by Terry Heick
The impact of Berry on my life– and hence inseparably from my training and learning– has actually been countless. His ideas on scale, restrictions, responsibility, neighborhood, and careful thinking have an area in bigger discussions concerning economic climate, society, and job, if not politics, faith, and just about anywhere else where good sense falls short to stick around.
But what concerning education and learning?
Below is a letter Berry created in feedback to an ask for a ‘much shorter workweek.’ I’ll leave the debate up to him, however it has me questioning if this sort of thinking might have a place in new learning types.
When we urge, in education and learning, to pursue ‘clearly good’ points, what are we missing?
That is, as adherence to outcomes-based learning exercise with limited positioning in between standards, finding out targets, and assessments, with cautious scripting flat and vertically, no ‘voids’– what assumption is installed in this persistence? Since in the high-stakes game of public education, each of us jointly is ‘all in.’
And much more instantly, are we preparing students for ‘good work,’ or just scholastic fluency? Which is the role of public education?
If we tended towards the former, what proof would certainly we see in our classrooms and universities?
And possibly most significantly, are they equally special?
Wendell Berry on ‘Good Work’
The Dynamic , in the September issue, both in Matthew Rothschild’s “Editor’s Note” and in the write-up by John de Graaf (“Much Less Work, Even More Life”), supplies “much less work” and a 30 -hour workweek as requirements that are as indisputable as the demand to consume.
Though I would certainly support the idea of a 30 -hour workweek in some scenarios, I see nothing outright or undeniable regarding it. It can be suggested as an universal requirement only after abandonment of any regard for occupation and the substitute of discourse by slogans.
It holds true that the automation of practically all forms of production and service has filled up the world with “work” that are meaningless, demeaning, and boring– along with inherently damaging. I don’t think there is a good debate for the existence of such job, and I long for its removal, but even its decrease requires financial changes not yet defined, let alone advocated, by the “left” or the “right.” Neither side, thus far as I know, has produced a reputable difference between good work and bad job. To shorten the “official workweek” while granting the extension of poor job is very little of a remedy.
The old and ethical concept of “occupation” is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our presents, or by our preference, to a sort of great for which we are especially fitted. Implicit in this idea is the obviously shocking opportunity that we could work willingly, which there is no necessary opposition in between job and joy or satisfaction.
Just in the lack of any kind of feasible concept of occupation or good work can one make the distinction implied in such phrases as “much less work, more life” or “work-life balance,” as if one commutes daily from life below to work there.
However aren’t we living even when we are most badly and harmfully at work?
And isn’t that specifically why we object (when we do item) to poor job?
And if you are contacted us to songs or farming or carpentry or recovery, if you make your living by your calls, if you use your skills well and to a good objective and as a result are happy or satisfied in your work, why should you always do less of it?
More crucial, why should you think about your life as distinctive from it?
And why should you not be affronted by some main mandate that you should do much less of it?
A useful discourse on the subject of job would raise a number of inquiries that Mr. de Graaf has actually disregarded to ask:
What work are we discussing?
Did you select your work, or are you doing it under compulsion as the means to earn money?
Just how much of your intelligence, your love, your skill, and your pride is employed in your job?
Do you appreciate the product or the service that is the outcome of your work?
For whom do you function: a supervisor, an employer, or on your own?
What are the ecological and social costs of your job?
If such inquiries are not asked, after that we have no other way of seeing or proceeding beyond the assumptions of Mr. de Graaf and his work-life specialists: that all job misbehaves work; that all employees are sadly and also helplessly dependent on employers; that work and life are intransigent; and that the only option to poor job is to shorten the workweek and thus separate the badness amongst even more individuals.
I don’t think anyone can honorably challenge the suggestion, theoretically, that it is better “to minimize hours instead of give up workers.” However this raises the likelihood of reduced income and as a result of much less “life.” As a solution for this, Mr. de Graaf can offer only “unemployment insurance,” one of the industrial economy’s even more breakable “safeguard.”
And what are people going to make with the “even more life” that is understood to be the result of “less job”? Mr. de Graaf claims that they “will work out much more, sleep extra, garden much more, invest more time with family and friends, and drive less.” This pleased vision comes down from the suggestion, popular not as long back, that in the spare time gained by the purchase of “labor-saving gadgets,” individuals would purchase from libraries, galleries, and symphony orchestras.
But what happens if the liberated workers drive much more
What if they recreate themselves with off-road automobiles, quickly motorboats, convenience food, video game, television, digital “interaction,” and the numerous categories of pornography?
Well, that’ll be “life,” allegedly, and anything beats job.
Mr. de Graaf makes the further skeptical assumption that work is a fixed quantity, reliably available, and divisible right into reliably enough portions. This intends that one of the functions of the industrial economy is to offer work to employees. On the other hand, among the objectives of this economy has constantly been to transform independent farmers, shopkeepers, and tradespeople into workers, and afterwards to use the employees as inexpensively as feasible, and after that to replace them immediately with technological alternatives.
So there could be less working hours to separate, extra workers amongst whom to split them, and less unemployment insurance to use up the slack.
On the various other hand, there is a lot of job requiring to be done– community and landmark repair, boosted transport networks, much healthier and safer food production, dirt conservation, etc– that no one yet wants to pay for. One way or another, such work will certainly have to be done.
We might wind up working longer workdays in order not to “live,” yet to survive.
Wendell Berry
Port Royal, Kentucky
Mr. Berry s letter originally appeared in The Dynamic (November 2010 in response to the write-up “Less Work, More Life.” This write-up originally showed up on Utne