Education and Money

[pandora_parrot]

Lately, I've been seeing more and more really neat projects that people work on. Electronics projects that people have accomplished. Neat things they did with bits of hardware. Hacks where someone fashioned a hand-held device for playing console games from one video game system or another. All of the fantastic and amazing projects I saw at Burning Man. Beautiful bits of wood working, painting, etc. Abstract vehicles made into snails, couches, ducks, sailing ships, etc. All very very neat stuff.

But one thing that always strikes me about a lot of these things is how much money it requires. Getting access to the tools needed to make many of these things is VERY expensive. And the consumable supplies required are also often quite expensive. Getting into model airplanes has really showed me that. It costs a ton of money just to have the tools I need to actually work with these planes, let alone buy all the little parts I need to get a plane in the air and keep it there. Hobbies like model airplanes, electronics, metal works, etc. require a lot of money to get into, and quite a bit to keep going, as they require high costs in parts, etc.

I've also been realizing how expensive it is just to learn something artsy/craftsy/hacky/etc. You have the initial cost of entry where you buy your basic tools, and then you have to buy consumables for creating projects that you are guaranteed to break/destroy/use improperly, since you're going to be learning. Even things like painting and drawing have a cost to entry and maintenance costs to buy supplies. And what if you buy all the supplies to do something new, and find out you have no interest in it? That's expensive too!

It strikes me that many of these things that so many people in my current peer group take for granted are heavily influenced by class privileges. One friend had parents with sufficient money to buy them computer equipment that they could play with from the time they were 6 years old. Another had a father that had a PhD in mechanical engineering. Another grew up in a culture with lots of access to supplies and knowledge for various crafts like making clothing, wood-carving, etc.

Although I had perfectionism and such standing in my way of learning many of these things as a child, I also had limited access to the funds and knowledge required for these things. My father was a high-school drop-out, and my mother had an associates degree in accounting. Although there were many things they could teach me, they tended to be more practical things like how to maintain your car and stuff like that. We spent most of our money on education for my sister and I, so we had very little left over. There were a few times where we needed to go on welfare for a while, to make ends meet. Most of our clothes, toys, etc. were purchased at garage sales. Everything we got was used, from cars to bikes to clothes to silverware, etc. Going out to eat meant going to McDonald's. Christmas was about the only time that we "splurged" and bought completely "pointless" things.

By going to college, moving to California, and getting an awesome job, much of this has changed for me. My social network includes many brilliant and knowledgeable people and my income leaves a lot of room for discretionary spending. Many of the things that I've gotten into of late have only been possible due to these changes. Skateboarding, painting, rock climbing, model airplanes, etc. I've learned more about things I can do with computers and software because my social network now includes people I can talk to about such things. I can do things like build a model airplane because I know people that have ideas on how to do such things, and I have the money to buy the tools/supplies required..

Sure, there are other solutions to obtaining many of these things, but they tend to require social connections. Learning to scavenge for free or cheap tools/supplies for learning these sorts of arts/crafts/hacks/etc is a skill in and of itself. And frankly, you're still relying on being at least somewhat connected to someone with knowledge or money. Not everyone has such people in their lives or has any way of learning how to get access to such things.

It seems that some forms of creativity and know-how are a luxury that only the rich can afford. Or the socially well-connected.

It strikes me that there's something else going on here, as well. For example, creating one's own clothes and such is something that should be cheaper than going out and buying things. But in this consumerist culture, skills such as these are perhaps growing more rare amongst people. People are encouraged to buy a new thing, instead of making a new thing. And as that knowledge diminishes, it perhaps becomes more difficult to cheaply get into such things.

I'm not sure. I'm definitely seeing some really interesting patterns here, but it's not quite clear exactly what's going on yet.

What's your take on the connection between socio-economic class and creative skills?

Comments

[pazi-ashfeather.livejournal.com]

What's your take on the connection between socio-economic class and creative skills?

It is definitely easier for someone with more money, and also more time, to do this stuff.

