if not wall street?

Many people have been disappointed by their investments on Wall Street. Where does one invest if not on Wall Street? How about your own community? Small business has the greatest potential for growth, and the smallest aren't on Wall Street. If a sole proprietorship hires a single worker, the work force and maybe profits can double. The government thinks that "small" business is 500 or more employees, but they, as usual don't know jack. There are thousands upon thousands of very small businesses that are having trouble getting support from our bailed out banks and their growth might depend on you or others more willing to invest in community.

In the meantime, most trading and exchanges on Wall Street these days are driven by formulas that are actually unrelated to the actual performance of the company. Stock prices are driven up or down by government reports on hiring, inventory and consumer confidence, not by actual performance and profit. Firms like Goldman Sachs are there to make money whether the market goes up or down, and the more things go up and down, the better the investment banks make out (like bandits.)

Does any of that make sense to you? More and more investors are starting to notice and pull back from what is becoming regarded as a casino form of investing. The house wins. The investor often does not.

And so what are some investment opportunities? Look for organic gardeners, builders, rental property managers whose work you can support and invest in. Did you know you can loan money to your plumber and make 6 percent? Buy something that needs fixing that you can save and sell. Learn a craft. Get down to the most basic level. Start with your own growth as a maker and see where it might lead. It will lead, no doubt, to greater sense of community and reports on earnings that aren't printed out of a computer but that can be seen each day when you drive through your own home town. You might even make greater profit at the same time.

Today I am working on boxes, finishing an order to ship. I will also be getting the Clear Spring wood shop ready for a weekend bowl turning workshop with Greg Thomas, master wood turner from Fayetteville.

Don't forget to participate in the poll at right.

hand work and community 2....

I have talked about this many times before. There are things that happen when we invest in each other. There are things that happen when we listen to real music rather than that on the iPod, or when we buy something someone we know made, rather than stuff made in China or some other still productive nation that was imported by multi-national corporations and sold in the big box store.

The things that happen are these... someone is encouraged in their growth. Someone is given meaningful employment that leads to greater participation in community life. Homes, schools and relationships are made more stable. People see value in their own lives and find hope. We begin to feel neighborliness or experience what Ivan Illich called conviviality. Next comes joy.

What we often have instead is a state that can best be described as benumbedness. But we had none of that today in the woodshop. I won't be lying to tell you that wood working is a favorite subject at Clear Spring School.

The photos above and below are of the current first, second and third grade project, and of the first grade students at work.

a compelling hypothesis

When at a turning point in my own education a craftsman friend informed me that he believed my brains to be in my hands. Of course that is an odd thing to say to someone. We all know that brains are stuffed in our heads. But is the total of our intelligence there as well? My friend's observation led me to examine the pleasure I found in craftsmanship, reexamine my own goals, and I became a woodworker as a result. What could be simpler than that?

It seems there aren't all that many craftsmen left. We have almost given up on manufacturing. We assign skilled trades a lesser value in our culture than work done requiring a college degree. Many of those with degrees find that there is nothing to do in their field. We made a national decision to outsource manufacturing to become a "service economy" and now have even outsourced accounting and law. The experts proclaimed that we would be an "information economy." In other words, we wouldn't need to make anything, or do anything and the only viable business left would be Google. But then Google would be a whopper, right? And its isn't really about information, but about advertising.

And so, as a member of the lonely band of the few craftsmen left, I have a few things to say. By abandoning the ideals of craftsmanship and hands-on learning, we have put ourselves and our nation in a very tough place.

My simple, compelling hypothesis? By taking more time to be cognizant of our hands, to take greater interest in them, we have the power to bring things to right, to raise standards, to increase dignity, to bring greater intelligence to our schools, our homes, our communities and our lives. Just as I was challenged by my craftsman mentor/friend to examine the intelligence in my own hands, I invite you to do the same for yourself and our nation. The hypothesis is one you can examine for yourself, with or without my help. And let's not forget the pleasure and the joy... there are feelings that arise in the making of real things. I can tell you all about it but it is best that you discover these feelings for yourself.

Today at the Clear Spring School wood shop, the first, second and third grade students will begin making trains.

time to throw the bums out?

