ideas —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

If this is the case—if skill is, at base, a way of. achieving cultural authority —
then we might
well expect skill to be challenged by those who Position themselves as progressive,
This sena
truism of avant-garde art in 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 subtle forms of challenge to the
authority
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
tremendously influential in that its ideas transformed the schoolroom experiences
of countless children (27)

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 left-leaning movement in which educators tried to make
schools
into mechanisms of social reform. The emergence of Progressivism took place against
the
backdrop of an 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 earliest 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 slöjd (or
sloyd, 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." (29)
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 between 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
atending
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
efficiency”2 (38)