more than paper pushing

I just wanted to applaud the Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, and the $45 million generous donations of Henry & Lee Rowan, and Gerry & Marguertie Lenfest. More details on their donation can be found here in this Inquirer article.

Recognizing the shortage of skilled technical workers, the Williamson School gives college-age students degrees in carpentry, power-plant operation, turf maintenance, and machining, with free tuition and board. Further details of this award and the school are found in a Philadelphia Inquirer Article.

Far too many college and job training programs emphasize the importance of the services industry, urging people towards research, law, administration, management and business.

But I wonder (and especially in light of the downfall of Bear Stearns and the real estate losses experienced by the "money-moving" industry): How much paper pushing is needed? In this material age, why do we value the abstract so much more than the concrete? Why is the services sector far more prestigious than skilled trades? Why is a lawyer higher up on the social ladder than a carpenter? Yes, I might be an Excel whiz, but I certainly don’t know how to fix a leaking roof.

"[Craft] knowledge confers authority on the one who possesses it, and, as Sennett illuminatingly argues, craft traditions have been as much under threat from the modern suspicion of authority in all its forms, as from the industrialisation of the productive process. Originality and "doing your own thing" have replaced obedience and perfection as the standards to live up to, and this is everywhere to be observed in the deskilling of modern societies and in the marginalisation of those who truly know their job, and know it as something more interesting than themselves."

~ a review by Roger Scruton on the book The Craftsman by Richard Sutton