first hand, second hand, 3rd opinion.

When we know something from our own experience it is known first hand. When we learn something as portrayed from the experience of another, we call it second hand. We know that second hand is subject to bias, misunderstanding, misinterpretation and deliberate distortion. That is why when someone is seeking a medical diagnosis, we look for a second or third opinion to make certain important medical decisions are based on true clarity.

Shortly after I had graduated from college, I attended a poetry recitation in Memphis, TN. A college professor had wanted me to pursue the poetry I had been writing for his class, and the idea of myself as a "poet" had not completely escaped my imaginations of self. The poetry reading did that for me. I listened politely as budding poets and their more experienced advocates told bleeding heart stories that were dredged from the experience of others. No first hand, real stuff in sight. From my own perspective, as one who likes reality, and truth, a poet needs to be engaged in real experiences of his or her own and poetry without those falls flat.

The following is from Charles H. Hamm, Mind and Hand, 1886:

"It is easy to juggle with words, to argue in a circle, to make the worse appear the better reason, and to reach false conclusions which wear a plausible aspect. But it is not so with things. If the cylinder is not tight, the steam engine is a lifeless mass of iron of no value whatever. A flaw in the wheel of the locomotive wrecks the train. Through a defective flue in the chimney the house is set on fire. A lie in the concrete is always hideous; like murder, it will out. Hence it is that the mind is liable to fall into grave errors until it is fortified by the wise counsel of the practical hand."

If you are a regular reader, forgive me for repeating, but the human hand is constantly seeking the truth and thereby finding it.

We live in an age of exploding "journalism" with huge distortion of information and opinion. Where is the first hand? I have been brain storming an idea. What if those who wrote books were to print them (on letterpress) and bind them themselves? The process would be concurrent so that the hand and press might give shape and cogency to the language used. Can you see the potential for the enrichment of the whole of human culture? If you have been reading here for just a short time, you will know that the hands have left their mark on the entirety of human culture even though their labors have been denigrated and displaced from American education. We have thus become a nation of commonplace distortion and manipulations and we are missing the intelligence that arises from the hand's engagement in creative thought.

Let's reunite the hands with learning, so that what our children know will be connected first hand. Make, fix and create.

Homer Lane and sloyd

A reader mentioned that his research indicated that Homer Lane had attended sloyd teacher training in Boston and had taught sloyd before working with penal reform in Detroit and founding the Little Commonwealth School in the UK.  He was described by A.S. Neill as being the primary inspiration for Summerhill. These may present interesting areas for reader investigation.

The idea that engagement in crafts was essential to the full development of character was widespread amongst the proponents of manual arts. Dr. Georg Kerschensteiner, superintendent of schools in Munich, Germany said:

"We might say, that the useful man must be the predecessor of the ideal man. Everyone must be able to do some good and thorough work though it be of the simplest kind, of one sort or another. Not till then will he be able to only to satisfy his fellowmen and be of use to his country, but also to make his own life of value to himself. And in the same measure as our lives gain value for ourselves do we attain power to reach a higher stage of culture."

Quite sadly, there are seem to be few educators currently in the US who seem to understand this.

Diane Ravitch was John Stewart's guest on Friday, March 4. It should be watched by everyone interested in the ongoing debate about American education. Stewart's comments prior to the following interview are very much on the mark and the full episode can be viewed through the link above.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

In the meantime, Make, fix and create.

American Swedish Institute

Now that my seventh book is in the hands of the publisher for completion and printing, I get to play in the wood shop with sculpture. I am continuing a series, with this one being tentatively called, ripped, or twisted and torn. The base is cherry and the sculpture, ash.

The American Swedish Institute is starting A Year of Swedish Slöjd: Handcraft Workshops for Youth and Adults. The first sloyd teacher in the US had taught in Minnesota in a church basement, and the important point about sloyd was not only the useful and beautiful objects made, but the growth of intelligence and character the practice was known to foster in children and adults.

The first sloyd teacher in America was Lars Erikson, editor of a Swedish paper called Slojdaren in Sweden. John M. Ordway of MIT had visited in Sweden to observe the Sloyd method and persuaded Erikson to come to the USA as described by Charles Bennett,

"On December 8, 1884, in the basement of the Augustana Lutheran Church of that city (Minneapolis) Erikson began teaching a class in Swedish sloyd. This is supposed to be the first lesson in Swedish sloyd taught in America."

