weideas —conceptions of its proper use—were written into that

experience of skilled craft

The example of Baxandall suggests that skill is nor just knowing how
to make somethin; :
but rather knowing how to make something seem “just right” Pyes
argument thar skill :
essentially a matter of restriction, rather than potential, seems
initially to bé ar odds vida
this line of thought. But in fact, Pyes insight might help us to
understand the Political
valence of Baxandall's argument in greater depth. For skill is, in
the end, much like Giottos
circle. It has an inside and an outside; it both includes and
excludes. The manner in which
it performs this action—through absolute roundness, for example—is
only effective with-
in a certain cultural perspective, such as thar quintessentially
Renaissance mentality that
recognized circularity as a sign of perfection. What Pye helps us to
see is that skills tradi-

tional claims to authority, to “just rightness” reside primarily in

the craftsmarts refusal to
do it any other way.

LEARNING BY DOING

TF this is the case—if skill is, ar base, a way of. achieving

cultural authority —then we mi; ht
vell expect skill to be challenged by those who Position themselves
as progressive, This sena
truism of avant-garde artin general (hence the contemporary art
viewers commonplace “my;
child could do that”), and probably has much to do with the
disparagement of technique
by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Helen Chadwick mentioned at
the beginning of
the chapter. Yet there have been many more subue forms of challenge
to the ados
of skill. One particularly rich vein of this discourse can be found
in modern educacional
theory, which was perhaps little read by non-specialists, but was
nonetheless tremendousí;
influential in that its ideas transformed the schoolroom experiences
of countless children »
The discussion of vocational education is of Particular interest in
that it is one of the few
arenas in which craft has been extensively examined as a political
subject. This was especial)
true in the 1930s, when debate was defined largely in terms of
Progressivism —broadly
speaking, a politically lefi-leaning movement in which educators
tried to make schools
into mechanisms of social reform. The emergence of Progressivism
took place against the
backdrop ofan expansion of. schooling to the working class, and a
corresponding curricular
change. Craft-based teaching had been common in European and
American schools for
younger children in the late nineteenth century but it was not until
the interwar years
that such courses were considered to be appropriate to a general
liberal arts educaron for
older students. Eventually, in the late 19405, when the teaching of
craft came to be firm!
entrenched in British and American universities (party as a way of
coping with a sudden
influx of war veterans), arguments for and against Progressive
education structured the
gradual expansion of vocational education.

During the three decades of its greatest influence, Progressivism

generated an enormous
and varied literature on the ends and means of teaching. Although it
is difficult to generalize
about Progressive theorists as a group, all were to one degree or
another social reformers
Much of their work dealt with the issue of broadening curriculum to
include craft courses,

an idea which went through changing fortunes over the course of the
early twentieth
century. In the carliest days of the Progressive movement,
vocational educators already
connected manual training to the goal of abstract learning rather
than the acquisition of
marketable skills, They looked back to such examples as Felix Adlers
Workingman's School,
founded in New York City in 1880, which in turn had been inspired by
the s/ójd (or sloya,
meaning “craft”) elementary schools of woodworking in Sweden.28
Adler's school included
programs in simple engineering, woodwork and clay workshops as “an
organic part of
regular instruction,” and not in order to inculcate “an aptitude for
any particular trade?2
Similarly, John Deweys early “experimental school” in Chicago
incorporated the teaching
of carpentry as early as 1897, as well as assorted craft activities,
which he called “social
occupations” Deweys books Democracy and Education (1916) and Art as
Experience
(1934) proved to be hugely influential on the Progressive education
movement. His central
idea was “experience,” defined as a moment of interaction with
objects and processes.3! The
goal of all education, Dewey argued, should be to shape experience
so that it encourages
moral and aesthetic learning. Vocational teaching should adhere to
this principle: the idea
was that the experience of materials that could be gained via the
acquisition of craft skill
would produce in the student a general physical and mental
“readiness?2 Dewey thus saw
craft as entirely compatible with a liberal arts education.

Dewey's influence on the Progressives began to take shape at the end

of the First World
War. In 1918 the US Congress, spurred by the need for skilled
workmen that had been
demonstrated during the conflict, passed the Smith-Hughes Act,
appropriating federal funds
for vocational schools. Though these new resources immediately
resulted in an expansion
of crafts courses across the country Dewey atracked the bill
vigorously, arguing thar ic
“symbolizes the inauguration of a conflict berween irreconcilably
opposed educational and
industrial ideals.'% This was because the new funds were primarily
used to set up trade
schools as alternatives to academic high schools. By 1925, the
enrollment in vocational
and technical schools had already risen to about 50,000 students
nationwide.W As this
system was constructed, it inevitably raised the question of class
prejudice. By atrending
such schools, some argued, the working classes were encouraged to
engage only in manual
work, while the children of wealthier and more educated families at
non-vocational schools
were encouraged in intellectual pursuits. “To my mind,” one educator
wrote, “we may as
well give up the boast of democracy if we are to have industrial
education for the masses and
a liberal education for the favored few."2

This problem was only exacerbated when vocational education for

youths was introduced
into the relatively new junior high schools. Increasingly, these
schools acted as two-way
turnstiles through which students were directed either to work or to
further education in
an academic high school. In one of the more candid descriptions of
vocational education's
role in this process, the junior high school was described as a
“transition stage” in which the
child “is groping to find his place in society” so that its proper
role was “determining the field
of endeavor to which the child is best adapted,” thus maximizing
“ economic eficiency”2