Or, why you ought to consider taking up a skilled practice and pushing the kids in your life towards a career in the trades. There is a lot to say. Feel free to hop between sections!
This is great. As an architect, I’ve long been in awe of skilled trades - all of them. People get sh*t built. AI can’t do that. I recently heard a fantastic podcast by a climate journalist who became an electrician during the pandemic so he could more directly contribute to the widespread adoption of clean energy. I encouraged my college-student son to listen, but though he works hard in school, he didn’t think he’d want to work *that* hard. 😂 He’s actually in great shape and could easily handle it, but he has to figure that out for himself. Young people today are conditioned by social media and sports betting, both of which promise easy money for little labor. Though my son is minimally online he’s not immune.
Truly, none of us in the modern West are immune to the Machine, as Paul Kingsnorth has taken great pains to point out.
As an architect, do you ever wish you’d spent time in a trade (assuming you didn’t, which could obviously be wrong)? My intuition is that former tradespeople naturally make great architects because they understand how things work on the ground. If not, did you ever feel a disconnect between what you design and how things actually get built?
Good question. I sewed a lot of my own clothes when I was young, which taught me how to construct something 3-D from something flat and a pattern. (I was also obsessed with my dollhouse and built furniture for it, but that's a reach.) As a new architect, I worked for a design-build firm and we built things like stair railings and light fixtures. I also volunteered every summer for Habitat for Humanity, to get my hands in it. But the short answer is, yes, I was envious of my classmates who'd worked construction. As a girl it had never occurred to me to do that (dating myself?). My favorite times have been on the jobsite, puzzling over details with craftspeople. That is the absolute best.
Most women still don’t consider the trades as an option, but the tides are really turning on that one. Probably deserves its own essay at some point.
There’s an odd parallel between your experience and mine: I’ve been in residential service and repair plumber my entire career. This has been great in a a lot of ways, but there was a certain “X-ray vision” that I didn’t have because I never saw house after house after house that was just studs on a foundation. So I feel a little envy towards the folks that come from new construction because they just get what’s happening behind the walls. I have that now, but it took me a lot longer to cultivate.
Fantastic article! I am a auto technician by trade. When I started at a trade high school I thought I would be an electrician or a carpenter. As I went through the automotive program I thought “this is cool! I want to work on cars!” 33 years later I’m glad I made that choice. It has introduced me into many other forms of trade. With encouragement from my wife I have built entertainment centers, wired my own electricity, fixed our own plumbing and our HVAC system. I have used this learned knowledge to help my neighbors with frozen pipes and built a stage for my church. Helped my kids friends with car issues and loaned tools to friends who couldn’t afford their own but had the talent to use them to help themselves. Money was a secondary thought when I started out. Come to find out you can make 6 figures being a “grease monkey”. Lol With a trade you can literally move across the country and not worry about being employed because someone is always hiring due to the scarcity of a qualified person. Thank you for this writing, hopefully more people see it!
Great encouragement to consider other options. You could even develop each of the sections into a separate article! I did a radio piece on this topic a few months ago, encouraging parents not to default to university pathways but consider the multitude of trades available and in great need.
Toward the end of high school in Switzerland, we were handed a catalogue of alphabetized apprenticeships to consider. Around 70 percent of Swiss students chose to follow the apprenticeship route, and only around 25 percent choose a traditional university pathway (even though the cost is only around $1000 per year). This results in a society with well-trained individuals in all sectors; importantly trades are respected, and well-paid.
You will find that most articles on substack are between the 7 and 14 minute mark. After that there is skimming and scanning rather than reading (or even before that...). Thus some thoughtful reflections could get lost in a long article :)
I could definitely feel the length and kept checking my word count/time. I’d considered chopping it up but didn’t want to spit up my argument. BUT ALSO there’s so much more to be said to fully flesh things out, so your suggestion is spot on.
I’ve been telling folks in my hometown, in Georgia, for a few years now that they need to consider having their children introduced to trades. Not only is a college degree a borderline scam these days but our society depends on men and women willing to get their hands dirty. And it’s job security if you take your work seriously.
Nathaniel, thanks for bringing this highly valuable content to Substack and for pointing out the importance of integrating ourselves with out work. I never knew reading about plumbing could be so interesting!