Is it time to throw the administrators and politicians out of American classrooms and let teachers teach? From the New York Times: In a New Role, Teachers Move to Run Schools. As you can see in the photo above, I am inlaying the wooden ties in the front of the veneered cabinets, using a router inlay kit. The template controls the travel of the router, and the bit is set just deep enough to rout through the veneer glued to the face of the cabinet.

abacus math and brain development

While American kids may be punching buttons and getting right answers, Asian students are doing more to develop their brains through the use of eyes and hands on an ancient tool. According to this month's National Geographic, using abacuses is "common throughout Asia, where youngsters flex their finger muscles in abacus contests. Studies show that abacus mastery helps develop the brain's visuospatial areas." According to Seattle educator, Vinaya Kulkarni, using the abacus "contributes to all aspects of thinking, not just math."

Just to remind that Clear Spring School is ahead of the game, we have been making abacuses of various designs for different grade levels in the wood shop for several years and using them in the classroom. The photo above is of last year's 1st grade class.

If you are a regular reader or not, please participate in the new poll at right.

the problem with non-fiction...

One of the scary things about non-fiction is that it may, as your knowledge about issues grows, require that you actually do something about what you have learned. Some fiction can actually induce change, too. For instance, To Kill a Mockingbird was so powerful that it led people to reexamine their feelings about race. But most fiction is read for the simple pleasure of it and for the way it carries you away in mind and spirit from day to day concerns. Escape. Non-fiction doesn't always allow you to.

So, what the heck are you doing here? I'm curious. Does all this talk about making stuff actually lead you to the wood shop? I have a brief poll that you can take that will help me to better understand how you use this blog. So why are you here? Choose your answer at right and share it with others. You have one week.

Making a generation of "thinkerers"

Elliot Washor has an article in the Huffington Post on Creating a Generation of Thinkerers. And it makes me wonder why all children are not engaged in making. Shame on us.

Elliot's article is a thoughtful review of our meeting at Dearborn, Michigan centered around the Maker Faire and the Henry Ford Museum.

From Elliot's report:

Educational historian Larry Cremin once wryly noted, that educators respond to a new area of learning by creating a course in it. Recall how schools responded to technology by creating a course "down the hall at fifth period" without ever thinking about changing every course because technology existed. Similarly, educators run the risk of demeaning hand and mind work by creating separate courses for making rather than bringing making into all aspects of the school curriculum and thereby thoroughly reconstituting it.

And of course the answer is NOT to make making a separate course, but the bring the arts into every classroom and every discipline as a means of assessment. Here is some startling stuff from Elliot's article:

We reviewed disturbing data on how young people spend their time. We learned, for example, that they use the Internet about 12 hours a week, more time than they spend watching television (about 10 hours per week), talking on a cell phone (13 hours per week), and doing homework (9 hours per week).

The research reveals that the U.S. is becoming a nation of "non-tinkerers." In a poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, nearly six in 10 (58%) said they never have made or built a toy. More than a quarter (27%) have not made or built even one item from a list of eight common projects ranging from a dollhouse or piece of furniture to a fence or flower box.

When we introduced ourselves in Dearborn, we were asked to tell about something we had made. I told that I get to make things every day and every week, but that if it were not for woodshop at Clear Spring School, some of our kids would not have ever had the opportunity.

Happy Labor Day, to my readers. Labor once meant something more. Not only drugery, but problem solving, not just the opposed forcesof labor and management, but skill and pride of workmanship as this article sent by Will Simpson affirms. Whatever Happened to Labor?

extraordinary education

A cover story in the New York Times tells that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is making a "hands-on effort" toward peace in the middle east. The term hands-on is associated with extraordinary effort. We know when someone engages hands-on, it is with their whole being and complete attention. Doesn't it make you wonder whether we care for our children or not? Why have we chosen to give them less than our best? Is hands-on learning a special quality of eduction? Do I need to ask, or is it something that you have experienced for yourself? What does hands-on mean if not?

I think it is time for extraordinary effort toward extraordinary education. The simple means toward this end? The Strategic engagement of the hands. Make, make do, fix, mend, create, plant, harvest, care, care for, etc.

