by Terry Heick
The influence of Berry on my life– and therefore inseparably from my mentor and understanding– has been immeasurable. His ideas on scale, limits, responsibility, area, and mindful thinking have a place in bigger conversations concerning economic situation, society, and vocation, otherwise national politics, faith, and anyplace else where sound judgment falls short to remain.
However what concerning education and learning?
Below is a letter Berry composed in action to a call for a ‘much shorter workweek.’ I’ll leave the debate approximately him, yet it has me questioning if this kind of thinking may have an area in new understanding forms.
When we firmly insist, in education, to seek ‘certainly good’ points, what are we missing out on?
That is, as adherence to outcomes-based discovering practices with limited alignment between requirements, learning targets, and assessments, with mindful scripting flat and vertically, no ‘spaces’– what assumption is embedded in this insistence? Due to the fact that in the high-stakes game of public education, each of us collectively is ‘all in.’
And a lot more quickly, are we preparing learners for ‘good work,’ or merely scholastic fluency? Which is the duty of public education and learning?
If we often tended in the direction of the former, what evidence would we see in our class and colleges?
And perhaps most notably, are they equally special?
Wendell Berry on ‘Good Work’
The Progressive , in the September problem, both in Matthew Rothschild’s “Editor’s Note” and in the article by John de Graaf (“Less Job, Even More Life”), provides “less work” and a 30 -hour workweek as needs that are as unassailable as the demand to eat.
Though I would sustain the concept of a 30 -hour workweek in some situations, I see nothing outright or indisputable about it. It can be suggested as a global demand just after abandonment of any regard for vocation and the substitute of discussion by slogans.
It holds true that the industrialization of virtually all forms of production and service has filled up the globe with “work” that are meaningless, undermining, and boring– as well as naturally harmful. I do not think there is a great disagreement for the presence of such work, and I yearn for its elimination, yet even its decrease asks for economic modifications not yet defined, let alone advocated, by the “left” or the “right.” Neither side, so far as I understand, has produced a dependable distinction between great and poor job. To shorten the “main workweek” while consenting to the continuation of poor job is very little of a service.
The old and ethical idea of “occupation” is just that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our choice, to a type of good work for which we are specifically fitted. Implicit in this idea is the obviously startling opportunity that we might work willingly, which there is no needed opposition in between job and joy or fulfillment.
Only in the absence of any type of viable idea of occupation or good work can one make the difference indicated in such expressions as “much less job, more life” or “work-life balance,” as if one commutes daily from life right here to function there.
However aren’t we living also when we are most badly and harmfully at the office?
And isn’t that precisely why we object (when we do item) to poor work?
And if you are contacted us to songs or farming or carpentry or healing, if you make your living by your calling, if you utilize your skills well and to a good objective and for that reason enjoy or satisfied in your job, why should you necessarily do much less of it?
More crucial, why should you think of your life as unique from it?
And why should you not be affronted by some official mandate that you should do much less of it?
A helpful discourse on the topic of work would certainly elevate a number of concerns that Mr. de Graaf has overlooked to ask:
What work are we talking about?
Did you select your job, or are you doing it under obsession as the way to generate income?
Just how much of your knowledge, your affection, your skill, and your satisfaction is utilized in your job?
Do you value the product or the service that is the outcome of your job?
For whom do you function: a supervisor, a manager, or on your own?
What are the eco-friendly and social expenses of your work?
If such questions are not asked, then we have no other way of seeing or proceeding past the assumptions of Mr. de Graaf and his work-life experts: that all work misbehaves job; that all workers are sadly and even helplessly depending on employers; that work and life are irreconcilable; which the only remedy to poor work is to reduce the workweek and thus split the badness amongst more people.
I do not assume any person can fairly object to the suggestion, in theory, that it is better “to decrease hours rather than give up workers.” Yet this elevates the likelihood of reduced income and consequently of much less “life.” As a remedy for this, Mr. de Graaf can use just “unemployment insurance,” among the commercial economy’s more fragile “safety nets.”
And what are individuals going to finish with the “even more life” that is recognized to be the result of “much less job”? Mr. de Graaf states that they “will work out a lot more, sleep extra, garden much more, invest even more time with friends and family, and drive less.” This happy vision comes down from the suggestion, popular not as long earlier, that in the spare time gotten by the purchase of “labor-saving devices,” people would patronize libraries, museums, and symphony orchestras.
But what happens if the liberated employees drive more
Suppose they recreate themselves with off-road automobiles, quickly motorboats, junk food, computer games, television, electronic “interaction,” and the various genres of pornography?
Well, that’ll be “life,” supposedly, and anything defeats work.
Mr. de Graaf makes the additional skeptical presumption that work is a fixed amount, dependably readily available, and divisible right into dependably enough portions. This intends that a person of the functions of the commercial economic situation is to offer work to workers. As a matter of fact, among the objectives of this economy has actually always been to change independent farmers, shopkeepers, and tradespeople into workers, and then to use the workers as inexpensively as possible, and then to replace them immediately with technical alternatives.
So there might be less functioning hours to split, extra workers amongst whom to separate them, and less welfare to use up the slack.
On the other hand, there is a great deal of work requiring to be done– ecosystem and watershed repair, boosted transportation networks, much healthier and safer food production, dirt conservation, etc– that no one yet is willing to spend for. Eventually, such job will certainly have to be done.
We may wind up working longer workdays in order not to “live,” however to make it through.
Wendell Berry
Port Royal, Kentucky
Mr. Berry s letter initially appeared in The Progressive (November 2010 in feedback to the write-up “Much less Job, Even More Life.” This post initially showed up on Utne