Time magazine this week wonders whether we are a nation in decline, and I can suggest that the beginning of decline was when the powers that be decided that to not be a nation of makers, and to not be a nation of skilled craftsmen would be OK. Throughout the previous administration, we watched our young men go to unnecessary war in Iraq, while almost all our necessary and unnecessary consumer objects were purchased from China. American politicians, being completely out of touch, decided that was just fine. They did not lift a finger (as they knew not how to do so), but rather continued closing the last shop classes in American education.

Reader Reuben sent a link to an article describing the continued growth of the Chinese manufacturing sector. Good Luck Competing Against Chinese Labor Costs Mfg. Job Growth In China Is Headed Up, Not Down; 109 Million Mfg. Workers In China Dwarfs Number In U.S. But my point isn't that of trying to compete with the Chinese, but to improve the qualities of our own lives. To live without creative capacity is tragic.

There are things that each of us can do to remedy our national plight.

"Handwork, such as can only be learned in its own narrow field, must precede all life, all action, all art. To know one thing well and to practice it, gives more culture than a half-knowledge of a hundred things. -- Goethe"

Make, fix and create. DIY, TIY.

what it means to teach

One of the great advantages of having a blended school, grades 1 through 12 on the same campus, and preschoolers nearby is that the situation presents opportunities for the older children to take on teaching responsibilities. In chemistry, that means that the students prepare demonstrations for the lower classes. As David notes in a comment below, he and others (and perhaps we all) "learn the fullest by teaching others." Just in case any of you wonder how I became a competent woodworker, I can assure you that it wasn't only by hanging out alone in the wood shop.

One of the techniques used at Clear Spring School to increase interest in reading among those lacking in reading confidence is to have them read to younger children. It allows them to return to practicing on easier materials, to gain greater confidence and reading competence, while also setting an example for the children in the lower grades.

Through all of this inter-grade interaction, the Clear Spring School campus becomes much more like a family than a school.

A reader asked about giving support to Clear Spring School. The school gets no tax dollars, has a tuition rate far lower than other NAIS accredited schools, and is therefore very dependent on an active fund raising program. In other words, you can help. Checks can be sent to :

Clear Spring School
PO Box 511
Eureka Springs, AR 72632

If you want to direct your donation to my program in the wood shop, write WOH or wisdom of the hands in the memo space. All donations to Clear Spring School are tax deductible and will support hands-on learning.

DIY, TIY, make, fix and create. By teaching what you learn, you will learn what you learn at its fullest and deepest levels.
Bill Forrest sent in the following link which my readers may enjoy: Planting Seeds.

some things you have to see for yourself

As we all know, there is a difference between knowing something "as it was presented" and knowing something "first hand" in which the experience is our own. That is the cutting edge between real learning and the schooling we settle for in American education. The same thing is true for creating an understanding of what I have come to know as the experience of Clear Spring School. In order to really get it, one needs the experience of being there, and even I, who should be used to it by now, tend to be affected by the overwhelming gentleness of it all.

Every few years we go through the process of re-accreditation with ISACS, the Independent Schools of the Central States, part of NAIS,  the National Association of Independent Schools. The process requires an examination of our school, from the very top, to the very bottom, and it's a lengthy one, requiring three years, start to finish. So it seems that just when we get done and have a breathing spell, we are at it again, making sure that Clear Spring School measures up, is true to its mission, and is the best that we can be. That process begins with an examination of the mission statement, the vision and the philosophy of the school.

As long as I've been associated with Clear Spring School, we have talked about "the Clear Spring Way" which is a catch phrase that covers many of those things which we assume visitors, students and staff, can see or experience for themselves. We know it includes both an academic component and one that involves character. We are discussing it among teachers and students in order to nail down exactly what it means. It will be interesting to hear from many of the students what they think of as "the Clear Spring Way." If you visit the campus, you will see evidence that something is different. You will see the children all playing together, in all grades. You will see special bonds of affection and trust formed between first graders and students in high school. You will see interpersonal problems solved without intervention, and you will see self-motivated educational enthusiasm at all levels.

In the photo at left, as we observed a high school chemistry experiment, you can see curious 2nd grade students looking on. After a time, other lower elementary school children had gathered in to nest in laps of some of the high school girls, a common thing at CSS, where age rarely gets in the way of learning. The high school students often present their chemistry findings to the scholars in the lower grades.

