Saturday, February 12, 2011

Roy Underhill on Sloyd

I seem to have started something through my articles about educational sloyd. Roy Underhill has done a program, "Who Wrote the Book of Sloyd?"


Perhaps now the subject will be reaching a broader audience. Or at least we can hope so. You can tell by watching the program that he's been reading this blog. He even mentioned the wisdom of the hands. Nicely done, Roy.

On Otto Salomon's grave, it says: Den gode är en makt även i graven, which can be roughly translated, Good can be done, even from the grave. What Salomon did to illustrate the wisdom of the hands lives on in all of us who are inspired to understand the full dimensions of hands-on learning.

In the photo above, you can see a variety of shelf pins used in the making of small cabinets, including some you can make yourself. The maple parts laid out counter-clockwise show the way.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:56 AM

    Excellent! A larger audience indeed. But he should at least mention where "the wisdom of the hands" came from.

    Mario

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  2. He didn't do that did he. Do you think he wants his viewers to think sloyd is something he discovered on his own?

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  3. Hi Doug,

    Well it's been a while since I popped by and we chatted about sloyd but it was Roy brought me back here. A friend sent me the link to the episode and I was thinking of you as he was explaining his view of what sloyd was, hmm I thought I know that view and then there was that lovely "wisdom of hands" quote. I popped by here to confirm you had been involved in the making of the episode but obviously not credited for it. Never mind, sloyd is reaching a wider audience and you are playing your part.

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  4. Robin, thanks for stopping by. It is nice to hear from you. Obviously Roy has been to my site. And it is most important that people begin to grasp what the hands do in learning. I felt that Roy treated sloyd as something associated only with the past that is no longer relevant to modern learning. He could have spoken more forcefully about its value to today's youth. So you and I will have to make that point.

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  5. I'm a graduate of the Preservation Carpentry program at the North Bennet Street School in Boston (America's oldest and most prestigious woodworking school) and they have been big advocates of the Sloyd method. www.nbss.org

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  6. I had written for woodwork magazine describing the relationship between NBSS and Sloyd... You can find a link to the articles in the column at right. Doug Stowe's WOH articles and papers.

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