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Posts Tagged ‘shop-class-as-soulcraft’

ironically false dichotomy: mental v. physical

In economics, edumication on 23 January 2008 tagged coffee-spoons, community-college, education, manual-labor, mental-v-manual, mental-v-physical, schooling, shop-class-as-soulcraft, technical-education, vocational-education with no comments

I discovered the Smith-Hughes Act through “Shop Class as Soulcraft” (PDF)1

The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 gave federal funding for manual training in two forms: as part of general education and as a separate vocational program. The invention of modern shop class thus serviced both cultural reflexes of the Arts and Crafts movement at once. The [...]

an idea for a community workshop activity

In slush on 20 January 2008 tagged appliance-repair, community, community-workshop, education, machine-shop, shop, shop-class, shop-class-as-soulcraft, workshop with no comments

While reading Shop Class as Soulcraft, I came across something I already knew:

A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our mode of inhabiting the world: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in [...]

the deceptive materialism of the craftsman

In edumication, technology on 20 January 2008 tagged craft, education, fixing-things, machine-shop, manual-labor, manual-work, shop, shop-class, shop-class-as-soulcraft, soulcraft with no comments

Colleen Kaman was kind enough to send me an awfully good essay from The New Atlantis, called “Shop Class as Soulcraft”.1
Reading through the article, I ran across a contradiction in my thinking about hands-on work. Typically, consumerism is associated with materialism, which I had previously articulated, ad hoc, as the predication of happiness upon [...]