Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Mike Rowe is the Man

Recently Mike Rowe testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.  Don't know who Mike Rowe is?  He is the host of popular Discovery Channel show called Dirty Jobs.  He goes around the U.S. doing the dirtiest, messiest, and nastiest jobs he can find - and he does them with a smile.

Anyways he recently spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation advocating for the skilled trades.  You can read the whole text here.
It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used to fascinate me. I no longer thought about where my food came from, or how my electricity worked, or who fixed my pipes, or who made my clothes. There was no reason to. I had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought.
We need to the trades.  How stuff gets built, produced, or fixed can't be a mystery.  We need people to do these things.  University is not the be all and end all of education.

I need to teach more like he suggests.  Anybody who knows me knows that I like to make, build, tinker, disassemble, and hack things together.  Why buy when you can DIY.  I need to pass this mindset on to more of my students.


Along the same line you NEED to watch Mike Rowe's TED Talk about dirty jobs.  It is awesome, though provoking and entertaining.  (There is an awkward discussion about animal husbandry - just warning you.)




Up next:  Gever Tulley's 50 Dangerous Things (you should let your children do).