Camille Paglia on Revalorizing the Trades

Matthew Crawford wrote a pretty famous book about exactly this thesis, _Shop Class as Soulcraft_. Unlike Paglia, Crawford's ideas are based on time actually spent in the trades --- as an electrician and as a mechanic. Unlike Paglia, Crawford's idea isn't simply that the elite schools are out of step with the jobs market, but rather that our alienation from the trades and crafts are inherently worrisome whether or not the money's there for them. Crawford can point to captive consumerism, the plastic and disposable nature of the goods we buy, and the degradation of self-reliance as consequences of the trend towards "knowledge work"; he's not simply suggesting that more people become tradesmen so he can be left to his cushy academic job.

I don't love the book, but consider it as having been worth reading. It's also clearly just one in a line of similar books going back several generations (it may stretch back to the Transcendentalists). For people like Paglia and Brooks to write as if this is an insight that they just recently achieved is disingenuous.