Great essay. I particularly enjoyed that part that talked about goodness, virtues, and action. I am reminded when someone said, “Sometimes the most spiritual thing to do is to take out the trash”.
Yes! We’re called to bear fruit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, etc. How do you know that I possess any of these invisible fruit? They don’t dangle off of me. I must act. In a situation that requires me to be patient, then you know I have patience. When chaos ensues, then you know me to be peaceful. Or not.
When we work with our hands, we grow more diverse circuits in our brain vs texting all the time or striking the keyboard. Even though I don't consider myself a handyman, I get out in the garden daily, and love chopping, cooking, pressing, and digging into the dirt.
Love that you're on here Nathaniel.
PS most of my friends who are in the trades have what I call "brain coherence", where their left and right brain is in more fluent communication, as they can understand concepts, trends, and read emotions more than my brainy academic friends.
I took up leatherworking in my 30s and became moderately talented at it, to the point where I considered giving up academics and making custom pieces. However, I realized that it is a hobby, not a career; for better or worse I belong with books. I will say that I still enjoy it and make my own leather goods, and I can see why people devote their lives to crafting.
Leather working is a connection to physical substance, organic material created by nature from which I make some useful good. It connects me to my remotest ancestors who were clothed in the skins of beasts. It’s a world of wood and metal tools, hammers and blades. I love the sight of leather and it’s texture, but the most visceral sensory experience is the smell. There’s nothing like the sting of tannic acid; sometimes I’ll go to the leather shop just to walk around and breath it in,
This is a beautiful response. And the smell of leather is one of those scents that accesses a visceral, almost primal part of me. I don’t know what it is or how to describe it, but it just smells...right. I’d love to spend time working with it at some point.
Yes. We will strongly discourage our children to pursue trades and not go to a four year school unless they have a clear idea of why it’s necessary. My husband has done a number of trades and currently works irrigation and handyman work. He’s booked out for weeks and turning down work. And so many of the things you said ring true - he’s always helping friends and neighbors and his skill set has allowed us to do unconventional things we’d have been to intimidated by otherwise.
Yes! I didn’t even address owning your own business but it’s absolutely the case that the plumbers I’ve worked with who go on to start their own business basically write their own paychecks and set their own schedule. Few realize this!
What a great post. I am a child of missionaries, my dad has a degree in journalism, I went to a Bible school. I knew nothing about trades. But I really passionately agree with what you’ve laid out here. What’s the path to the trades? Through college, or trade school, or working up through a company? I hope to shepherd my children well, including showing them the option of the path into the trades.
That is the next question, isn’t it? “Okay, what now then?” I received a couple emails along those lines, so I’ve written a guide for entering the trades (which is written in an American context, so I don’t know how well it would apply to where you’re at in Indonesia).
An oversight that I didn’t account for, ironically, are the presence of trade schools, mainly because I didn’t go to one. I cover getting into a trade through unions, corporations, and mom-and-pops, but trade schools/community colleges don’t get a mention. I’ll have to remedy that at some point.
In any case, I hope you find this guide useful as you seek to shepherd your children well, to God’s glory and your neighbor’s good!
That's a lot of comments and I'm not going to read them all right now. I'll have to come back to them. I was a blue collar man from 19, until I retired this year. I worked in a mill as a labourer, up here on the Left Coast, in Vancouver. I remember I had a teacher who insisted I go to university. I didn't want to do that. I didn't know what I wanted to study. So I went to the mill until something better came along. Well, who knew they paid that much. I was making $85,000/year by the time I retired. We used to laugh and say all those guys that went to college/university were lucky to make $60,000/year. You couldn't ask for a better job considering you didn't have an education. I drove a big machine. So it was warm in the winter, had A/C for the summer, and a radio. AND it had a roof! I could have been the head Sawyer and cleared an easy $100,000, but I liked the freedom my job gave me. A blue collar life wasn't what I was thinking I'd do, and sure, there were strikes and labour disputes sometimes, but overall, it was perfect. I always tell the young kids I meet to get into a trade. Plumbing, carpentry, fabricating, the list is quite endless. And if I would have known being a farrier was a possibility, I would've done that!
I think, especially at this point in the American economy at least, that you’d be hard pressed to ask for a better job (or a better paying job) even WITH a college degree. I read recently that 79% of all jobs in the U.S. are desk/office jobs. The market is saturated with them and so, regardless of how many degrees one holds, the competition for a single good-paying position is enormous.
