Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein once wrote: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program acomputer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” 

That’s a tall order. Although I can only do some of those things, I approve of the principle. Now adays, though, we’re specializing more. A popular Internet essay is titled: “I Can’t Do One-Quarter of the Things My Father Can.” Are hands-on skills—building things, fixing things, operating machines and so on—really in decline? 

I think so. SAT scores provide a record of academic performance, but there’s no equivalent archive for tracking handiness. There is, however, a lot of anecdotal evidence that what used to be taken for granted as ordinary mechanical skills now amounts to something unusual. When I recently wrote on my Web site about the importance of giving kids hands-on toys, a reader e-mailed: “Boy, can I second [your point about] the lack of basic skills in adults. I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity here in Los Angeles. The volunteers who come out frequently can’t do something as basic as using a tape measure. ... Many of my Saturdays are effectively clinics on how to pound a nail.” 

Even the simplest of automotive tasks, changing a tire, seems to be beyond the ken of many people. According to AAA, nearly 4 million motorists requested roadside assistance last year—for flat tires. 

And just look at the Popular Mechanics Boy Mechanic books to see the kinds of skills that boys and teenagers were once routinely expected to possess. These books (which PM published in the early 20th century and recently reissued) assumed that young readers would be prepared to construct a fully rigged ice boat, a toy steam engine, or—I’m not kidding—a homebuilt “Bearcat” roadster powered by a motorcycle engine. 

It’s hard to imagine too many teenagers tackling projects of that magnitude these days. To be fair, young people today are likely to have skills that earlier generations never dreamed of—building Web sites, say, or editing digital movies. But manipulating pixels and working with physical materials aren’t quite the same thing. 

Does this matter? And if people are becoming less mechanically handy, is that so bad? I think so—and not just because specialization is for insects. Continued...