Dean Kamen, Manual Laborers, and You

FIRST General Forum
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So Dean’s speech at the end of Championship had what almost seemed like a throwaway comment that managed to offend at least two of my mentors and two of my sponsors (who were responsible for thousands of dollars of funding this year for our team).

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.

I’m worried that I’ve lost one of those mentors (who said to me, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can support this anymore”), and at least one – if not both – of those sponsors, who were deeply offended by Dean’s callous and elitist comment.

And frankly, I agree with them. I couldn’t help but look at the people breaking down the other fields behind Dean while he was speaking, and hoping that they were too busy doing the necessary work to make the Championship a success to have heard him. I couldn’t help but think about all the security guards, janitors, maintenance people, truck drivers, drayage workers and so forth who made each regional and the Championship possible. It made me wonder if Dean has ever heard of Dirty Jobs, much less watched an episode.

Science and technology absolutely make the world a better place, and they should be celebrated, and FIRST is just the vehicle in which to do so. But manual labor jobs feed us, clothe us, produce much of the energy we use, clean up after us… Indeed, even all the coolest robots and technology are ultimately assembled and maintained by manual laborers – or by robots that were assembled and maintained by manual laborers. Without them, science and engineering careers wouldn’t even get off the ground.

So kids, I hope that as you grow up and go to college and get fabulous careers in science and technology, that you keep that lesson close to your heart – the “little guys” getting their hands dirty are the reason your career is even possible, and you should be thankful for each and every one of them.

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I’m a manual laborer. Have been one for 22 years.
I can’t help it if I’m not as smart as some as the kids I mentor.
Doesn’t mean that I’m not important or that I don;t have wisdom to pass down to them.

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I think your reference to Dirty Jobs is right, as Mike Rowe says “Hard-working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.”

We need the manual workers, but, for the majority, Dean was right. He said we don’t want to grow up to break our backs in a dead end job (paraphrasing). I am right now at a CNC milling competition, but I would leave now if it pigeon holed me it doing for the rest of my life. I have aspirations of becoming a big-shot engineer where the manual labor is light. Will it happen? I hope so, check in in ten years. Whether it does or not, I hope that I’m not stuck in the do this same thing 5 thousand times a day industry.

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I was a manual laborer from age 17 to age 30 and hated every day of it.
It’s been 27 years since donning the ‘white collar’, but I’m pretty sure I recall that just about all my unskilled labor co-workers hated their lot in life too.

I am responding NOT to take issue with your post.
Not to invalidate your feelings (nor anyone’s feelings) about the statement.

I just think it’s fair to consider the context.
Dean was talking to the students who attended the champs.
Was it reasonable for him to assume that none of them aspire to a manual labor job?
I think so.

If you happened to be within earshot, it doesn’t mean he was talking to you or about you.

Edit: it would have perhaps been better if he’d said that he assumed none of the students “wants a manual labor job”, but I’m not willing to vilify him for not being so semantically precise.

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The robots we build in the future will make jobs safer, easier, cleaner, and better paying. Higher productivity will make more wealth for all to share, leading to a higher standard of living for everyone. There will be more leisure time for everyone, scientists, business people, and laborers alike.

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I didn’t hear the speech, but with this being the second year this topic has arisen, perhaps a certain degree of graciousness might have become accidentally neglected during the struggle involved in pursuing a worthwhile goal? Even the best of us can sometimes fall victim to tunnel vision when passionately devoting ourselves to accomplishing a goal.

This topic is not a debate about the truth or fallacy of some statement, it is about something else.

Blake

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I’m not a manual laborer – I’m a teacher. (Ok, and a part-time beekeeper. Which is manual labor. But that doesn’t really count.)

I’m also nearly impossible to offend.

The mentor I quoted, however, is a manual laborer, he chose to be a manual laborer, he loves what he does, and he (rightfully) thinks that his place in society should be valued.

Dean was talking to the kids, yes, but he was talking about the economy as a whole. He specifically said that we don’t want the old jobs back (which is hard to hear when you know a lot of people who would really, really, REALLY like to have their old jobs back – there’s a lot more pride in swinging a hammer than being on welfare).

…and Dean was also talking to everyone watching the international broadcast, be it via NASA or the internet. His audience was a lot more than those kids.

The bottom line of my issue here is that his comment very likely cost my small, rural team mentors and sponsors that they cannot afford to lose. Speeches being what they are, they shouldn’t be negatively impacting teams.

Whether or not you agree with my gripe about the speech, I’m certain that I’m not the only person with the same take on it – nor my mentors the only mentors, nor my sponsors the only sponsors.

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Perhaps Dean needs to listen…

He could shorten his speech and not offend these people at the same time…all it takes is focus and a bit less talking and he could make everyone happy…

Rob

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Dean was talking to the kids, yes, but he was talking about the economy as a whole. He specifically said that we don’t want the old jobs back (which is hard to hear when you know a lot of people who would really, really, REALLY like to have their old jobs back – there’s a lot more pride in swinging a hammer than being on welfare).

