Dean Kamen, Manual Laborers, and You

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

His comment about how 'nobody wants a manual labor job' was not well-received by the general contractor who has been helping our team with electrical work, fabrication, and assembly for six years, nor by the farmer who gave us his time as well as over two thousand dollars (and has only ever wanted to be a farmer, and loves his job and his life), nor by the owner of the woodworking company that has given us thousands of dollars over the past several years.

General Contracting, Farming, Woodworking are absolutely positively not in the manual labor category. Yes it takes a lot of sweat but those are tough careers that require a lot of thinking, forward planning, risk management, personnel skills, and a fair amount of intestinal fortitude to create and operate successfully especially in any economy especially the current economy.

Each of these careers have a high "internal locus of control". Each of these individuals are their own man or woman. And each of them would prefer to be in charge of their own affairs instead of someone else running their lives. They are risk taking entrepreneurs.

In the past 3 weeks I have met with both Dean and Woodie, separately and up close and personal. I talked with Dean specifically on the issue careers choices that FIRST students make. By no stretch of the imagination does Dean expect all FIRST alumni to enter STEM fields. NO stretch at all. Dean wants what we all want and that is for students to get passionate about something, and take charge of their lives and excel at something. The reason the subject even came up was because one of my team members, Dean, and I were talking specifically about this issue because a student on my team is part of the Miss America's Pageant system and is the current Miss Teen Georgia. And no she is not going into STEM careers since we are talking about it. I was never planning on bringing up the Miss Georgia thing on Chief Delphi (because we do not want to exploit it) but it helps explain what I'm talking about. And yes ! she thinks FIRST is cool !!

Being a General Contractor, Farmer, or Woodworker requires someone that is clearly in charge of their destiny.

Woodie's discussed his childhood and how tough and dirt poor his family was. About how he learned to work with his hands and had NO plans to attend the university. He talked about education he got with his hands and how that gave him comparative advantage as a university student relative to those that have never had the opportunity to work with their hands and the sweat of their brow.

I can easily see how someone (that works that hard as the three careers listed above) can get worked up about Dean's comment. I understand that. I am from that world.

But based on up close and personal discussions with both Dean and Woodie (in the past 3 weeks) I am quite certain there was no slight intended by Dean but it was a careless choice of words.

Having said all of that Dean needs to address this in one of his future events. And I think it would be cool to get Mike Rowe on board.

Ed