And so I can do my best to describe that for you. But there are some things you would have to see for yourself. When the hands-on connection is made, learning is at its deepest level, greater educational enthusiasm is brought to bear, and what you learn sticks like glue.  DIY and teach it yourself, too. Your own children are likely missing something very important, their creative problem solving capacity. Make, fix and create.

more dinosaurs...

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, first, second and third grade students worked on more dinosaurs, as shown at left. We've saved the most difficult for last and will finish the dinosaur studies next week. I had a bit of a problem in class today with students wanting materials to take home and continue crafting objects on their own of their own design. I am so pleased that they have such enthusiasm, but we had to have a meeting at school to talk about it, as pieces of wood left on campus can be a hazard and distraction. Years ago when we started the Wisdom of the Hands program at Clear Spring School, we did not know that we would launch such enthusiastic making.

I managed to be on the Clear Spring School campus in time to observe a bit of what high school science teacher Pete Golden calls science on a shoestring. He and his chemistry class have been on a mission to melt lithium to form an ingot. It is a challenge because it burns in the presence of water vapor, or oxygen. In the photo below, they used a burning candle to remove oxygen from the air, and used a desiccant pack to remove water vapor from the jar. The magnifying glass is being used to focus the suns rays directly on the lithium film inside the aluminum lined crucible. While the experiment did not lead to successful results, it leads to enthusiastic successful learning. It is all part of what we do at Clear Spring School. Hands-on, hearts engaged is not just for the wood shop. Make, fix and create.

Tom Reed has made a youtube video tribute to Otto Salomon which you can see below:

Prisoners, untie your hands.

As often happens, I spent some time in the night reflecting on our American educational experience. I've been reading an autobiography of the thoughts of Jerome Bruner, educational psychologist, and my interest in Plato's prisoners in a cave allegory comes from his having mentioned it three times in the course of the book.

The allegory presented to Bruner a powerful reflection that seems to have nagged a bit at the edges of his life. He didn't tell much about it in the book as it would be assumed that his academic audience would already be familiar with the story.  After all, it was once common for most academicians to be trained in the classics. It seems that now as we have our eyes glued to the screen, watching images projected for our entertainment, and the control of our perceptions, we have become even more prisoners in the cave than perhaps men were in Plato's time. And then look at school. Prisoners pass through the cave to take their places in the parade of shadows to control others.

If you want to provide for escape, the first thing is to untie the prisoners' hands, that they may release themselves to become further unbound.

Today the 7th and 8th grade students finished their travel journals and the 9th grade students did woodturning. After school I finished my chair for the ESSA ReArt Auction as shown in the photo above.

Make, fix and create.

Plato's men in a cave

Plato used an allegory to describe our human state, and to describe how we learn, and how we are manipulated to learn,  (or not learn) that scholars have called, "Plato's prisoners in a cave." He believed that the true purpose of education should be that of liberation of society from its delusions, that each, including the lowest among us, might live in the light rather than controlled darkness.

I am curious what other blog readers think this story tells us about education. It has been interpreted differently by different scholars depending on the points they wish to make. A tradesman might see another story.

One of the things I find interesting in Plato's allegory is that it illustrates how things can be seen differently from differing points of view, and one of the problems in American education is that we have divided education along class lines, of either the trades or academic advancement, whereas most early educators believed that all, even those of the highest academic advancement should learn trades fro the skill and character they impart. In light of this read Socrates dialog with Glaucon as follows:

[Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
[Glaucon] What do you mean?
[Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.
[Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?
[Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.

Just open your eyes and look at the mess we have made of economy and culture by neglecting to reinforce each child's responsible, creative and productive inclinations.

You could look at Plato's allegory as being relevant to modern American society and politics. What do you think? Are there things we might learn from it? In the US, we have a huge number of people who are imprisoned by ignorance resulting from disinterest fostered by their schooling. Marching across the cave behind the wall, are those who attempt to control their thoughts.

Make, fix and create.

what is sloyd?

UK woodworker and blogger Robin Wood has an article on his blog, raising the question, "What is sloyd?" and he does an excellent job of answering his own question. Check it out. Read it. It is a great article. If you are looking for more reading material on sloyd, my articles written for Woodwork Magazine can be found Here.

fingerprints

What are fingerprints for? No, they are not just to tell one crook from another. The intricate whorls on each fingertip perform a very specific function according to this report from Discover Magazine. Fingerprints Are Tuned to Amplify Vibrations and Send Info to the Brain.