On a slightly different subject, German automaker BMW is facing the challenge presented by an aging field of skilled employees and a lack of skilled workers to take their places on the lines to fill holes left by retirement. To help take greater charge of their future, BMW set up an assembly line of older workers, and asked their advice on what improvements could be made to enable factories to maintain efficiency with older workers. The workers came up with a list of improvements costing the company $50,000 and increasing efficiency by 7 percent. In other words, by asking skilled workers for advice, the company made millions on a very small investment. It is what happens when management trusts the wisdom of the hands. We have learned to associate European craftsmanship with quality, but they like we, have been making schools more efficient and less effective. And so we have to ask ourselves what we want schooling to do, and make the changes necessary to get what we want. Do we really want a nation of idiots?

Friederich Karl Biederman

Biederman was influential in the manual arts movement in Germany, and the following is from 1852.

Since practical work is consistent with the nature of youth, there is no particular need of awakening an interest by artificial or compulsory means. Pedagogy itself will accomplish through practical instruction that which it conceives as its first duty; namely, to secure by investigation a correct knowledge of the true characteristics of its pupils.

Individuality presupposes a distinct self-activity, and can never be the result of receptivity alone. Every teacher has known boys who were remarkable for their dullness while at school, and who, when put in other surroundings, became active and useful, while some of the so-called excellent pupils grew to be lazy and unprincipled men.

And so, what you find here is not anything new. Manual arts education began in Germany in the same way it began in the US, the UK, France, and so many other countries. There were two major voices, that of industry, demanding trained labor from outside the apprenticeship model, so they could pay less for it, and that of education itself, which recognized through the teachings of Rousseau, Commenius, Pestalozzi, Froebel and Uno Cygnaeus (Finland) that the greatest method for engaging children in learning was to engage their hands in making.

I want my readers to pay particular attention to the last line from Biederman's quote. Think Wall Street, and those highly educated persons, who, lacking in hands on experience were quite willing to plunder the American economy for their own short term gain. They learned nothing from the experience but to try, try again.

If I had a hammer...

Today is upper class move-in day at Columbia University, so we are poised with boxes and suitcases to load out by taxi for a trip up Broadway to the upper Westside. Lucy's hammer is packed away in college boxes which will be delivered late in the day, so I made a quick trip to Home Depot on W. 23rd. Who would think that there might be a Home Depot so close to the Flatiron Building. The hammer is needed to knock her bed apart so that it can be lowered, and I suspect that the hammer is one of the most convivial of tools. No special degree or training required. With a simple hammer, a man becomes powerful in ways that a man without a hammer is not.

Years ago, when I was studying pottery at Memphis State University, we had a student go wacko. He earned the name, "Mack the Hammer," by coming into the clay studio with hammer in hand, and smacking on his hand and on the table, making threatening gestures. His threat was that he would shatter finished work or hit someone on the head. Security and psychological intervention stepped in before he was able to do much damage. Every single tool has mixed potential, destructive as well as creative use. Some of the destructive capacity of each tool is less easy to perceive than a smack on the head or busted pots.

It is a busy day, and not much to blog about. I want to begin describing how the arts can be used as an assessment tool for all other subject areas, even beyond the arts themselves. That will come later.

tools for assessment

In American schools, standardized testing has been adopted as the primary tool of assessment. In essence, a standardized test is a tool used to get a view of performance, or cognitive abilities, and in that way, it's similar to using a magnifying glass to examine bugs, a microscope to examine germs, or a telescope to examine the stars. But of course there is a difference in that these last mentioned tools are used to examine real things, not contrived amalgamations of narrow statistical slices of real people. We know that statistical examination of real stuff is subject to gross misinterpretation and distortion, even though the parties involved may have the very best of intentions.

Ivan Illich, in Tools for Conviviality states the following:

Tools are intrinsic to social relationships. An individual relates himself to his society through the use of tools that he actively masters, or by which he is passively acted upon. To the degree that he masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning; to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his self image. Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision.

The point about the arts as a means of assessment is a matter of conviviality. To witness the arts as a tool for understanding is to participate in human growth. To attend a performance or demonstration of the arts in schools is an enrichment of community. In comparison, to pass out test scores may inflate the perceived potentials of some and drastically impede the perceived potentials of others. In the case of students in New York City public high schools who received B-level grades, but cannot pass basic placement tests at community colleges, Diane Ravitch said, "We are lying to our children." For many, demoralizaton by low test scores lead parents, and teachers to completely overlook the child's greatest potentials. That may not be criminal but should be.

