Assembly

I'm at the stage in making tiny rocking chairs where the parts are sanded and assembly can begin. With a variety of parts to wrangle,  it's best to go slow, making certain each fits in its proper place.

I've been waking up at night, and in addition to hearing barred owls calling to each other, I think about American education.

 After Kindergarten was introduced in the US, many educators gravitated toward the notion that the upper grades of elementary school should be modeled on the same ideas. That's definitely not the case now.

Before Friedrich Froebel became a teacher, he worked with Christian Samuel Weiss, a pioneer in the study of crystallography and its relationship to math. There were a couple important things in Froebel's philosophy and teaching method that came directly from those early years. On was that crystals grow in their  own unique manner from a pattern inherent in the material, just as a child might grow from a unique pattern embedded within. 

The other was the development of Froebel's gifts, a system of blocks and objects that were used to help the child understand the patterns inherent in the universe. I discuss this and more in my book, Making Classic Toys that Teach. 

The thing that makes me think most of Froebel was what he saw as a primary goal of education— to develop in each child a sense of interconnectedness, from that pattern embedded within stretching out to embrace the whole of life. That is a far cry from the general purpose of education today, but one we'd best keep in mind. As I  lay awake at night, thoughts circling in my own mind, there are greater things afoot. Ask the owl.