Recently I ran across this FANTASTIC article in the New York Times by Matthew Crawford (author of Shop Class as Soulcraft) about the intrinsic (and often overlooked) value of working with your hands:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html
I related deeply to this entire article, both as a gear-head and as an artist. Crawford claims that working with your hands presents rational, intellectual challenges that deeply satisfy us while teaching valuable decision-making skills… and I find the same to be true in art and design.
“In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?”
A piece I read recently suggested that art students are subject to a similar style of “life-training.” For example: when you set out to draw a portrait, there are no set rules for where to begin or what style it should be rendered in. When you are moving the pencil, you are making hundreds of tiny decisions per second without any detailed instructions. Only you can decide what strokes are “right” or “wrong” or when you are “done.” In this respect, art teaches us confidence… how to make your own decisions and stand behind them… and just like in a repair shop, if you screw something up, the feedback is instantaneous, tactile and measurable. You can’t fudge numbers or lay people off at the end of the quarter to cover up the fact that your kerning sucks.
For this reason, it’s a shame that the art programs are usually the first to get cut when the budget is looking lean. So much emphasis is placed on preparing students to be “knowledge workers” that we often forget how much wisdom can be gained from physical interaction with things.
Matthew Crawford on The Colbert Report:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/79531/the-colbert-report-matthew-crawford