no school today

You'll not have seen so many pictures of kids working with wood on the blog lately. We have missed so many days of school and wood shop due to snow. Today is one more of those days, and while we do not have the deep snow that has affected the Washington, DC and Philadelphia areas, even a small amount is enough to stop school when you have hills as steep as ours in northwest Arkansas. We had about an inch during the night and expect 5-7 inches more during the day.

I have been using my time to make progress on a variety of fronts. One is that I am working on chapter 3 of the Wisdom of the Hands book which is a much more coherent and organized view of the educational philosophy that you read each day in the blog. This is kind of a daunting task, as you know the hands touch every aspect of human life and culture. Prior to the machine age, everything we touched was either a natural form or bore the creative imprints of the human hands. To distill the impact of our hands down to 9 chapters is a daunting task.

I've also been working on woodworking articles, and a bit of stuff in the shop... my relentless friendly competition with the Chinese in which I make small wooden boxes, and custom furniture.
In addition, I am working on my first piece of sculpture in over 30 years. Presently called Dancing Noguchi, It is a simple slab of cherry standing as a human form. I am impressed when I see the price tag on sculpture as compared with the prices people are willing to pay for furniture, and have come to believe that I might as well join in the fun. If I sell a few pieces for big bucks, it might alleviate financial concerns in other areas.

Today I voted early to increase our school millage to finance construction of a new high school.

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy." - John Dewey

The images above show two works by Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, and my own work in cherry is shown after oiling. Next, the walnut base will be sanded and oiled, the mounting pipe will be painted black and I will have my first finished piece of sculpture in 30+ years.

how can we best measure school success?

Normally, in the US, school success is measured through performance on standardized tests devised by experts, and understood by few and misunderstood by many. These tests are thus an extremely poor tool for evaluation. Some universities like Wake Forest no longer require standardized tests for college entrance and prefer to look at other evidence of achievement, maturity and preparation. On the K-12 front, things aren't looking quite so sane. The rise of standardized testing as the primary tool for evaluation of teacher and student performance and distribution of federal funding has led to "teaching to the test," and neglect of many important developmental benchmarks that can't be as easily measured. There are lots of credible academic authorities that concur with my point. Type testing in the search block and you will find earlier discussions.

But, how can we best measure success? Do we give up on testing as the primary means and not replace it with something more meaningful?

Rubric is a term originally meaning red earth or ochre, used as a color in sacred texts to highlight important points.

In education,

"A rubric is a scoring tool for subjective assessments. It is a set of criteria and standards linked to learning objectives that is used to assess a student's performance on papers, projects, essays, and other assignments. Rubrics allow for standardized evaluation according to specified criteria, making grading simpler and more transparent.

The rubric is an attempt to delineate consistent assessment criteria. It allows teachers and students alike to assess criteria which are complex and subjective and also provide ground for self-evaluation, reflection and peer review. It is aimed at accurate and fair assessment, fostering understanding and indicating the way to proceed with subsequent learning/teaching. This integration of performance and feedback is called "ongoing assessment."

It is of great value for students to know precisely how they are to be measured, and what performance goals are important for them to set for themselves. Progressive educators are making great use of rubrics in organizing and motivating student activities.

What we really need in schools to replace our focus on standardized testing would be a rubric or set of rubrics through which parents and students as well as teachers and administrators can monitor and measure school performance and that would encourage teacher and student creativity as well as proficiency in reading and math. This would be a system of measurement growing from the foundations of K-12 education rather than being imposed from the outside by behavioral science.

Of course, there will always be those so little interested in the personal effects of education that they will prefer to monitor its progress or lack of progress from a spread sheet. But a real revolution in education will come when we reassert common sense, and it would be best if it grew from the ranks of educators and parents rather than from the halls of congress.

Imagine a rubric for schools that would ask that students be creative in their search for solutions. If you were to design a rubric, what would its components be? What elements of a child's education would be most important and given greatest emphasis? All things, even creativity, honesty, courage, and joy can be measured or observed and graded through use of a rubric. How do you measure joy in learning? One marker is when students become so engrossed in learning that they have to be told to go home. That happens in wood shop and at Clear Spring School.

Actually, a rubric is an easy thing for a craftsman to understand. As one works on the creation of an object, the maker evaluates progress on a variety of fronts. The object itself is a rubric of sorts. The craftsman looks at the selection of materials, the design, the fit of parts, the surface qualities of the materials, the application and fit of the finish, and the usefulness of the finished form, in assigning his or her "grade" to the work, and the fine craftsman learns to settle for nothing less than the best on all fronts. In a sense, the use of a rubric is the application of age old principles, from before science. The image above shows rubric, the lettering in red, reflecting the original definition of the term. The academic meaning of the term can be found here.

what's right with this picture?

