responded by telling me that it is a slow
accumulation over time – gradually gaining familiarity with certain tools and
tricks. He also said the difference between a mentor and an apprentice is the
level of proficiency (my lack of proficiency this past week made me feel like a
child learning to ride a bike). The more you do one thing with an open mind to
learning, the better you become at it until you are a master. The crazy thing
about farming is that to save on costs, one has to be a proficient utility “tradesmaster”
– generally skilled at a variety of trades. While I believe my education makes
me a more effective worker and has given me the ability to learn things
quickly, the countless things yet to learn astounds me – skills and bits of
knowledge that I cannot even dream. If I am hindered by the belief that these
skills are below me as an educated person, I can never become more sufficient
(or proficient) and would be the first to go in a zombie apocalypse!
After just four days in a world foreign to me, I am humbled
by the prospect of one day becoming a utility tradeswoman. There are so many
skills to acquire that will take time and patience; they are all necessary in
becoming a successful and self-sufficient farmer and I look forward to learning
them as I venture forward in this vast trade. I hope to greet every situation
with an open mind and a spirit that recognizes the wealth of knowledge behind
the hands and minds of every plumber, electrician, farmer, carpenter, mechanic,
and so on. As Joel Salatin writes, no job is inherently less valuable than
another because all rely on each other to complete the task at hand.