When a finger sweeps over a finely textured surface, such as a cotton sleeve or a wooden coffee table, the interaction sends a large range of vibrations into the skin. Specialized sensors called Pacinian fibers, the tips of nerve fibers, detect only a select few of the vibrations — those right around 250 hertz — before sending the signal to the brain, where the touch sensation is processed.

The intricate whorls on the tips of your fingers, not only engage with other textures as fingers slide over various textures, they amplify and filter the sensations to greatest efficiency and effect.

What other part of the human anatomy is arranged in similar ridges and whorls? Can you think of one? Can I be blunt? How about the human brain? Another one is hair. Some researchers have suggested that the direction of rotation of hair whorls on the human head is significant with regard to brain development. Who knows? The human body/mind is a complex mechanism that we still do not fully understand. And yet, we've constructed educational institutions that ignore much of what we do know.

For instance, that, "The hands are the cutting edge of the mind."-Jacob Bronowski
Make, fix, and create.

college or career? Why not both.

The report from Harvard challenging the notion that all kids should go to college is under assault by advocates for the disadvantaged according to this article in Education Week. College for All Confronted.

The authors contend that their vision would expand opportunity for all students, especially those who face the dimmest prospects now because their education stops at high school. Rather than derailing some students from higher learning, their system would actually open more of those pathways, they say, by offering sound college preparation and rigorous career-focused, real-world learning, and by defining clear routes from secondary school into certificate or college programs.

"Every high school graduate should find viable ways of pursuing both a career and a meaningful postsecondary degree or credential,” the report says. “For too many of our youth, we have treated preparing for college versus preparing for a career as mutually exclusive options.”

The opponents to the report are concerned with further disadvantage being placed on the poor and disadvantaged:

"They’re arguing for different standards and separate tracks,” said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that focuses on policies to improve education for low-income students. “Every single time we create multiple tracks, we always send disproportionate numbers of poor kids and kids of color down the lesser one. Until we can find a way not to do that, then people like me will object.”

Mr. Schwartz of Harvard acknowledged that the report wades into “tricky terrain.” But he said that tracking is “when schools make decisions about what kids are capable of and what their futures are. It’s pervasive in our schools, and it’s a huge problem.

“But I wouldn’t confuse that form of tracking,” he said, “with trying to create a system in which by the time kids hit 16, they and their families have some real choices to make.”

Early manual training and Educational Sloyd proposed that craftsmanship practiced by all in schools would level the playing field and create a sense of the dignity of all labor, but their remedy was ignored, bringing us to our current state of educational disarray. David Henry Feldman had presented a new metaphor for education, "the child as craftsman" from which we can recognize the qualities of skill and character inherent in craftsmanship, that should be made available to all students of every social class, and race, regardless of academic potential, and that were offered to all students through Educational Sloyd.

If were were smart, we would ask every child to choose a trade as a cognitive supplement to academic advancement. Every cognitive leap involves metaphor and most essential successful creative metaphors are conceptualized from engagement in physical reality.

Don't expect scholars at Harvard or elsewhere to fully understand what you can only learn from your own hands. The Harvard report, Pathways to Prosperity can be downloaded here.

In the meantime, I'm keeping my hands smart by making a chair for a "chairity" event in support of the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. It is a quickie, made from old salvaged chair parts and a slab of spalted maple. The event is called "reArt" and with a few exceptions, the works are ones that have been passed along from collectors to be auctioned by the school to other collectors to raise money for the school. Five or six local artists have been selected to donate original work for the live auction. This chair fits the theme by reusing old parts. Some of the step by step photos are at left and more can be found in earlier posts. The chair back has been painted with green milk paint.


The "Watson" competitor on Jeopardy brings to mind an earlier post on the subject of distributed intelligence, What if we're not as smart as we think we are? What if intelligence has always been offloaded to the tools we use, and not necessarily invested only in what goes on inside our heads? If that is the case, (which it is) then we would be wanting to train our children in the use of all kinds of tools, thus enhancing their cognitive capacities.

make, fix and create.

The way to the brain

"The way to the brain, goes through the hand" was an expression common among Englishmen at Nääs one hundred and ten years ago according to Hans Thorbjörnsson, historian of the famous school for Sloyd teschers near Gothenburg, Sweden. I asked Hans to research the origins of the quote and he found that it was widely used and could not be attributed to a single man. I began trying to find that same expression on the internet to discover its actual origins, and found an almost identical expression stated as a principle of Montesorri schools. It is quoted in the prospectus of a new charter school being proposed in the Bronx, NYC.