Can you see that something should be done about this? All during the last 10 years, during both the Bush and Obama administrations, standardized testing has driven school development at the expense of the arts. Let's just cut the crap and get back to what is really important in schools. OK? Restoring the wood shop is the best place to start.

We think of assessment as something to assign to experts, and yet each of us is involved in the continuing assessment of our surroundings. We can tell whether something was done as a matter of care, or as a matter of expedience. For instance, as we stay in a New York apartment, I can't help but notice all the thick layers of paint applied over a half century of renovations. The paint in the photo above was applied layer upon layer, each time to make the place look better, but by never addressing the growing misshapen mass beneath, a display of real painting skill will never emerge. The photo above. What can you say? Is it an illustration of conviviality? The challenge of meaningful assessment is to use what we really know to counter the mis-perceptions of external expertise and then design schools and schooling in which children are allowed to reach their full potentials.

explicable assessment

One of the hardest courses I took in college was called "behavioral statistics" and one of the books presented as required reading was "How to Lie With Statistics", a classic valuable to anyone hoping to understand the deliberate obfuscation present in modern culture. You take a statistical framework like that devised through standardized testing and what you get is an abstracted, conglomerated view of educational reality. A friend of mine, Elliot Washor, is co-founder of the Big Picture Schools and he had been called to a school conference concerning his son. They, a team of experts, began telling him all the bad news about his son, based on their examination of his grades and test scores. After listening patiently for some time, Elliot asked, "Did you know my son is a Jazz musician and performs regularly with a group?" The experts, of course, new nothing about it. They hadn't bothered to gather any personal information that might have given a more complete view of Elliot's son.

One of the great dangers of our current standardized testing schema is that understanding it is the exclusive domain of experts, who are so detached from actual circumstances so as to push forth a complete distortion of facts regarding the students they are supposed to safeguard and educate. For that reason, I ask for what I have come to call "explicable assessment".. a means of assessment that can be clear to all regardless of training or expertise, and that considers the individuals involved and the communities in which they live. Anything less is an insult to the intelligence inherent in each community and the wisdom of each and every parent and child. Anything less is to do great harm.

And so, how do we develop explicable assessment? The arts have it. Within the arts we discover character, diligence, expertise, skill, care, attention and the opportunity to engage every other aspect of school curriculum. Even the most casual observer can see it. And creativity? That is a bonus.

There is a possibility that no one will listen to me. After all, I am just a woodworker turned shop teacher. What would I know? I am grateful to have a few friends in education and am also aware that the situation in American schools is ready for some thinking outside the box. So, let's you and I roll up our sleeves and get a few things accomplished.

Redefining accountability

Yesterday I visited with Dr. Thomas James, Provost of Teachers College and as I sat in his office I found a publication describing Diane Ravitch's recent lecture there. Dr. Ravich was an early proponent of No Child Left Behind testing but then became very vocal in opposition when she became witness to its destructive effects. Now she says that testing should be used as a diagnostic tool rather than be used for ranking and for teacher and student accountability.

Under NCLB and "Race to the Top" schemes, underperforming schools have faced forced closure, and Ravitch maintains that if we were to apply that same logic to making cities crime free, "we would be firing cops and closing police stations and turning a bad situation into complete disaster." That is what we have chosen to do to some of our poorest schools. Can you see how it is quite reasonable to assume that we have become a nation of idiots?

Dr. Ravitch said we should be looking for another means of assessment. "Schools are part of the community, representing traditions, values and cultures. It's not like managing a stock portfolio, it's like managing a family."

That is exactly why the arts should be the assessment tool used in our nation's schools. As I mentioned to Dr. James yesterday, if you ask parents to come to a ball game, they have a 400 percent greater likelihood of showing up than for conference night. Standardized testing is abstract and impossible for most people, parents, teachers and administrators to understand, and we have thus done a tremendous harm to our children and our schools by making our tools of assessment distant from commonly comprehensible community values.

Diane Ravitch, in being an early proponent of testing, was sincere in her belief NCLB testing might help. That it hasn't and won't is a matter that she has honestly faced and we must as well.

