Of the motor functions you will notice that as working movements become skilled patterns, they no longer require conscious attention to motor activities. Instead, they become conveyances through which other object qualities can be known as those objects are transformed. An example from woodworking involves the holding of a chisel. For a trained carpenter, the hand itself disappears from consciousness, but for a beginner, the proper grip and the angle of the wrist take tremendous concentration.
As skilled movement is acquired the hand requires less consciousness and the mind senses only the engagement of the cutting edge at the end of the tool in the surface of the material being shaped. In essence, the hands move out of the way of direct consciousness to allow direct access of the mind to the surface qualities of objects. It is part of the miracle of the hands that they are empowered to act in seamless unconscious harmony with thought, so perhaps it is only natural that the importance of their contributions to our learning would go unnoticed in modern education.
There are a number of areas of research that tell us that the hands must not be overlooked in education. As expert musicians will testify, the playing of a musical instrument critically involves manual dexterity and sensitivity (see Wilson, 1986), and research suggests that playing of instrumental music in school has a significant effect on the development of math proficiency (Catterall et al. [2002, Reference] This research was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. It is truly astounding how rarely the United States Government is able to take its own advice. It is a clear case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