“The way to the brain is through the hands.” This is borne out by the research of Piaget, which indicates that a child must interact with real objects, have time to investigate and test his ideas, and discuss his ideas with others in order to build satisfactory mental constructs. The Montessori approach uses a wide range of specially designed concrete materials that represent abstract concepts, particularly in math and language arts. This physical modeling fosters the internalization of accurate mental representations of these operations.

Maria Montessori founded her first school in 1907 and the American Montessori society was founded in 1960. You will note that use of that expression in relation to Sloyd came years before Maria Montessori's first school, and long before she became famous as an educator. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Can it be that anyone looking at oneself, without the delusions imposed by academic predispositions might observe and state the nearly exact same thing? Or perhaps, Maria Montessori had drawn upon a wide range of sources in formulating her theories and methods, as we each do today.

Here are two more direct quotes from Maria Montessori telling us that she had a clear grasp. “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence,” and “The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.” You can find these and a lot more here.

And so the question arises, can you examine your own learning experience and note the value of your hands in investigating and understanding material and cultural reality? I hope so. And then I also hope you will feel your way clear to do something about it. DIY, TIY

Make, fix and create.

In the meantime, the Providence, R.I. school board voted to send termination notices to every teacher in its many schools. No, it is not a joke. With the Republican conservatives in power and their "starve the beast" notions from the Reagan era that "no tax is a good tax," even if it supports education and fire protection, raising taxes to fix budgetary problems is not considered as a reasonable option. The same ideological infection is sweeping our nation, from Wisconsin south. Is it fair to say that we have become a nation of idiots? Heartless ones at that.

mind food...

This morning I have three small planes on my desk which must be packed up and returned to Fine Woodworking for photographs. I send them back with a sense of reluctance. I would keep them on my desk as food for thought if I could. They are beautifully crafted, a delight to hold, and they perform well the tasks for which they were designed. One must know that the designers and makers of these planes have taken great satisfaction in them.

I have little doubt that more of these will be bought than will be put to use. That seems to be the way with tools in the US. People collect them, while having too little opportunity to put them to use. But there could be worse things. I think that a person can get the same satisfaction and sense of physical power and control from handling a well crafted and finely tuned plane as from a finely made gun, but with some difference. The power of it is creative rather than destructive. And you can keep it on your desk instead of locked up. Meth addicts seldom break into homes to steal planes, and they won't be used by a family member to commit suicide.

This morning I'll have my first, second and third grade students back in the wood shop to work on dinosaurs. Some finished their long necks last week and want to make more. Wish me luck. They are a great bit of fun, but the process can be demanding. In the meantime, my daughter Lucy's EWB group project has been selected for broadcast on the PBS program Planet Forward. The program will be broadcast on April 8.

Some longnecks from this morning's class are shown in the photo above. Sherry Turkle, tomorrow's guest on Science Friday will discuss whether we have become too fond of technology at the cost of too little care for each other. It should be an interesting program as this link attests.
 

The photos below are testing the Veritas Detail Rabbet plane.

Make, fix and create

woodworking scholars

If you read yesterday's post quoting Otto Salomon, you may have noticed that he referred to students in sloyd as "scholars." As a part of general education, woodworking Sloyd was understood to be a significant contributory element to the growth and development of each and every child, and you can see how referring to students as "scholars," a term normally associated with academic learning would play a role in our understanding of wood shop. It would also delineate our expectations for what was to arise from it. This lesson was learned and taken to heart by some, and ignored by others who saw woodworking as being only of economic value, rather than a tool in the overall development of each child. This morning, as we watch continued democratic revolution in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and other African and Middle Eastern Nations, we need to also consider democracy in our own country. I will refer my readers to an earlier post concerning democracy and wood shop, containing comments by Charles B. Gilbert at the Eastern Manual Training Association meeting of 1905. A Passioned Plea. Mr. Charles B. Gilbert was one of those who had taken the lessons of Sloyd to heart. He was the Superintendent of Schools for Rochester, NY, and knew first hand, the value of woodworking education to all students.

"Democracy is not a form of government; it is a state of mind. It consists of a community of democratic people. The business of the schools is to train democratic people; and every teacher in every line of work should endeavor to bring up the boys and the girls to the feeling that they must be democratic--that they stand equal in opportunity and in obligation with all other boys and girls who are growing up."

