arising from the ooze.

Can it be that we've arisen from the ooze and need no longer be burdened by the engagement of the hands? Can now think fully and responsibly without them as fresh generations of robots arise? Author of the Hand, Frank Wilson, sent me a link to an article suggesting that soulless structures arise when architecture is divorced from the builder's hands.  The article, a memoir of sorts, is by an architect, Duo Dickinsen: 

Truth be told, many architects I know are a little uneasy about their lack of building knowledge. Since architecture without construction is largely a graphic arts exercise, this is either deeply ironic or grimly paradoxical. To bridge this yawning gap, architects today typically hire a slew of consultants—roof, skin, curtain wall, interior, sustainability, preservation—who join the growing influence of software-driven structural and mechanical engineers to absorb much of what architects once assumed they could handle. - Duo Dickinson

The problem is that without direct engagement of the hands, learning  becomes too hypothetical and overly academic (or "Purely Academic") and thus divorced from truth, and from the ascertaining abilities of the human hand.

 "... of all bodily members the hand is the most human and the most noble. In its features and capabilities is symbolized all that man as achieved in his long upward march from the primeval ooze." - Robert McDougall

It is odd that in schools, we leave teachers hands tied and students constrained to desks, while our greatest educational resources are restrained from their most natural inclination: that of ascertaining the reality of the universe.

Today at the Clear Spring School, I am planning to give my upper elementary school students further instruction on the lathe, and allow my lower elementary school students time to work on independent projects.

make, fix and create...