concrete and abstract

One of the principles of Educational Sloyd was  that of moving from the concrete to the abstract. The idea was that by building and doing real things, rather than just engaging abstract material, students would develop both skill and deeper sustained interest. Back in about 2009 I was quoted by Matthew Crawford in his best selling book Shop Class as Soulcraft used a quote from my blog as the epigraph of chapter one. 

“In schools we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement… Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract, and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.” 

He used the quote noting that in just a few words I'd summarized the dreadful situation we're in. It's the artificiality of it all that drives kids nuts. Some are able to sit bored for hours. Some rebel. Crawford did a later exploration of the same quote in a subsequent book, The World Beyond Your Head in his final chapter. So I'll go a bit deeper into it myself. 

The first thing to note is that kids are smart and they know the difference between the artificiality of schooling and real life. They know that the teachers are presenting the things that the administration cares about, the students' own personal interests be damned. And since they know the curriculum has been manipulated and controlled based on things that are not real to them they need not pay serious heed. 

For some schooling is made barely bearable by having goals that lie beyond graduation. But just because some manage to make it through schooling seemingly unscathed and find some degree of success beyond it does not make it right for any and certainly not for all.

So what's a guy or gal to do? Julie Wilson, in her Path to Learning Podcast episode laid things our pretty clear. You change things, bringing your own unique passions into the school environment. Julie said, 

If school sucked for you, we really need you (to teach). Because you have a lens that we typically don’t have. The vast majority of people in the education system, people like myself, they did school well; therefore, I think we need more of the people who were not served by that traditional model. The more they can rally around this work and bring their different and innovative thinking to it, I think that will really help to turn things."

Yes, this will take time. But there are examples to examine like  our own Clear Spring School and a very long tradition of progressive pedagogy to inspire us to move forward. 

Make, fix and create.