Make Magazine provided this link to enable Wisdom of the Hands blog readers to log in to the zoom interview by Dale Dougherty at 6 PM Central Daylight Time on June 2, 2022.
Make, fix and create...
The event will consist of an interview by Dale, and there will be time allotted for a Q and A.
Make, fix and create...
While some are attempting to take part in what they've called a "culture war," by steadfastly refusing to regulate weapons of war, and as children and innocent unarmed adults are killed by assault rifles folks should have few rights to in the first place, FDR proclaimed 4 fundamental freedoms that are essential in a democracy. Those were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Those last two are the ones that we've lost in the culture war that pits the second amendment rights to "bear arms" against the safety of all Americans.
Some of us want to eliminate poverty, as it is most often the source of poor schooling, stresses on the home, divorce, and of kids falling through the cracks. The "conservative" approach is to put hardening of schools as their priority, while also hardening the lives of our kids and increasing the level of fear. Imagine for a moment that your loving fourth grade teacher had an AR-15 at hand behind her desk ready to blow away anyone who arrived in class unexpected. Any other weapon and she'd be outgunned. Imagine for a moment that to enter the supermarket, you had to face an AR-15 armed guard and pass through a metal detector, taking your concealed weapon back to the car when the alarms went off. That's the world some Republicans want.
Freedom from fear these days is the freedom most lacking. So what's a person to do? Put the guns down, walk forth freely and bravely into the world. When we meet those carrying guns let's ask them what they are so afraid of that they need to be "armed", while the rest of us walk forward having put fear aside. The purpose of self-defense weaponry is proposed as that of living with less fear, while parents worry about sending their kids to school, and to see an armed man enter a grocery store makes me want to run for my life.
I work out at the gym with doctors who have long served in our community, including for many years taking turns in the emergency room. I asked them if they could count the numbers of self-inflicted and accidental gun deaths over their many years of service here. The number was beyond their counting. I asked if there was a single case in which a gun saved a life. There were unable to recall even one. So if we want to live without fear, let's remove assault weapons and weapons of war from our society, please.
I read about a country western music star, a grammy award winner, who backed out of the NRA convention. He said, however, that he was a "proud gun owner." What is there about gun ownership that could make a man feel proud? A young man, 18years or or in some cases younger, can own an assault rifle giving him the potential of taking lives from innocent folks. Would it be more fitting to state one's embarrassment instead? And yet the world seems to be full of "proud gun owners." We've far too many of them, and far too many guns.
Gun manufacturers have used advertising to attempt to associate their products with military bravery, but should guns not be seen as an expression of cowardice instead? Would it not be a better world if we would walk in it unarmed, placing our fears aside and our faith in each other? And if instead of training kids and cops to face mass shooting incidents we were to return schooling and shopping to a kindlier foundation?
Since politicians seem unwilling to solve our nation's gun problems, I challenge all gun owners to think more critically of themselves and about the rationality of their own fears. What is it they fear so much that they think guns are required in order to feel safe? This, my friends is a world of our own making, but guns won't make things safe. If you are a coward, no number of guns will make you safe. But if you're brave, no gun is required. Owning the same kind of weapon used to rapidly kill children or old folks at the grocery store should never be justification for feeling proud. Perhaps shame instead, for cowardice in the face of life, should be acknowledged by those who hold their guns so dear.
Let's be brave. Let's be strong. Let's feel pride in having put instruments of destruction aside and begin the arduous process of healing others.
In a survival structure you need to use the materials at hand, and what we have on campus in large quantities is bamboo. Bamboo is a fascinating material. It grows quickly and has amazing strength. In much of the world it's used to build scaffolding for construction. It is actually a type of grass. It grows thick and in northwest Arkansas is considered a nuisance plant. Once planted, it is so hardy that it is difficult to eradicate. What the students have cut will soon be replenished.
The photo shows student progress. Like a structure built many years ago, "Fanshaw's dwelling" it is a two room dwelling.
I've proposed an article for Quercus Magazine about the project and will be sharing photos and text for future publication.
Make, fix and create...
Being released into the White River, the boat will travel to parts unknown, and if found, the engraved plate may lead someone to contact the school. The rather plain looking boat will get additional decoration in the pre-school before launch.
We've no excuses. They've no excuses. From Sandy Hook and Columbine on, nearly all Republicans have fought against any sort of restrictions on gun ownership. At the same time, while claiming that the problems are mental health related, they've offered no solutions or leadership in that direction. They wait for anger and despair to die down and then proceed as though nothing happened.
The Republicans are not alone, as there are some Democrats still afraid of standing up for the safety of our kids.
In the past, the lead talking point was that in the face of horror we must wait and let the passions subside so as to not act in a rash manner. But how many more Sandy Hook and Robb Elementary School massacres must our nation endure as politicians offer "thoughts and prayers" and as they wait the angst to die down and they can skate forward untouched and having done nothing for the safety of our kids or for our society at large.
In March, 2020, schools across American were closed down to wait for the covid pandemic to be brought under better control. What will schools do in the face of the pandemic of gun violence? Perhaps our schools should be closed until congress finds the courage to act.
In the meantime, we continue teaching kids to make beautiful and useful things from wood. The project offered this week was to make eight sided pencil cups, which the kids were proud to take home and put to use.
Make, fix and create.... Assist others in living likewise.
At the gym on Saturday, my weight lifting partners were discussing K. Anders Erickson's 10,000 hour rule, and that so many hours are expended by all of us in frivolous fashion.
An example is that by the time a student graduates from high school, well in excess of 10,000 hours will have been spent in dispassionate time, sitting at desks, when in an alternate approach they might have become fully engaged in pursuit of passional interests.