In other words, when you use the schools to deliberately divide the students into two classes, "scholars" and trades, one destined to college and the other not, you have done irreparable harm, not only to the students but to society and the democratic principles we claim to hold dear.

If you want to do something about the Wisdom of the Hands, and restore our own society to democratic sensibility, please contact your own superintendent of schools and tell him (or her) she's been missing something very important. Perhaps Charles B. Gilbert could explain a few things to him/her.

The photos above show planes I reviewed today for Fine Woodworking and progress on a rustic chair made with old chair parts. The rustic chair will be given to a "chairity" auction to benefit the Eureka Springs School of the Arts.

Make, fix and create.

creating a sense of the dignity of all labor

The following is from Otto Salomon's Theory of Educational Sloyd:

"From a social point of view... it is of vital importance that the ordinary teacher of the school be employed to teach this subject (sloyd), for he is looked upon with great respect by his scholars--in many instances with profound respect--and whatever he puts his hand to, the scholars will not be ashamed to do, but rather take a pride in doing."

Salomon had noted that artisan teachers of sloyd were looked upon with indifference and contempt by their academic peers within schools. And so, in order to convey a sense of the dignity and worth of labor, teachers of all subjects should be trained in hand and eye as well as for head work alone.

"Persons not manually trained, generally regard the products of manual labor at less than their real value. They think it much more difficult to solve a mathematical problem than to make a table. It is not an easy thing to make a parcel-pin or a pen-holder with accuracy, and when students have done these things they will be the better able to estimate comparatively the difficulty of making a table or chair; and what perhaps is of still greater importance, they will become qualified to decide between what is good and what is bad work, and thus avoid the misfortunes which befall the ignorant and credulous through the impositions of knaves."

Salomon goes on as follows:

"Words alone will not inspire this respect; hence we conclude that the best way to instill into children a true and proper respect for rough, honest, bodily labor is:
1st. By introducing such work into schools of all grades, in order that all classes of the community may engage in it.
2nd. By the teachers taking both pleasure and pride in doing it themselves, as well as delight in teaching it intelligently to others. For what the teachers appreciate, the children usually appreciate."

In light of all this, you can see what a big mess has been made of American education and American culture and economy. Teachers are no longer respected and the American worker is in the pits. The poor and middle class have been abandoned, while Wall Street Bankers, having been bailed out by the taxpayer are making record bonuses again. Dignity and respect for labor would be considered socialist principles by those who only care for money, but they are the ones who have made the mess of everything, including American education.

Today in the CSS wood shop, the 7th and 8th grade students finished making their travel journals and the 9th grade students did woodturning. After school,

I've been taking beauty shots like that shown at left.

dignity and respect in the classroom

Noted educator Deborah Meier wrote a piece recently in the blog she shares with Diane Ravitch, Bridging Differences, about dignity and respect in the classroom. She wrote:

"a study done across national borders showed that people, when offered liberty, freedom, and dignity as choices, picked dignity as the thing they wanted most. I thought that was interesting. Being treated with dignity is, I suspect, part of our natural aspiration as humans. And while it can be crushed, it can also be restored. My experience in schools that placed faculty, family, and student dignity above all else was reassuring. Students came to us without expecting that this was ever likely to be found in schools; families who had similar experiences at being disregarded, patronized, talked down to, and shut out of their children's school lives responded when schools changed, too. Not immediately, but over time.

The same is true for the adults who work in a school—from custodians to secretaries to paraprofessionals and teachers. And principals.

I came into teaching in the early 1960s as a substitute teacher in South Side Chicago's K-8 schools. Then I became a kindergarten teacher—a position I held for many years. From the very moment I began the journey I was struck by the ways in which I was disrespected, as though that was the norm."

One of the points of educational Sloyd that was shared by many advocates of manual training was that developing a sense of the dignity and respect for all labor was crucial to the development of democracy. We seem to have abandoned that. Children of non-academic intelligences find little acknowledgment of their value within schools. An academic hierarchy puts American education in desperate condition.

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, the 4th, 5th and 6th grade students worked on their looms and some finished their hand made travel journals. The 10th, 11th and 12th grade students turned wood on the lathe and helped sand and finish the wood samples for the school collection. Make, fix and create.

what you know vs. who you are...

The media has made a big deal this week about the TV program Jeopardy and the super computer named "Watson" beating two very smart human contestants. Is it any surprise that a computer could be programmed with huge amounts of trivia, far in excess of normal human capacity? But give that computer a pipe wrench and see if it takes pride and pleasure in successfully fixing your pipes.