The illustration is from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, and shows the inside of the Kindergarten Cottage, set up by the Froebel Society of Boston. At this exhibit, thousands became enthralled with the hands-on learning method developed by Friedrich Froebel and promoted by dedicated enthusiasts from around the world. The numbers of kindergartens in American Schools increased exponentially following the Exposition.

My mother became a kindergarten teacher in Ft. Dodge, Iowa in 1943. For the sake of cmparison, count the number of students in the illustration above, and count the teaching staff. In my mother's first year she had 45 students in a class which she was expected to handle on her own. The other teachers were watching to see that she did so, but facing similar situations of their own did not offer help.

A practiced story teller, my mother has some favorites to tell about her experience. One was the rope at the top of the stairs with a sign that said "pull," that had to be passed each time she ushered her 45 children upstairs to the boys and girls restrooms. A great invitation to beginning readers, but one that brought the fire brigade.

Another story involves "little Dougie Denker." He slipped out the window, making his escape from schooling. Called on the phone, his mother said, "Don't worry about Dougie, he knows his way home." An hour later, the school was informed by the police that Dougie was at the corner on Main Street directing traffic.

It is easy to take a wonderful idea and cheapen it by increasing the numbers and it is easier for students and teachers to find successful, rewarding experiences in the classroom when there is a reasonable ratio between them.

why is this man smiling?

He's doing his part for America by taking only 9 million in compensation as CEO of Goldman Sachs instead of the 68 million in compensation he secured two years ago as his company led our nation into the worst recession since that following the stock market collapse of 1929. His company would have failed completely but for its bets with AIG that the housing market would plummet, bets which forced the US to rescue AIG, and thus transfer billions almost directly from the US Treasury and the pockets of our children to the coffers of Goldman Sachs. So Lloyd Blankfein is feeling pretty good, leading the company to record profits, and making such a huge sacrifice at the same time. Some suggested that by taking such small compensation he was "taking a bullet" for other company employees. Such heroics during a near catastrophic recession should make us all feel better, right?

Educational Sloyd was intended to foster a sense of the dignity of all labor, a sense of the worth of each of those who make a contribution to the well-being of others and contribute to society... even those who work with skilled hands instead of through the manipulations of information and the economy. It is too bad that educational sloyd fell out of favor in the early part of the last century. Without hands-on learning, we have an economy dominated by a whole generation of leaders in nearly every industry who are completely out of touch. Banking and insurance are the worst. Matti Bergström, a professor and neurophysiologist from Finland, said the following which I repeat for your reading pleasure:

The density of nerve endings in our fingertips is enormous. Their discrimination is almost as good as that of our eyes. If we don't use our fingers, if in childhood and youth we become "finger-blind " this rich network of nerves is impoverished-which represents a huge loss to the brain and thwarts the individual's all-around development. Such damage may be likened to blindness itself. Perhaps worse, while a blind person may simply not be able to find this or that object, the finger-blind cannot understand its inner meaning and value.

If we neglect to develop and train our children's fingers and the creative form building capacity of their hand muscles, then we neglect to develop their understanding of the unity of things; we thwart their aesthetic and creative powers.

Those who shaped our age-old traditions always understood this. But today, Western civilization, an information-obsessed society that over values science and undervalues true worth, has forgotten it all. We are "values-damaged."

The philosophy of our upbringing is science-centered, and our schools are programmed toward that end.... These schools have no time for the creative potential of the nimble fingers and hand, and that arrests the all-round development of our children and of the whole community.

The way that Goldman Sachs pushed AIG off the cliff, necessitating a huge rescue of AIG by the American Taxpayer is described today in the New York Times. There are millions of people in the US who would love to be working and earning a paycheck, while the CEOs just keep on smiling as though nothing happened. At some point in the past we decided that our national interests were better represented by trading on Wall Street than by the productivity of the American worker. When you extract our most highly educated students from any comprehension of the contributions of skilled labor, you virtually cut our economy off at the knees. At one point in American history, a man or woman of means would imagine his or her greatest potential being met by putting others to work in meaningful occupations. But extract individuals from the lessons of skilled creativity, and the full extent of their imagination is limited to finding new means to employ their dollars in schemes of dollar growth. These best and brightest invented such things as "credit default swaps," derivatives and trading schemes that led to near financial collapse.

