Rob Essay, Research Paper

Brian Wright

English 111 B

21 March 2000

Mrs. Innes

A Response to ?Is Craft Dead?

Tom Zaffiri has written a truly biased article about craftsmanship.

Although he is right about how we live in a much more technologically

advanced society where most goods are mass produced, I can not see where

he can say a craftsman of the society of fifty years ago is inferior to the

craftsman of today. ?In fact, carpenters of today are actually much better

craftsman of their counterparts of fifty years ago? (pg. 14). He is basing his

one-sided opinion merely on today?s technology.

I mean think of the truly magnificent structures that were constructed

long before than just fifty years ago. There has been skillful craftsmanship

probably since the spawn of man for crying out loud. Just because our

society has the knowledge to make buildings bigger and faster now doesn?t

make us superior to our preceding classes of craftsman. I worked doing

construction for three summers with my Uncle Rich so I do have a little

background on what I am talking about here too. Eventhough we were

equipped with all of the top of the line tools that one could possibly need, I

still worked amongst some of the most ignorant people that actually tried to

pass themselves off as skillful craftsman.

Personally, I think that Mr. Zaffiri needs to go back and do some more

research to broaden his horizon a little bit better on what he writes about and

then try writing a well rounded article next time. His shallowness really

appalled me to the point to where I was almost thoroughly disgusted with his

writing.