In schools we have become so focused on turning our children into knowledge feedback mechanisms through standardized testing that we have forgotten that they will need to live in the real world and take part in the fixing and making of things. It is not what you know that makes you who you are, but what you can do, and what you have done.

Another important component of education is that of creativity. It has been said that every human creative advancement has come through the use of metaphor: "If this works as so, then that might work as so, also." Even when things don't work the same as projected from experience, the use of metaphor establishes the direction of exploration and investigation through which creative developments are achieved.

You remember the story of John Henry? There is a song about his competition with the mechanized steam drill. Sadly, I doubt that there will be any songs about Watson's competitors. We already know that Google is smarter than we are and watching two competitors attempting to beat Watson to the buzzer is not as heroic an exercise as John Henry swinging his heavy spike hammer all day to the point of collapse in utter exhaustion. But will computers be trained to take pride and pleasure in their craftsmanship and creative capacity?

Yesterday, I used my Kubota to pull logs from the woods that had fallen and are a good source of free firewood. So now I have a ready supply of wood for chain sawing and splitting for next year's warmth. There are children whose parents think that every thing in their lives needs to be bought and paid for and delivered without physical effort rather than accomplished through more direct means. What a disservice we have done!

And so, with that, I've said enough for one day. We know that the use of the hands makes us smarter, more deeply connected to human culture and more fully alive in confidence and creativity. So regardless of how smart our computers have become, and regardless of what happens or is not happening in schools,
Make, fix, and create...

You may have been watching the education crisis taking place in the Wisconsin State House, as teachers and supporters of education rally against the Republican governor' plan to cut teacher salaries, and strip them of collective bargaining rights. An editorial by noted educator Diane Ravitch tells the story. Why America's teachers are enraged:

There has recently been a national furor about school reform. One must wonder how it is possible to talk of improving schools while cutting funding, demoralizing teachers, cutting scholarships to college, and increasing class sizes.

Much of the conservative Republican strategy can be understood through their concept, "starve the beast." They believe that government should do as little as possible, and their best means to see that strategy come to fruition is for government to be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy rather than raising taxes and fixing the deficit. We witnessed the "starve the beast" strategy as the last administration pushed us into two wars which were unfunded by tax revenues, leading us into an economic crisis which the Republicans intend to use to force their dreams of limited and powerless and ineffective government to come true. And sadly, they are willing to use our children and schools and poor and middle class as pawns in their ideological Armageddon.

it goes way back

A friend alerted me to a school at had profound influence on American crafts in that it was deeply entwined in the life of Wharton Esherick, proclaimed by some as "the Dean of American Craftsmen" for his contributions to the American craft movement. The Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education in Fairhope, Alabama was founded in 1907 as a progressive school in which no child would ever fail. No testing and no homework. My readers who are interested in progressive education should visit their site and review their interesting history. Called the Organic School for most of its life,

It was called "organic" in that the central aim of the school was to "minister to the health of the body, develop the finest mental grasp, and preserve the sincerity and unself-consciousness of the emotional life." That is, the child was seen always as a "unit organism" in order for schooling to promote the growth of the whole child. In Johnson's view, education and growth were identical. The curriculum organization and the life of the Organic School were carefully informal. All grades, marks, promotions, and reports were thought to create only tensions of self-consciousness and were therefore omitted entirely. Students were judged only in terms of their individual abilities and hence extrinsic rewards were eliminated in favor of the intrinsic satisfactions of learning and growth. The measures of success of students, and indeed of the entire school, were to be based on creativity, spontaneity, interest, and sincerity in their lives.

That is a far cry from where we have arrived in American education in which children are constantly measured and sorted, but it is what you would witness first hand at Clear Spring School.

So, how can we fix things? First is to realize that learning and growth are the same, completely natural to each child. Give children tools and materials with which to create, learn and grow. Ease up, and trust the child's natural inclinations to lead him or her onward in learning and growth. Adults in education must be free to set examples of creativity and curiosity. Children are naturally curious about all kinds of things and their curiosity is often dulled and confidence diminished by the process of American education.

On another note, my daughter Lucy's Engineers Without Borders team at Columbia University is in second place behind the University of Arkansas in the voting at Planet Forward.  Her project is called "Implementing Sustainable Sanitation and Water Management  in Ghana." The UofA has a big lead, but you can still register and vote.