The trades are hard on the body, but easy on the billfold and good for the soul.
If you really want to know what it was like for me in the mill, I've got a few stories up on my SCRIBBLER page. I just wrote one, but I'm putting it behind the paywall. There are a few that are not behind the wall, so take a look, you might get a good chuckle...except for the STEVE story. I try not to talk about that too much...but take a look anyway.
I would love for my son to learn a trade, but he's got this "I can be a pro-basketball player" dream that he's holding onto. I've tried telling him that he needs something to fall back onto, but he won't listen.
Maybe one day, he'll tell me that I knew what I was talking about.
It’s hard to come to grips with reality. Sports are a weird one for me because they can habituate so many good things--teamwork, skilled practices, virtue--things I would say are good, but they can also lead to dreams of the big leagues which doesn’t seem to me to be a good thing to aim for.
That what his dreams are: He's a sports nut. He's got the jerseys, the sneakers, the balls, etc. I want him to realize that he can as much money, if not more, by learning a trade.
I've been trying to nudge my son into the trades. I keep trying to tell him that instead of a 4 year college, he can go to trade school for 8 months, get out, get a great career and make good money, but I'm competing with sports stars that pull in millions for chasing a ball. All he sees is the flashy cash, the big cars and the mansions.
Each time I try to gently remind him that for every one star quarterback, there are 100 people who try out. But he's got those stars in his eyes and the wife doesn't help at all, as she takes him to every tournament and game he wants to participate in.
I wish I had gone into the trades, because a good welder can make a lot of money and doesn't have to work where he doesn't want to work.
This is great. As an architect, I’ve long been in awe of skilled trades - all of them. People get sh*t built. AI can’t do that. I recently heard a fantastic podcast by a climate journalist who became an electrician during the pandemic so he could more directly contribute to the widespread adoption of clean energy. I encouraged my college-student son to listen, but though he works hard in school, he didn’t think he’d want to work *that* hard. 😂 He’s actually in great shape and could easily handle it, but he has to figure that out for himself. Young people today are conditioned by social media and sports betting, both of which promise easy money for little labor. Though my son is minimally online he’s not immune.
Truly, none of us in the modern West are immune to the Machine, as Paul Kingsnorth has taken great pains to point out.
As an architect, do you ever wish you’d spent time in a trade (assuming you didn’t, which could obviously be wrong)? My intuition is that former tradespeople naturally make great architects because they understand how things work on the ground. If not, did you ever feel a disconnect between what you design and how things actually get built?
Good question. I sewed a lot of my own clothes when I was young, which taught me how to construct something 3-D from something flat and a pattern. (I was also obsessed with my dollhouse and built furniture for it, but that's a reach.) As a new architect, I worked for a design-build firm and we built things like stair railings and light fixtures. I also volunteered every summer for Habitat for Humanity, to get my hands in it. But the short answer is, yes, I was envious of my classmates who'd worked construction. As a girl it had never occurred to me to do that (dating myself?). My favorite times have been on the jobsite, puzzling over details with craftspeople. That is the absolute best.
Most women still don’t consider the trades as an option, but the tides are really turning on that one. Probably deserves its own essay at some point.
There’s an odd parallel between your experience and mine: I’ve been in residential service and repair plumber my entire career. This has been great in a a lot of ways, but there was a certain “X-ray vision” that I didn’t have because I never saw house after house after house that was just studs on a foundation. So I feel a little envy towards the folks that come from new construction because they just get what’s happening behind the walls. I have that now, but it took me a lot longer to cultivate.
Plus, you get to smell new wood. 😊 And the crawl spaces are impeccable. It’s still a thrill, every time.
Fantastic article! I am a auto technician by trade. When I started at a trade high school I thought I would be an electrician or a carpenter. As I went through the automotive program I thought “this is cool! I want to work on cars!” 33 years later I’m glad I made that choice. It has introduced me into many other forms of trade. With encouragement from my wife I have built entertainment centers, wired my own electricity, fixed our own plumbing and our HVAC system. I have used this learned knowledge to help my neighbors with frozen pipes and built a stage for my church. Helped my kids friends with car issues and loaned tools to friends who couldn’t afford their own but had the talent to use them to help themselves. Money was a secondary thought when I started out. Come to find out you can make 6 figures being a “grease monkey”. Lol With a trade you can literally move across the country and not worry about being employed because someone is always hiring due to the scarcity of a qualified person. Thank you for this writing, hopefully more people see it!
