27 March

DH Lawrence, who was himself a school teacher, often said that education forced on all people was an evil. To be ‘uneducated’ is not the same thing as not being smart, it just means to not spend a lot of time in schools and other education institutions. The danger of forcing all people to go through the same education, Lawrence said, was that those who hate school end up resenting those who do well at school. And then they end up having no respect for knowledge itself. At the same time physical jobs, like trades, are seen as a fallback for those who are less ‘smart’, rather than as a different type of smart. I think we can see this right now, with the growth of populism, and the delight with with which many ignore expertise. Climate science? Fake news! And it’s now noble to be a tradie or do physical work (as it should be), but school and university educated people are seen as pencil pushers or chair warmers. One of the big problems is that we make assumptions, that kids of well-off parents are likely to be smarter at school stuff, and the ‘lower classes’ should be the tradies. But often the school geniuses might be in poor families, and kids from rich homes would be excellent tradies. We also use a hierarchy, that nuclear physics is harder than plumbing, for example. The trades suffer most with this, because they can sometimes take pride in *not* being thoughtful in what they do - that’s seen as a wank. The craft of some of those trades then disappears, and is taken over by a yob sort of culture.