On the subject of manufacturing in the US, check out Charles Hugh Smith on the future of manufacturing. Are we moving to a new model in which individual craftsmen, or very small groups of craftsmen meet demands for limited manufacturing of goods marketed through the world wide web? Check out my work on etsy.com

Rembrandt and Comenius

There is very little difference between a man and a boy, in that we like to be doing things.

This morning, I am retaking photos for the article on mixing and matching woods. My first round was to get the art director's input and approval and now with notes on each shot, I can retake them at better angles, and with better backgrounds. Editors and art directors are important people in the scheme of things and I have been grateful to have learned something from each I have worked with.

When you like what you do in the first place, redoing is no particular chore. I am also beginning to inlay stones in the top of the walnut and maple table. I get to balance my time, doing things that I like in serial progression, so that no one thing becomes oppressive.

I found this interesting portrait of John Amos Comenius by Rembrandt on the web, and offer this quote again as it is in keeping with my day as planned.

"Boys ever delight in being occupied in something for the youthful blood does not allow them to be at rest. Now as this is very useful, it ought not to be restrained, but provision made that they may always have something to do. Let them be like ants, continually occupied in doing something, carrying, drawing, construction and transporting, provided always that whatever they do be done prudently. They ought to be assisted by showing them the forms of all things, even of playthings; for they cannot yet be occupied in real work, and we should play with them."

A couple of my boxes illustrating mixing and matching woods can be found below.

Sir Ken Robinson 2006

mixing and matching woods

Today, I've been taking photos for an article on mixing and matching woods... a simple subject with complex variables, spanning the full dimensions of 3-d design. Line and color are two primary considerations. Get the hang of mixing and matching woods and you will have turned an important corner in making your work very interesting to others. In the photo below, you can see that the use of grain either hides or accentuates the edges of various parts. In woodworking, the term line applies to the edges of the piece, the edges of the individual parts that compose the piece, and to the lines of grain within each part.

Carved pens

The first, second and third grade students will be writing in cursive this week, so it was time to make pens. Most of the 2nd and 3rd grade students have done this in the past, but their work improves each year. And they don't mind doing them again. The results are shown below.

playing to learn

The Op Ed piece Playing to Learn by Susan Engel from the New York Times will be an interesting read for anyone interested in the Wisdom of the Hands. From that piece,

"During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions."

sliding dovetail jig

I use a simple log cabin jig to rout the sliding dovetail grooves on the underside of the table top. This requires very precise measuring for the exact placement of the jig before routing. I first rout with a straight cut bit and then follow with the dovetailed bit to form the necessary shape. The straight cut bit improves accuracy by removing the bulk of the stock before the dovetail is formed, allowing the bit to work more smoothly with a lighter load. The photos below show the fit of the table stretchers into the routed grooves on the underside of the table top. Because there are three of these stretchers, the grooves must be accurately placed. The two halves of the top will close to 1/4" from each other, allowing a small gap for expansion and contraction to occur. As you can see the inside edges have been textured for additional interest.

modeling upside down

If you want to form a parabola, you can chart the points using a mathematical formula, or you can take a piece of string and hang it from two points. The result will be the same, though one technique will be easier and more direct and useful than the other. The photos at left and below were sent to me by Frank Wilson, author of The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture from his trip to Barcelona. Gaudi's Sagreda Familia was modeled upside down as shown below using string to prove the concept before construction. What is it about the hands that some people just don't get? You can take any subject from mathematics to literature and increase its hold on the attention of young students by making it hands-on. Another view of Sagreda Familia more closely resembling Gaudi's upside down model is shown below.

still the hands, stifle the intellect

There are those who believe that the height of human intelligence involves the use of language, and of course they would likely be the ones standing at the head of the class blathering on and on about it. The following is from Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand, 1886:

Objects make impressions upon the mind through the senses, and words serve as the means of preserving a record of such impressions and of communicating them to other minds. If, now, the mind should cease to receive impressions, language would no longer be required, since there would be nothing to express; and the occasion for the use of language ceasing to exist, the power of speech would ultimately be lost. The power of speech then, depends upon a continuous succession of impressions made upon the mind by its contact, through the senses, with matter in various forms, whether in nature or in art.

It may also be claimed that the power of speech depends almost entirely upon the endless succession of fresh objects presented to the mind by the hand. These form the subject as well as the occasion of speech. If the hand should cease to make new things, new words would cease to be required. The principal changes in language arise out of new discoveries in science and new inventions in art, each fresh discovery of science giving rise to many new things in art.

And so, in developing a fresh strategy for American education, would it not be best that it be built upon a foundation of hands-on learning and the arts?

