Shop Class as Soulcraft

Crawford begins the chapter by noting that different work draws on different dispositions. He compares the commanding disposition of a dog trainer to the careful disposition of a diamond cutter. Yet, Crawford argues, disposition rarely factors into the education individuals are given in school or the career paths they are pointed towards after graduation: “We are preoccupied with demographic variables, on the one hand, and sorting into cognitive classes, on the other. Both collapse the human qualities into a narrow set of categories, the better to be represented on a checklist or a set of test scores” (72). However, Crawford believes that individuals are drawn towards certain kinds of work and that performing these kinds of work mold the individual. Therefore, steering everyone into academics does a great disservice to many and to those of a certain disposition that would be best served by work in a trade.

Crawford then describes the learning experiences he gained from two seminal teachers—Lance and Chas. Lance was the first person to employ Crawford as a mechanic when Crawford was just a teenager. Crawford dreamed of working on Porsches but found that being an apprentice in Lance’s shop meant he first had to do a lot of cleaning and observing before he was allowed to step into a vehicle or work under the hood of one.