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Why few younger people know how to work with their hands
Author: Margaret (SP fan)
Date: 08-22-2018 - 21:38
I've been thinking about this problem for some time, and realized that the high-precision anti-smog stuff on all cars made after the early 1980s is the reason why few people under age 50 know how to work with their hands.
It has been many, many years since Dad could tinker with the family car in the garage, with the kids watching and sometimes helping him. Dad can't do that any more beause most things on cars now are too high-precision for anyone to be able to fix at home, and the computers that now monitor and control many things in modern cars make fixing the family car impossible for anyone who is not a trained mechanic working in a well-equipped modern shop.
This is true for the vast majority of the people in this country who live in cities and suburbs. A very small percentage of the people in this country -- about 2% -- live on small family farms, where both adults and children would be familiar with and work on old-style machines that do not have precision parts. Those people certainly do know how to work with their hands -- they have to, in order to keep the family farm going, and to be able to survice economically. But fewer and fewer people are living on small family farms, as those farms get sold to larger and larger busineses, who employ relatviely few people to work on the machines that plant and harvest the crops.
I do miss the days when the father could tinker with the family car, but I do NOT miss the smog or the stink from those old cars, nor do I miss cars that were worn out by the time they had run 100,000 miles. People nowadays take cars that can run 200,000 miles with no problems for granted, and they also take air that is clean because of the excellent anti-smog equipmebt on cars for granted.
Can we recover and preserve some of the old-time hands-on knowledge? I dunno.... I hope so!
It has been many, many years since Dad could tinker with the family car in the garage, with the kids watching and sometimes helping him. Dad can't do that any more beause most things on cars now are too high-precision for anyone to be able to fix at home, and the computers that now monitor and control many things in modern cars make fixing the family car impossible for anyone who is not a trained mechanic working in a well-equipped modern shop.
This is true for the vast majority of the people in this country who live in cities and suburbs. A very small percentage of the people in this country -- about 2% -- live on small family farms, where both adults and children would be familiar with and work on old-style machines that do not have precision parts. Those people certainly do know how to work with their hands -- they have to, in order to keep the family farm going, and to be able to survice economically. But fewer and fewer people are living on small family farms, as those farms get sold to larger and larger busineses, who employ relatviely few people to work on the machines that plant and harvest the crops.
I do miss the days when the father could tinker with the family car, but I do NOT miss the smog or the stink from those old cars, nor do I miss cars that were worn out by the time they had run 100,000 miles. People nowadays take cars that can run 200,000 miles with no problems for granted, and they also take air that is clean because of the excellent anti-smog equipmebt on cars for granted.
Can we recover and preserve some of the old-time hands-on knowledge? I dunno.... I hope so!
