What follows in an edited version of a paper I presented at a conference at the Unversity of Helsinki in 2008.
Abraham Maslow (American psychologist 1908-1970): “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to
treat everything as if it were a nail.” Tools not only provide
the power to shape materials, but expand the dimensions of human intellect.
There is magic in the manipulation of real tools and real materials. They
create interest in the learner by engaging the hands in the exploration of
physical reality and the expression of intellect. We place our children at risk
of boredom and diminished capacity by abandoning the commonplace tools that
formed the foundation of human creativity.
Research on gesture, the field of embodied
cognition, and new developments in the study of depression reveal the
significance of the varied and rhythmic use of the hands in the development of
human intellect. We are made stupid and depressed when our hands are stilled.
Most American schools and homes are involved in a
risky experiment in which the common tools of artists and craftsmen are
abandoned. The Clear Spring School, a small independent school in Northwest
Arkansas is different. We are on the cutting edge in the making and use of
tools. Our children make their own, from hand-carved ink pens based on the 1885
Nääs Sloyd model series to the looms our children use in weaving and textiles.
Making tools provides a means to put the hands into action in the classroom. When
the child makes the tools used in his or her hands-on exploration there is a
depth of interest and understanding that cannot be approached otherwise.
Tools, hands and the
expansion of intellect
"Let the youth once learn to take a straight shaving
off a plank, or draw a fine curve without faltering, or lay a brick level in
its mortar, and he has learned a multitude of other matters which no lips of
man could ever teach him" --John Ruskin, "Time and Tide", 1883.
The United States, unlike the Scandinavian countries does
not have a national curriculum in craft education. While many schools in the US
have arts education, often taught by a resource teacher and with little
integration with core classroom learning, craft education is extremely rare in
schools. For that reason, those of us involved in crafts education are
challenged to find a clear rationale for its inclusion in schools. Crafts
education must compete for funding against many other more widely recognized
educational needs, so part of my mission has been to demonstrate its value
within a system that has been skeptical. On the more positive side, not having
a standardized national crafts curriculum offers craft teachers the opportunity
to be exercise personal creativity. To develop a program like my own would not
have been possible in schools with greater responsibility to meaningless national
standards.
Prior to the 1990’s, wood shops were common in middle
schools and high schools but since then wood shops have been discontinued to
allow greater emphasis to be placed on academic studies. At this point, schools
with wood shops have become rare. But the good news is this: You can play a
vital role in the return of common sense learning in schools.
According to widely published statistics, about 30 percent
of American high school students fail to graduate. An additional, but
unmeasured number of our best and brightest students are bored with their high
school educations. Add the numbers of disinterested, and deliberately
disruptive students who manage to squeak through at graduation, and you might
begin to think we could be doing a better job at educating our children and
preparing them for their futures.
In my own wood shop, as a professional craftsman I never
felt that what I was doing was obsolete. Woodworking enabled me to use a
variety of skills, integrating the arts, science, history, mathematics and
business. It occurred to me that woodworking in school could become central to
the learning experience, making all the other conventional studies more
relevant and meaningful to children’s lives.
If learning were more relevant, more meaningful and more fun, school
would more readily engage our children’s attention and more surely lead to
their success. As the mission statement of the Clear Spring School suggests,
When the hands are engaged, the heart follows.
In the fall of 2001, we launched the Wisdom of the Hands
program at Clear Spring School to demonstrate the value of woodcrafts as a part
of school curriculum. We named the program Wisdom of the Hands in the belief
that bringing the hands into direct action on behalf of learning would enhance
learning in all areas of conventional school curriculum and for all students,
even those planning to pursue college educations. We started at the high school
level and over the next two years, expanded the program throughout grade levels
1 through 12. During that time I began my own research on the role of the hands
in learning and I discovered that many of my own ideas were widely shared by
educational theorists since the mid 1700’s and are very much a part of modern scientific
research today.
Tools
As human beings even from the earliest age, our tools are very
much a part of us. They influence our thoughts and capacities and perceptions
of self.
Charles H. Ham wrote in 1886, “—the axe, the saw, the plane,
the hammer, the square, the chisel, and the file. These are the universal tools
of the arts, and the modern machine-shop is an aggregation of these rendered
automatic and driven by steam.”
As shown in the drawings from R.J Drillis
Folk
Norms and Biomechanics, the hands have been the fundamental means through
which the world has been shaped, measured, studied and understood.
All the
actions of machine tools are derived from the motions of the human hand. In
addition, while the metric system is based on relative abstraction, earlier
concrete systems, including our system of inches and feet, were based on
observation of the human hand and other parts of the human body.
The
Hands
As schools have
attempted to become more efficient in the process of education, children have
been confined to desks with hands stilled, essentially blocking their
traditional engagement in the process of learning. According to Dr. Frank
Wilson, author of The Hand, How its use
shapes the brain, language and human culture,
“The entire open-ended repertoire
of human manipulative skill rests upon a history of countless interactions
between individuals and their environments, natural materials and objects. The
hand brain system that came into being over the course of millions of years is
responsible for the distinctive life and culture of human society. This same
hand-brain partnership exists genetically as a developmental instruction
program for every living human. Each of us, beginning at birth, is predisposed
to engage our world and to develop our intelligence primarily through the
agency of our hands."
Current research in the new field of embodied cognition recognizes that the whole body takes part in the
processing of information and human intelligence. The idea that human knowledge
is “brain based” or “language based” no longer provides an accurate view of who
we are or how we learn.
There is something extremely powerful about the engagement
of the hands. Woodworkers have noted the therapeutic effect of woodworking,
calling their time spent in the woodshop, “sawdust therapy.” By and large we
feel better when we take the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the process of
creating something from wood.