Making one's own clothing may or may not be a money-saver. Take the cost in materials; now, factor the cost of that time. If you're effectively a house-spouse who's suppported by someone else, and has few commitments elsewhere, making clothing is probably very economical. If you're a single parent, who works a job and goes to school (both full-time), then your time is at quite a premium and although you may be able to work on a garment for yourself or your child, it's going to be more "stitching up this segment here since in the few spare minutes I have before leaving for work."

In a capitalist society, time really is money because, unless you're able to acquire and keep a salaried job where you're payed for something other than how much time you spend on what amounts to an assembly line, every hour you *can* work provides an incentive to do so, and given the low rate of pay for most such jobs you have to meet a certain threshold just to stay afloat.

That's another ding for people in lower economic classes -- they have to spend their time to make money, at unfavorable rates. It can leave less free time for creative pursuits, especially when you're doing work that's exhausting, soul-killing, or otherwise demanding toward your health and sanity.

I saw an essay by a steel worker once (I have forgotten his name), who said "Your average working Joe isn't stupid, he's tired." If your job is stressful enough, you need to apply that much more time to resting and recuperating.

All of this is relative, naturally -- I don't need to tell you that salaried work can be stressful and demanding. But it's a question of intensity over time; on a scale of one to ten, a job that sits at about five most of the time and peaks at 10 once in a while is more manageable, I think, than a job that stays at 8 all the time. You can still burn out at either one, but the amount of downtime you need to cope with the latter is going to be greater in general.

(Not that that's easy to quantify, but...how often do you go and do fun things on weekday nights? If you spend 8 hours a day on your feet, under tremendous stress, and take overtime whenever you can get it, but don't have much leisure money to show for it, how often would you do the same thing?)

Social connections can help; my sister has learned some artistic and craft skills that she'd not have learned due to socioeconomic status thanks to that (but the depth of her knowledge is not great; she doesn't have the ability in terms of tools and free time to practice any one of them and get really good at it).

I know for myself, I'd like to be learning scrimshaw and electronics. I love RC planes and would love to build all kinds of model systems. I used to want to do robotics as well. I still want to keep bees and silk moths, and keep a nice big garden, but...money stands in my way on almost all of this stuff. If we had a house, I could do the garden, and I am hoping to get a plot at a community garden next year. But RC planes cost far too much for even a basic starter to be affordable at my income, and scrimshaw tools aren't cheap (plus I'd need a workspace; our apartment isn't really suitable for bone carving).

[nphoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

This is something I've thought a lot about too.

It's fascinating to me that, though my parents were good people who did a good job raising me, neither one had a college education or much interest in bookish things.

To take just one example: my interest in music was almost entirely built from the ground up. My parents owned a few tapes of pop rock from back in the day, but that was about it. When I became interested in classical music in 6th grade, it was an adventure that I more or less took alone (I even was opposed to some degree by my parents on this because they didn't appreciate it). As an adult, I now have thousands of hours of classical and modern music, numerous books on the subjects of composition, form, and composers' biographies, as well as musical equipment in my apartment.

It's amazing to me to imagine how much more of a head start any one of my children would have compared to me if they are inclined to pursue music. It's just one illustration of many that demonstrates inherent differences in privilege among members of the same family across generations.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I think this is why some people are so blind to privilege. It can be so hard to quantify.

My family was poor when I was a child and my brother was very sick. My mother collected the neighbors' trash and hand-me-downs. I was often wearing stuff that was obtained either by getting something from a neighbor's kid and hemming it to fit me or that came with the mailing of N boxtops.

From my childhood perspective, this was horrible and humiliating and we were poor as dirt compared to many of our neighbors.

On the other hand.. Because we were poor, I learned to do a ton of odd jobs and we eventually got into the historical re-enactment stuff where I learned even more odd jobs. I made money during the summers by mowing the neighbors lawns because I correctly assessed what was wrong with a dead lawn mower at a garage sale, took it apart and rebuilt the motor (with a bit of guidance, of course) I was also willing to mow yards in the 110f heat of summer (we had no AC) when most of my neighbors and their children were hiding inside.

