"Experience"

At my last place of employment, I was fortunate to get to know a motorcycle mechanic who taught at a community college in the Canadian mid-west, and also travels all summer to teach Harley-Davidson mechanics in Ontario and Quebec. He also had an extensive collection of antique motorcycles.

As I usually do when I meet any experienced tradesman, I sounded him out to see if he had done any thinking about craft issues. I expected a little bit of discussion, but was supprised to have him say the one word "experience" as if that closed the subject. Needless to ssay, the discussion ended and there was no point going further. Actually Paul at the Remodel Crazy forum is the only active trademan I have met who thinks about trades issues with any depth. That is, wanting an answer to the question, "What is it to be a skilled worker?".

What my biker friend demonstrated, as I've come to learn, was the tendency of skilled trades workers to be comfortable and self-sufficient in their own zone of knowledge and experience, and not feel any need to alter it or be open to external influences. That self-sufficiency grows with competence in the core area of his or her scope of work. It's obvious that the more renovations a small contractor does, his projects improve in workmanship, he's better able to deal with the unexpected, be ready for customer problems, anticipate how long a job will take, until finally, if he or she is good enough, can be selective about the jobs taken on.

"Comfort zone" is usually taken negatively, but I'm using it here as a positive. In studying and writing some time ago on nursing and professionalization, asking if nurses paid too high a price by giving up craft to gain professional status, I learned that those most motivated by the status issue had become frustrated by nurses who simply didn't care about getting a degree and "moving up". To this "scorned" group, nursing as they experienced it gave them exactly the direct connection with patients that they had been called to when they entered training. That caring, ministering practice was what they wanted to focus on, and degrees and higher status in vocational pecking orders served only as a distraction.

Offering that illustration had a purpose, since the role of craft in nursing has been well studied in contrast to trades, where most research is done by the trades unions and focuses on conflicts rather than analyzing what make tradespeople do what they do.

Correcting that deficiency will be the object of future (and past) posts on this blog.