In our nation we have an epidemic of depression and other
mental and emotional disorders and use of anti-depressant medications has
become common for controlling mood and behavior. I came to my own conclusion
that much of the problem has been that we have been out of touch with our own
hands, and while being out of touch has disastrous consequences in adult lives,
it also has profound detrimental effects on the education of our children.
The significance of the hand’s role in learning and the
feelings that woodworker’s have about the therapeutic aspects of their time in
the woodshop are illustrated by research conducted by Dr. Kelly Lambert at the
University of North Carolina. She describes a system of “effort driven rewards”
resulting from the creative use of the hands, stimulating an exchange of
neuro-hormones in the brain that offsets symptoms of depression and raises
overall emotional and intellectual engagement in learning.
The idea
that the engagement of the hands in learning and making things might come as a
surprise to our nation’s pharmaceutical suppliers, but is no great surprise to
those who work with wood. Lambert’s research illustrates how the lack of
hands-on engagement leads to emotional disengagement, leading to diminished
display of intellectual capacity. This may explain why gesture researcher,
Susan Goldin-Meadow suggests, “If you are having trouble thinking clearly,
shake your hands.”
So the great educational question we must answer in the
first part of the 21st century is very much the same question asked
by educational theorists at the beginning of the 20th. “How do we
bring the hands to bear on the education of our children?”
The Demonstration at
Clear Spring School
The Wisdom of the Hands program is different from
conventional school art classes and is different from conventional woodworking
programs as well. Each project is planned in cooperation with core classroom
teachers to integrate with current studies. By making our own tools at Clear
Spring School, we establish a relationship between the materials drawn from our
environment and the student’s growth in confidence by capitalizing on the
child’s natural inclinations toward creative activity. We make tools that fit a
variety of different categories, each intended to enhance the school’s basic
curriculum. Some of the tools enable children to do work, while others are used
to expand the children’s understanding of concepts. Some are used for
investigation and demonstration of scientific principles, some are used for
organizing and collecting data and still others provide additional interest in
classroom activities.
•Working
tools are those that provide the children opportunity to do other projects,
often involving crafts. Examples are looms for weaving, knives for carving,
pens for learning cursive, and pencil sharpeners, among others.
•Conceptual
study tools include geometric solids for the study of geometry, math
manipulatives, models of the solar system, puzzle maps for study of geography
and plate tectonics, abacuses for doing math problems and developing numeracy.
•Investigatory
tools include windmills for
studying meteorology, bug boxes and nets for catching insects, and projectile
launchers for the study of trigonometry and physics.
•Organizational
tools include tool boxes, divided trays for the collection of rocks and
minerals, display boxes for collections of insects and numbered stakes for
marking plant species on the school nature trails.
In addition, the children of all ages have a love of making
toys and we use toys as tools to expand interest in specific areas of study. As
examples, the children have made trains and various animals inspired by their
reading. We have made dinosaurs inspired by their study of dinosaurs, as well
as boats for the study of the sea, and cars and trucks for the study of
economics and transportation. Much of the success of the program is rooted in
the close relationship between classroom teachers and the wood shop.
Toy making increases the child’s enthusiasm for learning at
all ages. Each project tests new ideas and ends with play. Each child at Clear Spring
School has a collection of treasured objects that remind of lessons learned,
skills developed.
The Key to our
success:
The fact that the classroom teachers are part of the
planning process, often suggesting possible projects, leads them to become active
wood shop participants, working alongside the students, demonstrating their own
engagement in the learning process. Rather than the wood shop being an isolated
school activity, it is successfully integrated at all grade levels.
By being deeply immersed in exploring the fundamentals of
physical reality, and making his or her own tools for discovery, truly no child
is left behind, no child is bored, and every child is empowered to engage in
creative response to society and the environment. The variety of tools that can
be made in the school wood shop is without limit. So what is the difference
between making an object and making a tool? Tools are intended to have use and
impact beyond the time spent in the wood shop. As an example, the simple tray
made for the collection of rocks and minerals is not complete until the
contents have been collected, organized and labeled. A loom is not complete
until it holds a completed piece of textile art. A toy is not complete until it
has been played with and enjoyed, shared and learned from. Tools have
particular effectiveness in bringing the hands to work in the classroom far
beyond note taking and keyboarding. The hands’ profound impact on learning has
been widely ignored in American education, but may also offer the pathway to
effective educational reform and renewal.
Clear Spring School was founded in 1974 in the small town of
Eureka Springs Arkansas to serve as a laboratory to explore new principles in
progressive education. It serves 80 students from pre-school through high
school. It is accredited though ISACS, Independent Schools of the Central
States and through NAIS, National Association of Independent Schools.
Make, fix, create and increase the likelihood that others learn likewise
A friend of mine reminded me that if we were to factor in the effects of poverty on outcomes in education, the US would be winning at the PISA testing game. That is without a doubt true.
During my eleven day Baltic sojourn, I had the opportunity to visit schools in Finland and Latvia. I was particularly interested in Finland schools due to their high ranking in the international PISA tests that are set up to compare educational effectiveness in 
Penmanship and cursive are making a comeback, according to this article in the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/from-punishing-to-pleasurable-how-cursive-writing-is-looping-back-into-our-hearts/2018/08/31/aa180b9c-aa06-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html
As shown in the drawings from R.J Drillis Folk
Norms and Biomechanics, the hands have been the fundamental means through
which the world has been shaped, measured, studied and understood. All the
actions of machine tools are derived from the motions of the human hand. In
addition, while the metric system is based on relative abstraction, earlier
concrete systems, including our system of inches and feet, were based on
observation of the human hand and other parts of the human body. 