What does it take as far as a general investment of time to arrive at a high point in valuable engagement and contribution in life? There are three steps toward that level of investment. The first is to awaken possible passion and identify interests. For that to happen, kids have to be exposed to various alternatives and the actual folks performing a wide variety of services and tasks.
Froebel’s book Mother Play comes to mind, as he illustrated various roles within community through visual images, song and finger play, celebrating the importance of various roles and folks. Even the lowly charcoal maker was celebrated as shown. Kids need some way to grasp a variety of options for finding passionate potentials for engagement. Schools, by focusing primarily on reading and math and only things that can be easily tested, don’t provide that.
The second thing that has to happen is that kids be enabled to see themselves as having a pathway to the next level by being connected with folks who are on the same journey, developing skills in various areas of passionate engagement.
The third thing is that we need to develop systems that reward and support "passionate engagement,"over nearly all else.
It interests me that in years past it was noted that many of the career opportunities in one generation didn’t exist in previous ones, so a focus on CTE may be a bit more narrow than what I have in mind. How about PE, not meaning physical education (though not to exclude that) but "passionate engagement" as being one of the factors aspired toward in education. By the time kids graduate from high school they will have spent in excess of 10,000 hours sitting at desks. Passionate engagement of the type required to raise one’s level of performance to a high standard, one of service to society, will not happen as a result of sitting at desks. It requires deliberate practice.
What the focus on CTE does is expand the range of options. But to get those 1 ,000 hours to mean more than boredom, and getting good at that, we need to respond to student’s natural passions, and also break down the artificial walls between CTE and college prep.
I have a quote in the book from David Henry Feldman that discusses a new standard from his essay the Child As Craftsman, calling for diversity of interests and passionate engagement in diverse interests as being a more useful goal in public education. So it’s really a bit beyond supporting CTE as an alternative to College Prep.
Of course, the hands play a role at center stage.
Make, fix and create...
https://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2006/09/welcome-to-my-wisdom-of-hands-blog.html
Since then there have been over 2.5 million page views recorded reflecting an unknowable number of first time and returning visitors. My wife thought that by doing the log I would not need to write the Wisdom of Our Hands book, and that the one would take the place of the other. But the blog became my way of sifting and recording and practicing getting better at sharing the ideas inherent in the philosophy. The blog also helped me to be connected with like minds all over the world.
If you are not familiar with the blog, the link above will carry you to the very first post, and you can travel for years onward from there. You'll also find lots of creative work that I hope will inspire, not just to do similar work but also to reconsider the role the hands play in our lives, they being crucial to the development of both character and intellect.
In the blog, you'll find numerous references to the concepts in the Wisdom of Our Hands book and you can read for free and to greater depth. As some know, this is my retirement year from teaching kids at the Clear Spring School so there's a bit of sadness for me watching one era end while another slides in to take its place. There's also a deep and lasting connection with lots of kids (and adults) that will linger.
The great thing is that the wisdom of our hands is as much yours as mine. Carry forth in the making of beautiful and useful things.
Make, fix and create.
"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
It fascinates me as I watch my students learning to saw with a hand saw, that developing a smooth motion with the saw involves developing smooth motion in the underlying infrastructure.
A friend with whom I work out regularly described a coaching tip from a golfing companion, who suggested having watched his swing, that when his arms were pulled back, he would cock his wrists slightly, giving extra force to the swing, but interjecting that additional motion required compensation that made the results more variable and less controlled. And so, yes, the wisdom of the hands is not just about woodworking. It is about how we engage intelligently as bodies in the real world. Can sawing help your swing? Perhaps.
My Kindergarten students (our Rainbow Group) were shocked and dismayed that yesterday was to be their last day in the wood shop. One asked, "Will I ever see you again?" This is my retirement year from teaching at the Clear Spring School, but I plan to stay involved. And I'm attempting to plan one more lesson for my Kindergarten students before the end of the school year. They are too precious to ignore.
The photo shows my K students with Froebel Gifts number 4 which consists of a box holding 8 flat tile blocks. Froebel distinguished between "gifts" and "occupations" as follows. Gifts were manipulative learning objects that were unchanged by their use, whereas "occupations" would be permanently changed or altered in their use. Examples of occupations are paper folding or cutting with scissors. Once cut, paper cannot be uncut. But the blocks can be built with and then put back in the box.
Make, fix and create...
Making beautiful and useful things should be a part of every student's school experience.
Make, fix and create.
Unlike modern homes, Fanshaw's dwelling decomposed into the earth leaving no trace but these photos and the experiences remembered from making it.
Make, fix and create...
Don and I had become friends at that point so I asked him if any high school students in the world had built a replica of Fanshaw's dwelling. Learning that none had, we offered be the first.
As our current group of older students is currently working on a wilderness survival structure, I'll share photos from an earlier time at the Clear Spring School over the next few days.
Fanshaw's dwelling was an unusual one, in that it had two chambers side by side, each with its own entry. Other than that, it was built in the traditional wigwam style of the Osage. It was built with the tools and materials we had at hand.
Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning likewise.
It is written by fellow woodworker Josh Pauling.
Make, fix and create...
With much of the early publicity out on my new book sales seem to be falling off. I'm hoping that it will take on a life of its own, and you can play your part. Order it. Read it, if you've not done so yet. Promote it to others.
Make, fix and create...
Supplies of the book are in short supply as the publisher awaits another printing that's due for distribution in June. In the meantime Amazon has it for sale at above list price.
We're working on an article about kids whittling in school to be published in the Fall edition of Woodcarving Illustrated.
Make, fix and create...