I always felt like the neighor's kids across the way were privileged. They had AC and a pool and cool video game systems and they were both captain of the football team (different years, of course) and everyone loved them...

Until the older boy attempted suicide... Their dad drove them to be SPORTS STARS and when he didn't make the grade for the university team...

Sure, my parents did some serious emotional damage to me, they even pressured me to play sports until it was abundantly clear that no amount of yelling at me would make me good, but those boys were like thoroughbred race horses. Only this TINY little window for success and even if they worked as hard as they possibly could, maybe they just genetically didn't have it in them to make the grade. Not their fault, but they were bred for a purpose and when that purpose vanished... What's left but to take them out in the pasture and put them down?

Last time I saw the younger brother he was a used car salesman, getting by on his rep and charm. No idea where the older one went.

Being the strong and healthy but undesired step child to my beloved but sickly younger brother, I was always Cinderella. He got the best toys and the least work. He also generally got new clothes instead of hand-me-downs in part because he's allergic to so many things and in part because frequently when I got the clothes they were already second or third generation, patched and battered and I'm rough on clothing (especially since it was humiliating to me to wear it and I was often bitter about it) so most of it never got to him.

Still. Compared to the kids on the reservation, we were kings. I never went to school with shoes held together with duct tape (well, except by my own preference) My mother broke belts over me when she got into a fit now and then but I didn't get the kinds of beatings many of the other children I knew did, and in rural Oklahoma, I was A) white and B) Allowed to have all sorts of guns and knives. The former gives one MAJOR social privilege and the latter makes even the dorkiest nerd appealing by teen boy standards.

If you've ever watched Red Dwarf, there's a brilliant scene with Ace Rimmer.. Woot youtube! Episode is 'Dimension Jump' At 4 minutes in to the 3rd part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckRHxxS_tL4 Really great lesson.

[salia-chan.livejournal.com]

With a lot of carefull searching, you can find a lot of surprising things for not much. the problem being is a lot of people don't know exactly WHAT it is you need to get into a given hobby, so they go a bit overboard and get a lot of specialized single taskers which you can often substitute other things for, if not as nicely.

Personally, I think I could get into certain aspects of car hobby stuff for not particularly much...but those require a LOT more space than I have, and the ability to get some sort of wielding ability (and that would cost a fair amount, and as of last time I tried learning, I kinda really suck. x.x)

But most people don't have any way of getting into a hobby, except by way of friends or jumping in headfirst.

Hopefully, on another note, people will get various things written down so random skills and such things won't wind up disappearing like they have in the past. iirc, it's theorized that damascus steel was lost because people used up the deposits and it wasn't needed to be remembered, and was semi secretive to begin with, so the formulas and procedures got lost.

Mew. But at least most things are findable on forums nowdays, from computer stuff to patterns and procedures for clothings to how to mine probably.

Mew~

[paka.livejournal.com]

I think lack of money really screws with your ability to have hobbies - both directly and indirectly. If you're in a situation where you can't afford more space, or where you might be moving soon, that really limits your ability to get into some things. If you're at the sort of blue-collar and some white collar jobs which really eat your energy because you need the money, then your hobbies all too easily become watching the tube, surfing the internet, playing MMOs.

I'll try not to be too bitter here, but it often feels like my income and the need to stay working means I sit on the sidelines in life a lot, while other people get lucky and get to really explore life - and that this becomes a recursive loop with social contact, because the easiest way to catch peoples' interest is to do interesting things.

I definitely feel there's a networking angle with any hobby regardless of income.

[mantic-angel.livejournal.com]

"It strikes me that many of these things that so many people in my current peer group take for granted are heavily influenced by class privileges."

Most of the lower class people I know are actually significantly more inclined to crafts: when you have to keep your own clothes together, you learn to sew - and that lets you do doll making and custom clothing. Equally, things like carpentry, gardening, cooking.

