I remember back in the 70's it was honorable to learn a trade - any trade. My ancestors were pipe fitters, coal miners, carpenters, plumbers - I decided to become a mechanic. I love going to work every day - probably one of the few people who enjoys earning a living with my hands. But you wouldn't believe how many people come up to me & say " Why don't you better yourself ? You don't have to be a mechanic your whole life." That's the problem with our society today - no respect for ANY blue-collar jobs. My son used to work on small projects with me when he was younger, but as he got older he migrated away from anything to do with tools or dirty work. His freakin' high school offered NO shop classes whatsoever. No wood shop, metal shop, welding, agriculture - NOTHING !! Now he's 18 & he wants a medical or computer job some day - that's fine, but they drilled into him for years that blue-collar work is second-class, & that freakin' kills me. I love my boy, but I'm afraid he couldn't change a tire if he had to. I see a LOT of that in his generation. I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm right it spells bad news for the once great USA.
I blame a lot of it on schooling. I'm pretty young at 36, but even when I went through junior high "Shop" was a required course. Now just try to find a decent shop class at your kids schools.
The rest of it, well, it pains me to say it but I will. Americans have become GD snobs. There's a general feeling in this country that if you have a little bit of money it's beneath you to do any physical work, thats what we pay "other people" for.
It's very sad but I can see this history very clearly in my own family. My grandfather on one side was and engineer and a tinkerer. He put in over thirty years with General Dynamics, and with Radio Marine before that. For my fourth grade science project, he showed me how to wire a couple of phone handsets together with a couple of dry cell batteries, explained how it worked, and we installed the wiring and power source (very, very, neatly...my grandfather was a jewish engineer from the days when you wore a tie to the missile range) in an old cigar box. I loved it, it was a bit like knowing the secret to a very good magic trick. My other grandfather started his own business in his garage, which grew to a large steel fab company. At 14 he gave me a summer job on a brake press out on the floor.
Move a generation to my old man, and he's been some sort of salesman his whole life. He thinks it's beneath him to work on his car, install an attic fan, or a sprinkler, etc. For all that pretense (and thirty years seniority on me) he makes about 10k a year more than I do. That personally, my household income trashes his because my wife works.
I don't know how that happened to my father, except to say that maybe he didn't want to be like his father. I don't know what's going on with my co-workers kids, except to say that in some way they've been programmed to believe that as long as they mash the right buttons in a cubicle somewhere, someone else will do all of the real work in the world for them, feed them, cloth them, and care for them.
I don't know if it's happenstance or not that makes a man what he is. For myself, I've been an electrician for a long time. I specialize in industrial controls and automation, and I love my job, and god forbid you should catch me in a tie. I know how to hunt, fish and cook. I know my way the basics of an internal combustion engine alright, how to build your average structure, I know how to maintain, repair, and reload ammunition for a variety of firearms. I know how to solder pipe, lay bricks, dress a wound, perform a tracheotomy, and sometimes I can even program my own VCR.
Maybe all these kids need is a old phone in a cigar box.
