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Mass-producing family

I don't see the kids in my neighborhood much. They gather on the corner for the bus in the morning. In the afternoon the bus drops them off and they scatter like water droplets in a hot skillet. Their parents and sitters have taught them that the outdoors is dangerous. There are people who want to hurt you, there are snakes, there are cars, and there are diseases. They spend their time watching TV, on the Playstation, the web or TM'ing or IM'ing their friends. It's a very passive, anonymous, life they lead and they seem resigned to it.

I grew up the son of an aircraft mechanic, who later was promoted to maintenance planner. His love of airplanes and aviation kept him in that business for forty-five years. He, of course was the first of his family to make a career in aviation. Growing up in rural Kentucky in the 30's meant learning what the back end of a draft horse looked like and never getting more than seven miles from the house you where born in. It also meant that everyone you knew, everyone you met, grew up in that same circle of relevance.

Lindberg had just crossed the Atlantic and dad was burning to be part of the aviation revolution. He left the farm soon after war broke out, to join the Army Air Force. Training gained in the service was enough to get him into the aircraft business and keep him off the farm.

He did well to leave. Small farms have been going under ever since, bought up or grown over, in the name of efficiency. Now subsidies go to the corporations that run them. He had a steady job, free vacation travel, and none of the risk of farming. He never needed a second job to make ends meet, the way most farmers do.

Granddad grew up around the turn of the century on that farm in Kentucky. His youth came before industrialization, running water or electricity, had made it to Rowan county. He once showed me the books he had in school, three McGuffey's Readers. They taught the letters, the numbers and words, and, using stories, they taught morals and character. His assignment was to work through the books, do the exercises and take the test, when you were ready. When you completed the last test you graduated. His teacher had all the children from the Elliotsville area in one classroom. With kids of all ages, self-discipline was required to be successful. He made it through, but many of the others never finished.

Growing up he helped his father on the farm, and at the general store they operated in Elliotsville. He worked in the fields in spring and fall and the rest of the year he would make trips to Morehead to get wagonloads of goods for the store.

Dad took me to the maintenance base a lot when I was growing up. We'd walk through planes, in for an overhaul. We'd see racks of aircraft parts being inspected and assembled. In church I would design airplanes on the bulletin during the sermon. As soon as I was able I took a drafting class. I started college intending to design airplanes for real, so I enrolled in a mechanical and aerospace curriculum and earned a bachelor's degree. Unfortunately, when I graduated I found that all the aircraft companies where laying off, so I slid into a small manufacturing company designing machines that made railroad ties and telephone poles out of trees.

Half a century earlier I would not have had the opportunities I have had, to get an education at the hands of experts, to have a career spanning thirty some years and several manufacturers, or to live comfortably, without concerns about markets or solvency. On the other hand, I would have grown up learning from my father, the trade he knew best. I would have learned how to work the fields or manage the store. I would have learned when and what to plant, and where to market my produce, what to buy and from whom, what to make and how to make it. I would have had a network of suppliers and customers, paying cash or bartering with goods they had made. I would have taken over dad's store, when he was ready, inheriting the reputation he had built in our community, and it would be enough to raise my family, learning as I went from him and teaching my children in turn.

I wonder, is it better to have a limited education, but be expert in your field and respected in your community, or is it better to have a broad education, able to adapt to changing markets, to be equally proficient at many trades. The choice we make is critical to the meaning and functioning of our communities. The later choice denies any loyalty to organization or craft. No one needs to be good at their craft, because the least amount of interest makes you as good as anyone else. You can see the effect in industry, where jobs are dumbed down, by automation and by information databases, so that an untrained worker can be effective within just a few hours. The former choice brings families together to work as one entity, it makes the value of work and the value of money a part of a child's growing years, and it creates more real world experience by age 10 than most college graduates have.

With industrialization we have favored a production line system, even for educating our children. Educated flexibility has been a boon for industry and workers, with technology constantly changing, the required skill sets change too. But what does this mean for the craftsmanship that shows in the products we make. What does it mean to children who grow up not knowing the economics of work until they are spit out of the educational system at age 21; who are suddenly responsible for $45,000 in college debt and a new bride. And what does it mean to parents, whose only relationship with their children is the cash to feed a hungry teenager and what's left of an estate, in the end.

The best computer controlled machines can't make a Stradivarius violin, or a cohesive family.

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