University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Knacker: A New Breed

By Barry Edwards

—Ed.

As a consequence of our ever
more technically oriented culture, a
new breed of person have become
obvious. Whole communities of
hard core engineers have evolved
near major industrial and scientific
centers. Unfortunately the
characteristics of these people as
made evident by their
concentration these areas are not
all good. Divorce rates show that
wives care little for a husband who
cares more for his model airplanes,
power tools, and stereo than for his
family, or who would rather finish
an important project at the plant
then take his kids to the beach.

In my home town near a
government research center these
people even have a special name.
They are called "knackers". The
local business men can spot one a
mile away. He generally wears
ill-fitting, mismatched, poorly
maintained clothes which are at
least five years behind current
styles, thick glasses or a hearing aid,
a flat top or crew cut, and Edmund
Scientific detraction grating cuff
links. He will not look into your
eyes when he speaks to you and
seems very uncomfortable in the
presence of anyone. He does most
or all of his home improvement,
auto repair, plumbing and electrical
work, and appliance repair, himself
in order to made the wife think he
is fulfilling his home duties.

Efficient

On the job he is extremely
efficient as long as he must deal
only with technicallia. When he
must communicate with other
people, either directly or on paper,
he is painfully inadequate. His
"friendly" conversations center
around hobbies rather than family
or social topics, and if the talk does
drift into the human realm only the
more technical facets are discussed.
His interest in civic affairs and
politics is selfish, with little
attention given to the moral or
ethical considerations of a given
issue. The true knacker is not an
egg head. His thoughts occupy
much of his time, but they are not
of the lofty, idealistic sort. They
deal with hard, cold reality.

The knacker can usually be
recognized by the time he reaches
college, perhaps because there he
can feel more at ease among similar
classmates and he feels free to
exhibit his introverted ways. This
embryonic knacker is known as a
"toolie". The toolie exhibits many
of the characteristics of the fully
developed knacker even before
graduation. He devotes himself to
his slide rule, religiously spurning
extracurricular activities,
particularly those which require
social involvement.

Anxious

He is very conservative, anxious
to assume his place in Middle
America. He made better grades in
math and sciences in high school
than in English, history, and other
foreign languages, and he could
always "make things work", so his
guidance counselor recommended
engineering. He now
singlemindedly pursues his goal of
getting through school and into a
good, secluded job where his
hang-ups will not show up (to him,
anyway).

Toolies cannot, of course, be
created by engineering schools out
of just any given person. There
must be basic prerequisites. A
prime candidate must be antisocial,
selfish, withdrawn, and unsure of
himself. But even the prime
candidate is far from hopeless. A
good liberal arts education, proper
counseling, and extra-curricular
participation could make him a real
human being of this robot.
Unfortunately, industry has a need
for robots and engineering schools
must fill the demands with little
regard for the poor knacker-to-be
or his effects upon our culture.

The chief aim of the majority of
engineering faculty (those who are
forced to waste their time on
undergraduate affairs) is to
produce, with a minimum of
involvement, not a well rounded
person capable of living a life of
fulfillment, not a good citizen, not
a good father or husband, but a
living tool, an interchangeable part,
capable of immediate integration
into industry. With this goal in
mind the knacker factory tools-up
for production.

Isolation

The first step is to isolate all
engineers so that interaction with
other members of the university
community is impossible. This is
accomplished partially by early
commitment to engineering as a
major. Also helpful is the large
number of required technical
courses, all attended only by
engineering students and having
heavy enough workloads to prevent
extra-curricular activities or social
interaction. The courses are taught
with great emphasis on cook book
application of principals to the
needs of industry. Cultural impacts
and social responsibility are
introduced in a few senior courses
as an after thought.

The few non-technical courses
which are required and specified are
taught in the engineering school
almost exclusively to engineers.
The remaining non-technical
electives are so few that depth in
any one pursuit and breadth are
mutually exclusive. Partially as a
result of this sort of curriculum,
Toolies are shunned by other
students; many are labeled "geeks"
or "turkeys" causing further
alienation and withdrawal.

The solutions to the Knacker
problem on the college level are
obvious fro the above criticisms of
curriculum. The only serious
sacrifice to be made is technical
competence in industrial
engineering tasks which can and
should result from post-graduate
work or on-the-job training. The
job of the university is to build well
adjusted, well rounded, individuals
capable of maintaining meaningful
relationships with other people and
capable of coping with all the
problems of living in a sophisticated
society.