This is such a great story, Tex, and an example of exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. I’m glad you saw yourself in it.
Thanks for reading and commenting! Share it with other guys and gals that it reminds you of.
Great encouragement to consider other options. You could even develop each of the sections into a separate article! I did a radio piece on this topic a few months ago, encouraging parents not to default to university pathways but consider the multitude of trades available and in great need.
Toward the end of high school in Switzerland, we were handed a catalogue of alphabetized apprenticeships to consider. Around 70 percent of Swiss students chose to follow the apprenticeship route, and only around 25 percent choose a traditional university pathway (even though the cost is only around $1000 per year). This results in a society with well-trained individuals in all sectors; importantly trades are respected, and well-paid.
Each section into its own article, you say 🤔 I think you’re on to something!
You will find that most articles on substack are between the 7 and 14 minute mark. After that there is skimming and scanning rather than reading (or even before that...). Thus some thoughtful reflections could get lost in a long article :)
Oh - and Happy Birthday!
I could definitely feel the length and kept checking my word count/time. I’d considered chopping it up but didn’t want to spit up my argument. BUT ALSO there’s so much more to be said to fully flesh things out, so your suggestion is spot on.
And - thank you!! 🥳
I’ve been telling folks in my hometown, in Georgia, for a few years now that they need to consider having their children introduced to trades. Not only is a college degree a borderline scam these days but our society depends on men and women willing to get their hands dirty. And it’s job security if you take your work seriously.
Nathaniel, thanks for bringing this highly valuable content to Substack and for pointing out the importance of integrating ourselves with out work. I never knew reading about plumbing could be so interesting!
Great essay.
Handy is big. I'm glad you went there. There are worse things than being someone else's go to.
Totally. I have more to say on being handy but that’ll have to wait for a future essay.
Great essay. I particularly enjoyed that part that talked about goodness, virtues, and action. I am reminded when someone said, “Sometimes the most spiritual thing to do is to take out the trash”.
Yes! We’re called to bear fruit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, etc. How do you know that I possess any of these invisible fruit? They don’t dangle off of me. I must act. In a situation that requires me to be patient, then you know I have patience. When chaos ensues, then you know me to be peaceful. Or not.
When we work with our hands, we grow more diverse circuits in our brain vs texting all the time or striking the keyboard. Even though I don't consider myself a handyman, I get out in the garden daily, and love chopping, cooking, pressing, and digging into the dirt.
Love that you're on here Nathaniel.
PS most of my friends who are in the trades have what I call "brain coherence", where their left and right brain is in more fluent communication, as they can understand concepts, trends, and read emotions more than my brainy academic friends.
I took up leatherworking in my 30s and became moderately talented at it, to the point where I considered giving up academics and making custom pieces. However, I realized that it is a hobby, not a career; for better or worse I belong with books. I will say that I still enjoy it and make my own leather goods, and I can see why people devote their lives to crafting.
I think it’s helpful to try different things on for size as a way of discerning what we’re “meant” to do (if we can even talk about it in that way).
What value do you find the practice brings you?
Leather working is a connection to physical substance, organic material created by nature from which I make some useful good. It connects me to my remotest ancestors who were clothed in the skins of beasts. It’s a world of wood and metal tools, hammers and blades. I love the sight of leather and it’s texture, but the most visceral sensory experience is the smell. There’s nothing like the sting of tannic acid; sometimes I’ll go to the leather shop just to walk around and breath it in,
This is a beautiful response. And the smell of leather is one of those scents that accesses a visceral, almost primal part of me. I don’t know what it is or how to describe it, but it just smells...right. I’d love to spend time working with it at some point.
Yes. We will strongly discourage our children to pursue trades and not go to a four year school unless they have a clear idea of why it’s necessary. My husband has done a number of trades and currently works irrigation and handyman work. He’s booked out for weeks and turning down work. And so many of the things you said ring true - he’s always helping friends and neighbors and his skill set has allowed us to do unconventional things we’d have been to intimidated by otherwise.
Yes! I didn’t even address owning your own business but it’s absolutely the case that the plumbers I’ve worked with who go on to start their own business basically write their own paychecks and set their own schedule. Few realize this!
