Social foo: Tinkering

[alpharaposa]

The importance of having hobbies.

The attitude that working with your hands is somehow stupid or undignified annoys me. Even somebody who lives in their head a lot, like myself, can feel really good by assembling some items myself or with another person.

I started the article on the American Educational System on tvtropes.org, and somebody came along and, in the name of 'adding some humor', dumped a good deal of that very attitude on it. It's a wiki; I didn't bother to get into some kind of editing war over it. It just bugs me.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I found college entirely useless, except for three (largely incidental) points:

1. It kept me busy; since I had no idea what to do with myself, it was a useful outlet for my energy and kept me out of trouble.

2. I got a job so I wouldn't have to go back and forth from dorm to classes all day, and that job eventually gave me the resume start I needed to get my first full-time job.

3. I met silvertales and my art advisor.

That's it. My degree? Utterly useless in almost every particular, except, perhaps, for edification... an edification I wouldn't bother to take advantage of until decades later, because at the time it was being hammered into me I was too young to appreciate it.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

I learned some startling things in college, but they were not what my courses were meant to teach, generally speaking.

It did, indeed, keep me busy for a while as well.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

I think over-busy-ness and lack of time has a lot to do with the lack of tinkering.

I'm not a shade-tree mechanic, but I can do my own routine automotive maintenance. I have a little experience with carpentry, plumbing and electrical wiring, probably enough to remodel my own house if I put my mind to it. I can also build guns, reload ammo, and assemble PCs.

So why don't I do these things? Because I don't have time. I am utterly consumed with stressful white-collar work, which I can't afford to give up, but which renders me incapable at the end of the day of doing anything "productive."

The same can probably be said of children in schools, who get multiple hours of busy-work to do every night, on top of expected sports/other after-school activities and mandatory "community volunteer" projects -- and in spite of all that, seem to be the least well educated generation of Americans yet.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

Another link to read along these lines:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft

Lots to think about.