Path to learning: The Power of Hands-On Learning

I've been listening to the Path To Learning Podcast when I work doing quiet things in my wood shop. Each episode has content that I've found valuable, and today I listened again to my own episode which was recorded last summer. I think that if you are interested in progressive education you'll find it and other Path To Learning Podcasts useful. 

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXRodG9sZWFybmluZy5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NmQ4MjI3YzgtZWQxYS00ZDBiLTkyNTktMzFhZDdlMmQzMWYx 

The senses are key. They lure you into learning. If you've wondered about the difference between the concrete and abstract in the principles of Educational Sloyd, the difference is simple. The concrete contains a full range of senses, proving to hand and mind the reality of the educational experience.

I'm reminded of a friend in her eighties who had asked to see my work many years ago. And then when presented with it she asked permission to touch it, claiming that what the eye is drawn to, the hands must explore and confirm. And so that's why the wisdom of our hands is so essential. What we see or hear consists of surface senses, but the hands not only sense the surface of things, they determine shape and weight, and provide the means to manipulate and test. Then when they've done their creative work, others can readily see and measure the results... no standardized tests required.

For the sake of efficiency, policy makers during the start of the industrial age, decided that children could be handled in the same manner as the assembly line managed parts. Students were to be arranged and sorted, by age and intellect without regard for the variations of human development and without regard for individual interests, and the expectation was not that we engage student interests and allow for the variations within the human species, but to force conformity to artificial standards.

And so they've made a great mess of things. It's not that their intentions are bad, but that failing to take the hands into consideration, they've made education overly abstract.

And so the path forward can be recognized in this quote from Anaxagoras, one of the earliest Greek philosophers who said, "Man is the wisest of all animals because he has hands." But then how do we become wise if our hands are purposefully stilled and sequestered from the development of mind?

Make, fix and create...