This is the most confused article I have read in a long time. 1. "Maker" is one way to self-improve. As an engineer, it means that I pick up basic knowledge of

This is the most confused article I have read in a long time. 1. "Maker" is one way to self-improve. As an engineer, it means that I pick up basic knowledge of other engineering domains in my free time, which lets me be a better engineer. As an entrepreneur, it lets me stay creative, and see what is possible. 2. Not being a maker is no more of a criticism than not doing pro-bono legal work, not volunteering, not engaging in continuing education, not being a cyclist, not doing yogo, or a million other things we do to make ourselves better people or the world a better place. We all do a few of them. None of us have time for all of them. The bad alternative is watching TV. There is no stigma attached with not being a maker, anymore than there is with not doing yoga. 3. Maker is not, and never has been, about the artifacts. It's about the creativity, the process, and the learning. It's fundamentally anti-materialistic. After a decade of making, I can sew. I can weld. I can machine. I can woodwork. I can code. I can design electronics. I can do a hundred other things. That makes me a better, more versatile individual than I was a decade ago. It's also fundamentally different from making as blue collar work. Every artifact I've produced was about bettering myself or doing something creative. 4. On the other hand, she embodies why there is a stigma attached with being a homemaker, educator, and similar: "As an educator, the work I do is superficially the same, year on year. That’s because all of the actual change, the actual effects, are at the interface between me as an educator, my students, and the learning experiences I design for them." I have a child. I have taken several courses in early childhood development. It makes me a better parent -- in very obvious ways. It saves me time in the net -- when my child has a behavior problem that I see other parents struggle with, I can usually resolve it quickly and efficiently. However, among homemakers, there is a stigma attached with knowing what you're doing. The attitude is "we don't need somebody telling us how to raise our children," no matter how strong the evidence. Scientific research is confounded with parenting articles on link-bait sites. Properly raising children is essential, but that's not what most stay-at-home moms do, most nannys do, or all but the most elite childcares do. Early childhood development has been binned into a blue collar job, and we see the unfortunate effects of that. Teaching is very similar, especially at a college level. People clueless about teaching-and-learning run courses. At this point, I've taken about a dozen MOOCs in teaching-and-learning. I've engaged in a number of experimental teaching projects. All of my courses are blended. I actively and continuously measure the outcomes of how I run courses, use that to improve them, and when possible, publish about it. If homemaking and teaching were to apply the same level of rigor to their work as engineering and coding, the level of those professions would go up to where it belongs. As it is, it has unfortunately become unskilled, blue collar work, and the author of the article embodies why.