veneered tops..

Yesterday I demonstrated making veneered top panels for boxes and my high school students are now enthused about making boxes using these techniques. Doing my demonstrations for two classes, I came up with 6 different top veneers, and when one had chips torn out in an obvious place, I experimented with using hole punches to add repair pieces that will also serve as additional accents. I had used a paper punch previously to add small accent dots in fields of veneer but the full set of hole punches offers a variety of sizes.
 

Sir Ken Robinson said the following about the effect of shop classes in schools:

Students who’ve been slumbering through school wake up. Those who thought they weren’t smart find that they are. Those who feared they couldn’t achieve anything discover they can. In the process, they build a stronger sense of purpose and self-respect. Kids who thought they had no chance of going to college find that they do. Those who don’t want to go to college find there are other routes in life that are just as rewarding.

Manual arts training for all students is important for the society at large. To borrow 19th century terminology from Jonathan Baldwin Turner, the object is to build a society of "thinking laborer" and "laborious thinkers," that may be united in their common thoughts and shared experience and provide a firm and lasting foundation for democracy.

Educational policy makers divided schools into two opposing arms. Woodrow Wilson had asked for a two branch educational system:

"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."—Woodrow Wilson

In the meantime, and as a result of creating a divided educational system with differing objectives we can observe how deeply divided our nation has become.

Make, fix, create, and increase the likelihood that we find common ground in all learning likewise.