I took it that he was saying it’s much better to create new jobs which increase our quality of life than to bring back old jobs which due to the increase in our levels of technology are no longer required.
It’s something I’ve thought about myself, it seems that whenever a large amount of jobs are no longer needed, people who worked in those jobs should now be able to work in new jobs which increase our quality of life. The problem with this is that someone is needed to create those new jobs, a fine challenge considering the crowd.

As for Dean’s comment about nobody wanting to be a manual laborer, I didn’t notice during the speech, but I agree that he is incorrect about that statement. I know I don’t want to do manual labor, I bet Dean doesn’t like manual labor, but I know plenty of people who enjoy it, and I try to not take for granted said labor which makes our quality of life possible. It is my firm belief that the diversity of people is one of our greatest strengths as a people, however one problem is people may not see that they have the opportunity to pursue what they love to do as a career or even that such an opportunity exists. I find FIRST great in it’s ability to inspire people who may be people which make great engineers and mathematicians, however I don’t think everyone wants to be one, nor should everyone be one.

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Back when I was in college, I did a lot of manual labor for summer jobs. I once spent a week shoveling manure in the basement of a barn. With every swing of the pitchfork, I told myself “Once you get that degree, you’ll never have to do this again.”

Fast forward 30 years. I have a 30 acre hobby farm and raise a few cattle of my own. I get to spend plenty of quality time in the basement of the barn with a pitchfork. Now, I just smile and think “This sure beats sitting in a staff meeting.”

Manual labor is a necessary and honorable thing, but I’m glad I don’t have to get up and do it every day on somebody else’s terms.

And for what its worth, some of the best practical experience a mechanical engineer can ever get comes from working on farm equipment.

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Making money with your mind is rewarding, awesome, and should be encouraged in every possible way.

But making money with your hands is (or used to, depending on the economy sadly) a way to feed you and yours, and feel just as satisfied with life.

There are a lot of jobs people don’t want. I have yet to meet a 16 year old who’s aspiration is to grow up flipping burgers. And yes, some jobs aren’t as pretty or glorious as others. But if I have chance to work with my hands, I’ll take it every chance I can get. It’s not only an awesome way to learn how things actually work (I’ll learn more about a motor by taking it apart and experimenting than just looking at schematics), but also a way to realize that putting in a day of hard work is satisfying, knowing that you’ve done a good job, weren’t afraid to mix things up, and earned your pay.

FIRST does a fairly good job of that. Not everyone will grow up to be an engineer, but everyone can have a place in FIRST.

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It kills me everytime I hear this sort of thing, because a good 50% of my FRC team were the guys and galls who were aspiring to technical specialties or trades. Although someday in the future their jobs may become more mechanized, I doubt the human element will every be completely removed.

I really wish people could understand one simple point, and that is: if the machines can do easy manual labour, what is the next step? Simple, we make them better at it. Eventually they will get to the point of being able to engineer and discover things themselves… So really, if humans want to remain relevant at all, we will find a balance integrating humans and machines into jobs together. (I believe this point has been argued by more eloquant men than me since the start of the industrial revolution, so I encourage reading up on your dystopias [or just watching Terminator :)])

The T in FIRST, technology is a very broad field, and I think we should include the technicians and tradespeople that make the way of the engineer possible in our envelope of inspiration.

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Manual labor is not a bad thing. In fact, it is critical to everyday life as we know it. Robots are good for taking over dangerous jobs so that we don’t put peoples lives in danger, but we can’t have robots picking up trash, fixing roads, farming food, raising cattle so we can have steak, building houses, clearing land, etc. Life just would not function without these areas in life covered. I recently wrote an essay for my college writing class on this topic and discussed how college is not for everyone and how our country is slowly taking away from the value of the “trades” and manual labor. Our country has this image that we students will play varsity sports, get good SAT or ACT scores and receive tons of scholarships, play college sports while maintaining studies, and get a high paying job. Hate to break it to most of Americans, but that just does not happen in real life! :o Engineering is a great field of work that shapes the future of the world, but it is not the only thing that will change the future, there are so many jobs that change how the day happens and functions.

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Right. I like wood working – with hand tools.
It’s manual, dirty, therapeutic, and I do it (or not) at my discretion.

The mentor I quoted, however, is a manual laborer, he chose to be a manual laborer, he loves what he does, and he (rightfully) thinks that his place in society should be valued.

Yes, his place in society should be valued – by society – and I believe it is.
But if nobody is willing to pay him to do what he loves doing, is it honestly inaccurate (much less offensive) to say that what he does is valueless?

He (Dean) specifically said that we don’t want the old jobs back (which is hard to hear when you know a lot of people who would really, really, REALLY like to have their old jobs back…

In 1983, I worked at the Western Electric Plant in Dundalk MD.
At the time, there were about 5,000 essentially unskilled laborers working there in 3 shifts.
We had a strong union, good benefits, and excellent pay (when I left in '83, I was making over $13.00 an hour).
By 1986, the entire plant was shuttered and all the jobs gone.
Those jobs didn’t disappear because society deemed the people who did them valueless – the economy deemed them valueless.
The people who did those jobs had no control over their own destiny, no say in their own future, no recourse but to hope (for most, in vain) that ‘something else would come along’ – or that the old jobs would come back.