There's a lot of crafts that have practical value, and once you've managed the savings required for the initial investment, they pay for themselves. It's far cheaper to make your own table, instead of buying one.

There are also a lot of "middle class" crafts, like electronics, R/C planes, and computers, which don't pay for themselves, and those I find are much rarer in the lower-class.

Then you have writing, drawing, roleplaying, and music (which all have minimal investments - especially since paper and pencil is a mandatory school supply to begin with) All of those seem fairly class-agnostic. Those seem to be heavily a function of whether the parent was supportive or not.

I also know a lot of lower-class people who own an instrument and are fairly skilled with it, or who had access to a piano growing up. It seems like those are often seen as a good investment, despite rarely having monetary returns.

[mantic-angel.livejournal.com]

I've also noticed that church is often a strong introduction to music. Thinking about that, a lot of my artistic skills were ones that were offered at my local school. So I'd think that there's a lot of it that has to do with location - living in a "good" neighborhood gives you access to good schools, good community, a nice local church, etc. - In other words, social connections can be just as valuable. (Which is, of course, it's own particular type of privilege)

I'm also coming from a middle class background, and one that invested heavily in things that'd privilege me. My dad is the webmaster at Boeing, and my mom's father was mayor of a small town near Los Angeles, so I got to inherit privilege that's probably a fair bit above what my parent's economic class would normally provide. In other words, mine is very much an outsider's perspective.

[tarathene.livejournal.com]

We've noticed this often. If we didn't do it in school or growing up, we have a hard time learning it now because we don't have access to the tools a lot of things require. Those things that have required tools to keep doing have stagnated or been completely forgotten.

No one thought we needed to have our own anything for the most part when it came to saws and hammers and things like that, because everyone in our family had that kind of thin all over their basement when we were growing up. If we wanted to do something, we did it with supervision. When we moved, though, they sent us a hand saw that we've never used. No room in the apartment, and no table saw/power saw/etc to do things easily enough. We've slowly collected a hammer, screwdrivers and pliers over the past seven years so we can do small bits of work, but nothing major.

We got to use a "real" camera in middle school, and a few years later got to replace our automatic 110 and 35mm point and shoot cameras with an SLR older than than we were, from a flea market. It was better than anything we had used before except in school. Once we moved and had to start paying the costs for film processing ourselves, though, we immediately stopped using it. We've since replaced it with the cheapest digital SLR on the market, but we still had that bought for us by family. We have yet to get any prints made of our work despite the relatively low cost because it -is- a cost.

We are afraid of cooking, partly because we never got taught as a child. We assisted, or were hand-held through making things, but food was always too expensive and thus too precious to let us try making things on our own. Now the most exciting thing we do is add spices and eat it anyway if it tastes horrible. The most expensive thing we've allowed ourselves to experiment with was ramen noodles with milk, flour and butter, and we've stopped doing that because we could never get it to stop being too lumpy to eat.

We learned about camping and especially backpacking, but people don't want to go with us, so for the past seven years we haven't. We didn't even remember which tent we had here we'd neglected our supplies for so long. We learned about hiking but we can't handle elevation changes very well anymore, partly due to lack of experience over the past seven years and mostly due to our body seeming to slowly fall apart around us. Our location right now doesn't hold many opportunities for hiking and backpacking without going up long distances unfortunately, and again no one seems to want to go with us to do anything. We even made a comic strip (http://rpdc.no-ip.org/?date=2007-10-12) about it back when we were trying to draw one.

We want to learn to make our own clothes, if only because most of what we like the look of does not come in sizes which fits us. We lack money for materials, sewing supplies, and especially a sewing machine which we're told we would almost absolutely need. Even more importantly though, we lack the confidence in our abilities when we start to not screw up everything we touch. We know that's how people usually learn, by messing up, but raw materials have always been too precious too us. We would rather give them to other people who already know, so they can make something instead of us messing things up. That's how a lot of our reservations about things go.