Sent this to my brother who's currently a custodian and hopes to head to trade school soon.
I guess I should add he's 18, lol.
That’s awesome! Thanks for reading and sending it along to him.
Does he have an idea of which trade he’s hoping to pursue?
HVAC I think, but I'm not sure.
What a great post. I am a child of missionaries, my dad has a degree in journalism, I went to a Bible school. I knew nothing about trades. But I really passionately agree with what you’ve laid out here. What’s the path to the trades? Through college, or trade school, or working up through a company? I hope to shepherd my children well, including showing them the option of the path into the trades.
That is the next question, isn’t it? “Okay, what now then?” I received a couple emails along those lines, so I’ve written a guide for entering the trades (which is written in an American context, so I don’t know how well it would apply to where you’re at in Indonesia).
https://thebluescholar.substack.com/p/a-practical-guide-to-entering-the
An oversight that I didn’t account for, ironically, are the presence of trade schools, mainly because I didn’t go to one. I cover getting into a trade through unions, corporations, and mom-and-pops, but trade schools/community colleges don’t get a mention. I’ll have to remedy that at some point.
In any case, I hope you find this guide useful as you seek to shepherd your children well, to God’s glory and your neighbor’s good!
My kids will come back to the US when they’re 18, so this is still super helpful!
That's a lot of comments and I'm not going to read them all right now. I'll have to come back to them. I was a blue collar man from 19, until I retired this year. I worked in a mill as a labourer, up here on the Left Coast, in Vancouver. I remember I had a teacher who insisted I go to university. I didn't want to do that. I didn't know what I wanted to study. So I went to the mill until something better came along. Well, who knew they paid that much. I was making $85,000/year by the time I retired. We used to laugh and say all those guys that went to college/university were lucky to make $60,000/year. You couldn't ask for a better job considering you didn't have an education. I drove a big machine. So it was warm in the winter, had A/C for the summer, and a radio. AND it had a roof! I could have been the head Sawyer and cleared an easy $100,000, but I liked the freedom my job gave me. A blue collar life wasn't what I was thinking I'd do, and sure, there were strikes and labour disputes sometimes, but overall, it was perfect. I always tell the young kids I meet to get into a trade. Plumbing, carpentry, fabricating, the list is quite endless. And if I would have known being a farrier was a possibility, I would've done that!
I think, especially at this point in the American economy at least, that you’d be hard pressed to ask for a better job (or a better paying job) even WITH a college degree. I read recently that 79% of all jobs in the U.S. are desk/office jobs. The market is saturated with them and so, regardless of how many degrees one holds, the competition for a single good-paying position is enormous.
The trades are hard on the body, but easy on the billfold and good for the soul.
Thanks for sharing your story, Ben.
If you really want to know what it was like for me in the mill, I've got a few stories up on my SCRIBBLER page. I just wrote one, but I'm putting it behind the paywall. There are a few that are not behind the wall, so take a look, you might get a good chuckle...except for the STEVE story. I try not to talk about that too much...but take a look anyway.
I would love for my son to learn a trade, but he's got this "I can be a pro-basketball player" dream that he's holding onto. I've tried telling him that he needs something to fall back onto, but he won't listen.
Maybe one day, he'll tell me that I knew what I was talking about.
It’s hard to come to grips with reality. Sports are a weird one for me because they can habituate so many good things--teamwork, skilled practices, virtue--things I would say are good, but they can also lead to dreams of the big leagues which doesn’t seem to me to be a good thing to aim for.
That what his dreams are: He's a sports nut. He's got the jerseys, the sneakers, the balls, etc. I want him to realize that he can as much money, if not more, by learning a trade.
less taxes too
Very true! Also, not very compelling to a 15 year old who hasn’t yet felt the sting of taxation 😂
I've been trying to nudge my son into the trades. I keep trying to tell him that instead of a 4 year college, he can go to trade school for 8 months, get out, get a great career and make good money, but I'm competing with sports stars that pull in millions for chasing a ball. All he sees is the flashy cash, the big cars and the mansions.
Each time I try to gently remind him that for every one star quarterback, there are 100 people who try out. But he's got those stars in his eyes and the wife doesn't help at all, as she takes him to every tournament and game he wants to participate in.
I wish I had gone into the trades, because a good welder can make a lot of money and doesn't have to work where he doesn't want to work.