6 legs

At this point in the assembly of my "behind the sofa table" of maple and walnut, the leg assembly is nearly complete as you can see. Next, after the wedges are sawn tight and the tenons are sanded, I'll rout the grooves in the top to match the sliding dovetails at the top. That way, the two parts of the top can simply slide into place from the front and back. No metal fasteners will be required. I normally don't work on top of the table saw like this, but it is the only guaranteed flat for assembly spot in the shop.

Education Hell-Rhetoric Vs. Reality

I ran a cross a review of this book, Education Hell-Rhetoric Vs. Reality by Gerald Bracey that affirms what I have been telling readers about the gross error and injustice sustained in American education by our emphasis on standardized testing. I want to thank teacherken for his review.

According to Bracey, "We measure what we can and come to value what is measured over what is not. In doing so we throw away most of education." And with it, the lives and futures of our children.

Bracey offers a list of personal qualities that we either don't use tests to measure and for the most part can't use tests to measure and thus completely ignore:

Peace
Creativity
Critical thinking
Resilience
Motivation
Persistence
Curiosity
Inquisitiveness
Endurance
Reliability
Enthusiasm
Civic-mindedness
Self-Awareness
Self-discipline
Leadership
Compassion
Empathy
Courage
Imagination
Sense of Humor
Resourcefulness
Humility

What Bracey told us in this last book published before his recent death is that we are making a terrible mess of American education.

On a related topic, NPR this morning had a segment on the relationship between brain function and exercise. Can you guess? Is there a relationship between physical exercise and the functioning of your brain? For some of us, that question is a no-brainer. We don't have to think very hard about it. But as schools have become more insistent on teaching to the test, Phys ed and recess are two areas that aren't acknowledged as having educational value. If you are one of those lucky enough to have been educated during the time in which the value of recess was understood, you will remember from personal experience, the difference between heaven and the hell to which Bracey refers.

instead of a laptop

A few years ago I was visiting a class at ESSA in which old pages torn from books were being used in art projects, and I found one page that grabbed my attention. It was about kindergarten and had a printed guide to paper folding, so I kept it as a book mark in one of my other early texts. I have been curious about its source. While I still don't know the name of the book from which it came, I did find a duplicate of the printed text on-line, as A list of Home Occupations for Children.

The keynotes of the kindergarten handwork are two: expression, or "self-expression" as it is generally called, and development, or step-by-step progress, from easy to difficult, from simple to advanced, from familiar to new work. That is, the child has many sides of his nature which need other expression than words, and many ideas, especially the germs of artistic ones, which he could not put into words. He can, through his power of "creating," express them by materials. He has a chance to express, to clinch the perceptions of color, contrast, etc., which are awakened by the experiments with the gifts; and he expresses, besides, all his childish delight in nature and life, by trying to make the objects he sees about him. Froebel tried to provide a large range of materials, which covered many degrees of resistance, flexibility, or plasticity, so that a fairly complete set of life experiences might be expressed: string, clay, sand, chalk, seeds, worsted, paper, cardboard, peas with sticks, wooden slats, etc. A teacher uses these in a more systematic way than they can be used at home. The aim of home work is to use a variety of materials, so that the children can soon learn to employ themselves independently, and be happy in it; and to work, in some degree, from easier to more difficult things.

Parents, these days are intent on spending money for technology to allow their children to keep up with the Joneses or the Chinese, depending on their particular argument of choice. Far better would be an investment in scissors and string. For this greater investment, at much less cost, the guide page I found torn from a book is a treasure. Use the link to gain access to parental wisdom often lacking in modern society. The image above is from my torn page showing a guide to paper folding techniques similar to Paper Sloyd.

library in snow

As usual when we have snow, one of the chores is to clear the steps, porch and sidewalks of our Carnegie Public Library. This time the snow was deep and my wife and I were pleased that a mystery volunteer had given us a head start. That didn't mean the job was complete, but it means a great deal to know that there are others in the community that care so much about the library as to take a stab at clearing the steps.

I often grumble at the work, but always feel pleased to have offered simple labor to an institution that was here long before I arrived and will have been sustained in part by my efforts. I am the speck with shovel and black jacket at lower right.

what practice is not...

The following quote is from Vernon A. Howard's essay "Artistic Practice and Skills" from the Arts and Cognition.

What practice is not. Many confusions engulf the notion of practice, none more perplexing than those relating to the nature and role of repetition, of "repeating the same thing" over and over. ... it is a popular misconception that practice amounts to mere repetition of exercises or of whole pieces until, somehow, the performer "gets it right," and can "do it without thinking." In this context "getting it right" implies an achievement threshold--performing up to some preconceived standard which requires at least a modicum of critical judgment at some developmental stage along the way.

And while it is common to speak of practice as if it were merely repetition, more than that is implied from the start.