The real problem here is not with Dean’s words but with the effect those words had on certain people.
We are all largely a product of our life experiences.
How we react to words and phrases is more a function of who we are than it is about the words themselves or the person who uttered them.
Is it bad, shameful, or undesirable to be a manual laborer?
It’s a pointless question in absence of a precise meaning for those two words.
And let’s face it, as this thread shows, ‘manual labor’ seems to have many meanings – ranging from noble to ‘no way’.

I simply argue that it’s unfair to take someone’s words and project one’s personal bias onto that person as if there’s no question what was meant.
I will relent that Dean could have (OK, should have) been more precise – ‘menial unskilled manual laborers’ might have been safer.
But I don’t believe he was referring to brick-layers, or plumbers, or HVAC mechanics, or skilled carpenters when he said ‘manual laborers’.
I believe, based on my life experience, he was referring to those 5,00 poor folk who bet their futures on an industry that outgrew the need for them.

The bottom line of my issue here is that his comment very likely cost my small, rural team mentors and sponsors that they cannot afford to lose. Speeches being what they are, they shouldn’t be negatively impacting teams.

Whether or not you agree with my gripe about the speech, I’m certain that I’m not the only person with the same take on it – nor my mentors the only mentors, nor my sponsors the only sponsors.

Whether or not I agree with how you ‘feel’ about the meaning of ambiguous phrases is irrelevant.
Whether or not others agree with how you ‘feel’ about them is equally irrelevant.
You have a selling job ahead of you and, as hard as it may be to accept, I’m trying to help you.
You could try to convince your sponsors and mentor that Dean is an elitist buffoon and that, because you are so completely mortified and embarrassed by his insensitive words and callous attitude, they should stick with you in spite of him.
Or you might try to get them to understand that possibly, just maybe, there was no actual offense in what he said.
Whichever way you go, I really hope you succeed – really.
We are a small rural team too, and I think we share your vulnerabilities.

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I had a few mentors who point blank said “Saturday was fantastic, until Dean ruined it with his speech.”

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FIRST does spend a lot of time playing up the math, science and academic parts of the competition at the cost of the skills side of things.

But you know, it wouldn’t hurt to drop a note to Dean explaining how his comments were heard by your sponsors and mentors.

It may well be that Dean’s understanding of “manual labour” is quite different from that of your colleagues. Personally, I would refer to the work of tradespeople as “skilled labour” as opposed to “manual labour”. I see manual labour as being paid for how much you sweat… and while there is no doubt that many tradespeople often get dirty and sweaty in the course of their job… they are being paid for what they know. Thats why there is a four year apprenticeship, and why master craftspeople… and general contractors… are worth one heck of a lot more than they were as teenagers. It’s not because they have a stronger back… it’s because they KNOW more.

And don’t even get me started about how much you need to know to be a successful farmer! Heck… just ask any farmer. They are mechanics, accountants, economists, meterologists, biologists and more all rolled into one. Yep, they do some manual labour, but they also punch in GPS coordinates into the autopilot in the air conditioned cab of their tractor, too.

But don’t take it from me… write Dean and ask him what he meant.

Jason

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I was thinking for a long time how to respond to this thread. But Jason and Georgie’s Dad said it much better than I could. Repped. (Sorry, Jason, “You must spread …”)

I definitely would let FIRST know how Dean’s remarks were heard. They need to know if the message they want to send is being received correctly or not.

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But don’t they say that every year – no matter what words Dean chooses? :eek:

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The conditional statement as presented is of course rhetorical, but the “if” part of the sentence doesn’t apply to any of my mentors.

Why can’t it be both?

I don’t see how that’s relevant. From the ladies in the VIP elevators who were pushing buttons for him, to the servers getting him food and busing his table, to all those gentlemen expertly moving/shipping/moving-again all of those robot crates, FIRST itself runs on the backs of unskilled, menial, manual labor.

It’s not difficult to accept at all. :confused:

I’m certain that Dean didn’t get up in front of a group of enthusiastic students, mentors, and sponsors with the intent of offending them. However, having taken a step back and given it some time, I couldn’t and still can’t figure out what else he could have meant besides “students, don’t be like those people” – and I can’t imagine how “those people” wouldn’t be offended by such a remark.

I could have started the thread with a quip about speech length (at 27 minutes of Dean-only time, it was a record for brevity, and should have been a third of that), but I wanted people to take this seriously.

As for letting Dean know how his remarks were received, that letter is already in the works.

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I apologize for assuming that you wouldn’t. That was presumptuous.
You do make this into a dilemma.
How does one urge young people to better themselves without implying better than what?
I hope you are able to keep your sponsors and mentors.