Shame

Very few people can, I guess, escape their teens without looking back and cringing at the errors, gaucheness, unkindnesses of an oblivious youth. I don't think it is just me but, of course, it might be. An old friend reminded me the other day of my hasty exit on parting from an ex-girlfriend who chose to dramatise the event by collapsing in tears across the doorway. As I sought any way of leaving I inadvertently kicked her, adding, very literally, injury to insult. I neither returned nor apologised and she will never know that I am now mortified by my insensitivity and ashamed of my clumsiness. I can also see the black comedy, naturally.

This is however, a roundabout way of speaking of another matter.

I completed during the early eighties what was then known as a graduate apprenticeship: the training in engineering practice then required in order to become a 'Chartered Engineer'. In my case I worked in a company developing and producing high speed production machinery. The works were located in the east of London, adjacent to the old docks, largely derelict in advance of the major development that took place a few years later, and which was not then obviously in prospect. The company had a strong reputation for technical excellence, accompanied by management and workforce relations typical of that time and that place.

I started in the apprentice school were I was to learn basic workshop skills. I was introduced to filing and grinding, moving on to turning, milling, welding and so on. After a short period I would move to the drawing office and spend days learning how to sharpen pencils, letter precisely and calculate tolerances.

Arriving at the apprentice school I was given a white coat, as all graduates were, and here is the moment of entirely retrospective angst: I put it on. The new apprentices had green coats, from the second year on apprentices could wear brown coats that were also worn by time-served craftsmen. Foremen, managers and a few toolmakers, the most skilled and experienced, wore white coats. I  neither questioned this, nor my right to wear the white coat and the unjustified status it accorded me. I knew nothing about engineering, my knowledge limited to ill digested lectures on fluids and thermodynamics, my practical skills more limited still.

After a period in the apprentice school I was  circulated around the key departments: assembly, stores, plastics and so on. Each for a few weeks. Unfailingly I was treated with tolerance and with a gentle patience which was undeserved and certainly unappreciated by me. Slowly I gained respect for the skills, and then for the deep insight into the engineering process that the craftsmen and technicians possessed. It became clear to me that nothing was achieved except by way of extensive adaptation, accommodation and redevelopment by these craftsmen. There was  knowledge on the characteristics of the production process - settings, tooling, material selection - that made the critical difference between success and failure. Some of this knowledge was based on practice and observation but a good part was based on the application of engineering science.

The separation between different classes - and I use this word knowingly - of engineers damages the profession. In donning the white coat we make a statement and create a barrier. We seek to raise our status and by doing so diminish it. I wish I could go back and make a different decision, I wish the profession could too.