It may seem kind of strange to those who practice some form of artistic endeavor, that practice, and the cognitive aspects of it would require explanation. But we live in a world in which the hands and their contributions to intelligence and character are too little known.

and explain it

The following is from a presentation I've made to a variety of groups pointing towards the meaning of wisdom. I believe the term wisdom encapsulates all of these, but more as it also refers to judgment and the process of deciding what should or must be done

Levels of Knowledge
Knows about.
Knows how.
Can do it.
Can explain it.
Can do it well.
Can do it well and explain it.

Richard Baseley, shop teacher from Australia sent a link to an article from the Telegraph, Thinking out loud helps solve problems summarizing research that indicates a relationship between verbal expression and comprehension.

Do you ever talk to yourself as you work out complex problems? I do. It may have to do with what Jerome Bruner called scaffolding. Is knowledge best built on a single branch of what Howard Gardner called "multiple intelligences?" Or is knowledge best retained and used when it is constructed on a platform of various experiences.

Think of concrete and steel. Remove the hands-on experience from education and the resulting education has no steel and is thus fragile and prone to early failure. Richard had asked,

"How do you break down the barriers between curriculum areas? How do you get the Science, History and Woodwork teacher sharing ideas and working together? What model or method do you use at your school that works?"

I will add my reply here:

My program was designed from the outset for the purpose of integration, so it has been known by all the teaching staff what the purpose is, though it took some time for it to be accepted by some. Because my program has been supported from the beginning by a foundation grant that provides my salary, and some funding for material expense and overhead, it has had unquestioned administrative and board support. The other thing that I think has helped has been that I keep the teachers engaged by implementing projects that they have suggested, so they see the integration from their end, as well as mine. The teachers like very much to see their ideas take place in the wood shop. For instance last year the science teacher was wanting to build a table of elements, so we collaborated on the design and worked with the students.

On the other hand, I always ask what the teachers are studying at any given time. By knowing what they are up to, I can make suggestions based on what I am interested in. For example the book binding was a project I was interested in but because the students are preparing to go on trips in April, making trip journals was an informed suggestion I made. This last week my first grade teacher told me that they are at the point in math lessons that the kids needed to make abacuses, which was a project we had done before. Next week the first grade teacher will be introducing cursive writing, so carving pens will be the lesson. By concentrating on "tools" useful for engaging the hands in study outside wood shop, or even at home, we build the scaffolding described by Bruner.

Part of what I saw early on was that because I couldn't automatically expect others to understand the value of woodworking, I would have to prove it to them by having my program serve their "needs." I mentioned this to teachers in Sweden and they thought that I was overly subservient and failing to put forth the importance of my separate discipline. But my point was not the establishment of a separate discipline. By making woodworking central rather than a sideline, made it of even greater importance than others would have been willing to allow. This approach was based on a Chinese saying, that, "If you want to lead, you must first serve."

a remaining craftsman

I am a remaining American craftsman. I won't say the last, as there are others like me, and will be more to come, as the urge to create objects of useful beauty with one's own hands is rooted at the core of our humanity.

Today the snow is falling fast and hard in Northwest Arkansas. We started with a layer of ice, then sleet and now snow at 4 inches and deepening by the hour, so town is slowed to a crawl, and other than a bit of tractor time to clear the road, the day portends such pleasantries as a warm fire in the wood shop and the careful assembly of fitted parts.

The photos show wedging the tenons that secure the table legs. I use a dowel between the mallet and the wedge to better direct the force and prevent the mallet striking from breaking the wedge. The tenons are glued and then a bit of glue spread on the face of the wedges glues them in place as they expand the tenon tightly in the mortise. One must check to make sure that the part assembly is square. After the glue sets, it would be nearly impossible to fix poorly aligned parts.

what we know to be true

I have been reading works that are influenced by Jerome Bruner. His work at Harvard laid the foundation for Project Zero which works in the area of arts and cognition, and his name came up in conversation with a friend. One of the things I have mentioned in the blog before is that narrative takes many forms and that the work of a craftsman is to describe his or her universe. Our narration may take place in strokes of the plane creating texture rather than text. It may not be readily understood by those inexperienced or illiterate in the methods and motives of hands-on craftsmanship, yet to create is a narrative act, often more responsive, responsible, truthful and expressive than words alone.

Interestingly our hands-on narrative even more than written text is responsible for the warp and woof of human culture. Literacy of words and language is regarded as being of greater importance and intelligence than "literacy" of the expressive hand.

The Narrative Construction of Reality, by Jerome Bruner is an important paper published in Critical Inquiry, 1991.