Jane Liu
Dr. Carrie Hall
ENG 1101-351
20 September 2018
Reintroducing Vocational Skills
When Mathew B. Crawford started off as an electrician’s helper, he was fourteen years old and started a small electrical contracting business after college in Santa Barbara. Starting at the age of
fourteen, Crawford was able to take the skills he had learned, and use them to help him start a business after college. Schools should reintroduce vocational skills classes to prepare students for
opportunities outside of white collar professions to help benefit themselves whether it has to do with working and retaining skills that will help you in your everyday life as you grow older.
Introducing vocational skills classes will allow high school or even middle school students retain a lot of information and the skills they need to grow as a person. They will get to learn what they
enjoy and how they would want to continue with their life using such skills to create a business, get a job that calls for certain skills or even just for your own benefit. Preparing students at a younger age
will help them through the college process and give them the opportunity to do other things outside of school that will improve their skills but parents would rather have their children be prepared for
college in an educational way. An example that relates to me is that I deal with severe anxiety and it has been hard to control and maintain my daily life. I’ve had to join cognitive behavioral therapies
(CBT) that taught me the skills that allow me to control my thoughts, think more positively, and what to do in red zone moments. Attending these therapies allowed me to help my brain focus on the
positives more than the negatives and solve problems the correct way without causing panic. I see my anxiety as an opportunity to join therapies that benefit me and teach me the skills I need to get me
through the day and allow myself to focus on my health my well being.
By working on Crawfords own products, he sees his world transform because he sees himself grow as a hard worker. He compares a craftsman to a tradesman. While the craftsman appreciates is
own hard work and cherishes it, consumers don’t realize how much work is put into it. “ The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he
recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the original abstract and purely subjective idea he has of
himself.” During that time, skilled workers were replaced with unskilled workers at a lower rate of pay to save money, while the skilled workers go elsewhere. I disagree with this logic because of how
they would rather have unskilled workers than skilled just because of the pay. This shows they didn’t care about the quality of the items but only for themselves. Blue collar labor is not useless. Blue
collar workers are people who perform labor jobs. They are hands on workers, they can be low skilled, and sometimes even unskilled. Blue collar workers aren’t required to have much schooling but
would much rather have skilled people. If they attend trade school, where it focuses on specific job that you want to master and they will go more in depth, it will be easier for younger people to find
an opportunity to work by attending trade school. Many people who are blue collar workers consist of engineers, electricians, janitors, architects and many more jobs that provide for communities.
Through Crawfords studies and experiences, he realized that, “Shared memories attach to the material souvenirs of our lives, and producing them is a kind a communion, with others and with the
future.”
By reintroducing vocational skills classes to schools, it will allow young people to be engaged to what they learn and look into it for their future and prepare themselves for what is to come. Without
vocational skills classes, people will never discover it until they’ve gone through unnecessary school. We need more people to take these courses so there are more knowledgeable workers that will be
available to provide for the communities electricity, buildings, machines and the safety of the world.
