tables and birdmouths

In the wood shop at ESSA I'm beginning a table making project. What I hope will be the end results are shown in the drawing. There will be four that will go in our Commons house that is used for meetings and for guest teachers to gather after hours. They can be arranged individually or assembled as a group for board meetings, and it's all part of the steady growth of our school.

The four columns supporting the table tops are made using birdmouth joints commonly used in boat building to make hollow spars and masts. They are 6 sided and hollow so that steel rods can pass through, and so that lighter material can be used. The feet will rest on pads made from high density plastic that will keep moving them from marring the floor. 

To start, I've been jointing and planing stock. Sometime in February I'll call together a team of volunteers to help. 

I quote from a personal email I received from David Henry Feldman on the state of American education and its problems. 

My own point of view about education is that it has gone lopsided, understandably, because of the number of kids who are unprepared for school and who don’t know how to do school work. So the system puts most of its resources into trying to get all kids at least well enough prepared to do the work up to a minimum standard.

The other, in many respects more important, purpose of education is to help each child find his or her true path. The goal tends to be relegated to after school or out of school activities. The preoccupation with ‘standards’ also has a dampening effect on this second, more sacred, purpose.

Without denigrating the very real challenges of insuring at least a minimum of competence in all of our students, if we don’t also celebrate the uniqueness and distinct potential of each student, and if we don’t guide each one toward a life well lived, we may win the battle but lose the war.

When shop classes were first started in American schools, (and as I've explained before) there were two compelling reasons. One was that we were becoming an industrialized nation and were in need of skilled hands. The second was that it was then realized that making beautiful and useful things bound the child to higher purpose, in the same manner as would engagement in the arts. I can describe (and often do describe) the many non-economic benefits of doing real things and most specifically working with wood.

For example, in 2016 I had my upper elementary school students turning wood on the lathe. Lily had done a beautiful handle for her small hammer. It was smooth. There were no tool markings and the shape was well conceived. She looked at me and stated, "I am very proud of this." But she did not need my guidance in her self-assessment. She knew precisely why it was good work. Moments later I heard her complimenting a younger student. "That's very good Ana." 

And so what I'm describing is not just quality of work. I'm describing qualities fostered in the person doing the work. In less than a minute, Lily had self-assessed, expressed pride, and from the stand-point of her own success had encouraged another in her work. This is what happens when students are encouraged to do real things instead of laboring senselessly on abstraction as they do in most schools.

Make, fix and create.