By: Dr. Jacob Imam, Founder and Provost, College of St Joseph the Worker
Why on earth did we start a college where students study Plato on Monday and rough in plumbing on Tuesday?
At first glance, a trades education may seem like a competitor with liberal arts. And the liberal arts might seem a strange, ethereal complement to the practical know-how of the trades. An HVAC professional who has thought hard on the distinctions between oligarchy, democracy, tyranny, and monarchy might be a good conversationalist: but can he artfully incorporate ductwork into the structure of your house?
Yes, he can. This is our conviction at the College of St. Joseph the Worker: that a tradesman formed in our great intellectual tradition will be a better tradesman, even as every student of the liberal arts will deepen his love and knowledge of the truth by learning also to love good, hard, physical work.
Our students often describe our College with a palpable sense of relief. The end of high school brought them more than a graduation party. It brought them a bind – forced to choose between suppressing their desire to discuss the deepest questions of human existence in favor of a career, or diving into the great liberal arts tradition not knowing if they will ever find a job.
But young people needn’t empty their heads to work with their hands. Just as learning the trades enables mastery of the built environment, mastering the liberal arts enables students to step back from the confines of the present moment, with all its practical demands, and answer such questions as: What makes life worth living? What ought we do to be happy? What is all of this work for?
We need such thoughtful workers, who can place their own efforts within the shared effort of becoming a just and happy people. Liberal arts colleges exist to produce citizens who take responsibility for the whole society. Americans tend to distrust elites who claim to lead us towards the big-picture goals of our society—without being obviously “in it”, getting their hands dirty, and coming from among us in order to lead us. A holistic education enables students to lead, and this education is deeply complemented by a training in work and practical skill that gives them the trust of others.
The ability to build the world and to fix what is broken—a capacity so evident in the competent tradesman—fills our students with confidence and an awareness of their own power to better the lives of those given to their care. This is a joy to behold, especially when today’s colleges increasingly produce the opposite experience: many young Americans do not graduate with a stock of useful skills and a life of good work ahead of them, but the anxiety that attends upon the lack of means, the lack of property, and with abundant debt.
Thomas Jefferson thought that the strength of our republic was based upon yeoman farmers, who he called “the most valuable citizens” precisely because they were “the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds.” For the same reasons, James Madison said that “the freeholders of the Country would be the safest depositories of Republican liberty.” Hard work and skilled trades can provide the financial independence that allows citizens to make use of their liberty, to be free from systems of control that hamper independent thought, and to lead courageously and with common sense: independent minds need independent means.
Meanwhile, training in the liberal arts enables builders to build the world well, according to a robust, articulate vision of the good. The liberal arts student needs practical skill and a habit of good work in order to understand and enact the vocation of political leadership. For most of history, good work was integral to most people’s day – but now, many workers are cut off from their own intellectual tradition just as many liberal arts students are cut off from the character building of physical labor. A marriage of the liberal arts with the trades is necessary for the flourishing of America.
