Picking One Job Instead of All of Them
Specializing means doing one job well instead of every job badly. Look at the workers in your school and see what each one does not make.
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What this means
A plumber fixes pipes. That is what a plumber does all day, every day. A plumber does not also cut hair, teach fractions, or bake bread for a living.
When a person makes only a few things instead of a little bit of everything, that is specialization. The plumber has specialized in pipes.
Now think about what the plumber uses. Bread, shoes, a car, gas, medicine, a phone, a haircut, a school for her kids. The plumber makes one kind of thing and uses hundreds of kinds of things. That gap is the whole idea. People who specialize always consume way more varieties than they produce.
Your school is full of specialists. The teacher teaches. The custodian keeps the building clean and safe. The cook makes lunch. The nurse takes care of sick students. Not one of those people does all four jobs.
Why not just do everything yourself? Because you would be slow and bad at most of it. A plumber who spent Monday learning to cut hair and Tuesday learning to bake would fix almost no pipes. Picking one thing means getting really good at it.
Why it matters
You already specialize a little. Maybe you are the one in your family who is best at fixing the wifi, or the one who always helps a younger sibling with reading. You do that thing, and other people do other things.
Someday you will pick work too. That choice is a specialization choice. You will get good at a small number of things, and then you will count on thousands of strangers to make everything else you need. That sounds risky, but it is how every town on Earth works.
Real-world example
A school bus driver spends every morning and afternoon driving students safely. She does not repair the bus engine, and she did not build the bus. A mechanic keeps it running. She does not grow the food she eats, sew her jacket, or fill her own tooth when it hurts. A farmer, a factory worker, and a dentist do those things. Every one of those people also depends on someone else to get their own kids to school. The driver drives, and gets everything else from people who specialized in something different.
Try it
- As a class, make a list of at least eight adults who work in your school or neighborhood. Try for variety: a plumber, a police officer, a teacher, a hair stylist, a mail carrier, a vet, a librarian, a cook.
- Next to each name or job, write the one main good or service that person produces. Be specific. "Helps people" is too vague. "Delivers mail to houses" is better.
- Pick just one of those workers. Write their job at the top of a big sheet of paper.
- Around it, write ten things that person uses but does not make for themselves. Push past food and clothes. Think about roads, electricity, glasses, shoes, medicine, haircuts, phone service.
- Circle every item on your ten that is made by someone else on your class list from step 1. Draw an arrow between them.
- Look at the arrows. Do any of them point both ways? Find a pair of workers who each need what the other does, and say the pair out loud.
- Last question, answer in one sentence: what would this worker's week look like if they had to make all ten of those things themselves?
Teacher note
The definition students miss is the comparison built into it. Specialization is not just "having a job." It is producing fewer varieties than you consume, and the second half of that sentence is where the meaning lives. That is why step 4 forces ten items against one. If a student's list stalls at four, prompt with invisible things: the road, the water pipes, the power lines, the eyeglasses. A second misconception is that specialists are somehow better or more important than other people. The arrows in step 5 are the antidote. When students find a two-way pair, usually something like the hair stylist and the police officer, they can see that dependence runs both directions and nobody sits at the top. Watch for students who list only goods and no services; push them toward the dentist, the bus driver, the barber. A student has it when they can explain that the plumber needs the teacher just as much as the teacher needs the plumber.
Check yourself
What does it mean to say a hair stylist specializes?
A plumber decides to also grow all her own food, sew her own clothes, and build her own car. What is the most likely result?
Which pair shows two specialists who each need what the other produces?
Specializing means producing only a few kinds of things while using many kinds of things, which is why every specialist depends on other specialists.