Many people are too lacking in curiosity and confidence for DIY plumbing. It is Saturday, and plumbers are expensive even when it is not. So when one of our washer faucets began leaking this morning, I went to the hardware store and bought what I needed to fix it myself. Do you know how much fun  it is to save that much money? Can you get the same sort of pride and satisfaction from watching someone else work (and paying for it) as you can by doing it yourself? No way.

Make, Fix and Create.

the hands, science and the arts.

 Man is the wisest of all animals because he has hands. --Anaxagoras 500-428 BC

"It is the hand that enables the mind to realize in a thousand ways its highest imaginings, its profoundest reasonings, and its most practical inventions." --James MacAlister, Superintendent of Schools of the City of Philadelphia, 1882.

"The hands are the cutting edge of the mind."--Jacob Bronowski 1908-1974

There's not much new here. I keep saying the same simple things over and over again. The hands are incredibly complex in what they do, but I am compelled to share my simple observation that they are the neglected center of human physical and cultural reality again and again until schools awaken from their love of sleep and their obsession with standardized testing.

We know we each learn best, most efficiently and most thoroughly to greatest long-term effect when we learn hands-on. I really don't have to make this stuff up since it is something you can take time to observe for yourself. In dramatic contrast to what we know about ourselves, we've created a system of education in which children are required to sit for extended periods with hands stilled.  American schools are the most expensive in the world and are very, very far from the best. So, how do we get a handle on education reform? How do we get a grip on necessary change? Are we really so unobservant and intellectually impaired as to continue to neglect the hands?

When we started the Wisdom of the Hands program at Clear Spring School our objective was to restore an understanding of the value of woodworking in schools as an integrated program leveraging the hands into position central to every aspect of learning.

And so it is with the arts. The arts are the clearest means to bring the hands into learning. With the hands come the heart. An essential bargain. But the challenge is not just to put the arts back in school as isolated fingers of a useless hand but to use the arts to provide a sense of relationship with everything else a child needs to learn in school. The arts bring the hands into essential play in learning. This is not a new concept that I'm just making up on my own. If you want to know more, read Comenius (1592-1670). He was the founding father of modern pedagogy, but seems to be ignored by most in modern education.

 I have been asked to help members of furniture society brainstorm a return of furniture making to American schools. And so I hope to help. What we need in American education is a friendly takeover by the arts, all the arts, not just woodworking and furniture design. We need potters, jewelers, theatrical performers and musicians, and all whose skills and interests have been pushed aside and marginalized in American education. We were the daydreamers in the classroom looking out windows for some small glimpse of real reality. What we can say is that where the hands are engaged, the heart follows, whether into the arts, engineering, medicine or science. And so my simple proposition is to arrange  for and ask for "the strategic implementation of our children's hands in learning."  Make, fix, create, demonstrate. DIY, TIY

Today I'll spend part of the day cleaning and putting my wood shops in order, and part of the day writing the last (but first) chapter of my new book, Making Small Cabinets.

how to apply fundamental pedagogy

It is hard to sell that with which people have little or no understanding or personal relationship. And so it is with the arts. How can people get on board extensive school reform involving the arts if they have no clear grasp of how the arts perform to energize learning? One of the challenges these days is to get adults who have never used their hands in creative ways other than on the keyboard to understand the value and transformative effects of the arts. The "arts" are so abstract in people's minds. So how to make the arts "concrete"? We literally have to take them by the hand and lead them into doing it, just as we would take the hand of a small child to cross the street.

This week, my wife and I attended a Valentine's one act dinner theater put on by the students in the Eureka Springs High School drama department. Students served dinner and then performed, to a packed house. It was a comedy about relationships and dating and very funny. The acting was REALLY good. Timing between lines was meticulously rehearsed. And when parents turn out in force to support their children's performances, administrators get a glimpse of what parents and enthusiastic kids know to be really important in school. It is called learning first hand.

Last night we had a board meeting for the Eureka Springs School of the Arts and were working to develop a strategy for getting corporate interest and involvement in the arts. Once again, basic pedagogy applies.

Move from the concrete to the abstract.

The first necessity is to bring human resource directors and corporate CEO's onto the campus to witness first hand the kinds of personal transformation that takes place when their own hands are creatively engaged in crafting, and making. Make, fix, create. Share what you learn and thus transform the universe, one man, one woman, one student, one child at a time.

Today I am taking a break from the wood shop and taking beauty shots of cabinets for the book.