So what will work? My proposal is unusual. While some like those involved in Harvard's Project Zero, are concerned with figuring out how to assess of the arts so they can compete with other separate subject areas, we are overlooking the most valuable assessment tool for achievement of quality schools. Assessment by and through the arts. The arts illustrate engagement, sincerity, attention to detail, breadth of interest, successful intellectual grasp of material, skill, and mastery of intellectual concepts and a very long list of more. An examination of a child's engagement in the arts is the one tool that parents, teachers, children and community can actually understand and relate to.

Last night my wife and daughter and I went to see Billy Elliot on Broadway. It was an incredible show. That it was about a child's engagement in the arts, his passion for ballet, is something that anyone in his right mind, hand and heart could understand.

And so what the heck are we waiting for? Chuck the reliance on standardized testing, and restore the arts. Where to begin? I propose wood shop. By crafting things from wood, the child exhibits a whole range of important skills, intelligence and character that can be easily observed without taking a college level course on statistics.

manual arts in Ghana

My daughter brought back this photo of children's toys in Ghana. The wheels are foam cut from old flip flops and of course you can recognize the tin cans. The blue strings are used to pull these trucks along the streets of Obodan, Ghana.

Manual arts in France

From Senator A. Corbon, 1879

It is high time to understand the indications furnished by the instinct of children and to give as soon as possible satisfaction to their two-fold need of working with the hands and of knowing the reason of things; that is to say, it is time to bring about a veritable revolution in the manner of rearing youth. If one wishes, to follow resolutely the course of nature and the clear indications furnished by the instinctive dispositions of children, if manual exercises are considered as essential, they should have a serious part in education commensurate with their importance. In the end, it will be found that it is possible to shorten the time of class work in order to give a sufficient amount of time to manual exercises; and that this will be done not only without injury to the intellectual development, but that on the contrary, it will promote it. In the first place, manual exercises are not carried on without awakening he intelligence, and still further, it is doing violence to the active nature of the children to confine them three hours in succession, twice a day, before the school desk. They submit, but with reluctance; they are subject to constraint; they are ill at ease physically and morally. The would certainly learn better in two hours if the third were given to manual exercises. It should also be observed also, in order to obtain more time for the exercise of the workshop, that there is a tendency in primary education, as well as in secondary and higher, to overload the program of study more and more. It seems as if the aim were less to develop the intellectual capacity than to heap up knowledge upon knowledge in the head of the children at the risk of exhausting the intellectual force.

Corbon's statement reflects what had become a widely shared perspective in the early manual arts movement. France and Germany along with the Scandinavian countries and the United States all shared the understanding that to educate the mind required the use of the hands. Today in Manhattan, I plan to visit the Tenement Museum and make a quick trip to Teachers College.

poets and clowns

At my meeting with educators in Dearborn, we were all wondering what to do next. How can we convince those who have the power to shape education that we had best include the hands in learning. The interesting conclusion I have come to is that reason is not enough to make change. Human beings are not all that reasonable.

Ivan Illich discusses this in Tools for Conviviality:

The transformation of learning into education paralyses man's poetic ability... Poets and clowns have always risen up against the oppression of creative thought by dogma. They expose literal-mindedness with metaphor. They demonstrate the follies of seriousness in a framework of humor. Their intimate wonder dissolves certainties, banishes fears, and undoes paralysis. The prophet can denounce creeds and expose superstitions and mobilize persons to use their lights and wits. Poetry, intuition, and theory can offer intimations of the advance of dogma against wit that may lead to a revolution in awareness.

conviviality

1. conviviality - sociableness - the relative tendency or disposition to be sociable or associate with one's fellows
2. conviviality - a boisterous celebration; a merry festivity
a jollification, merrymaking festivity, celebration

I have been contnuing my reading of Tools for Conviviality.Its author, Ivan Illich was an admitted socialist. Sadly, that would put anything he might suggest in question for some regardless of its merits. I would prefer to be a bit more open minded than that.

One day, a few years back, my wife and daughter and I were making college visitations and met a young man in the UT Scholars program who when told about educational sloyd, said, "Oh that's Marixist, isn't it?" Something about the "dignity of all labor" can send spasms through the intelligentsia. After all, what we all working so hard to avoid? Language is a convoluted thing, charged with emotions and colored by suspicions and doubts created by past efforts to dominate and control.

But putting aside Illich's socialism, if you can stretch your heart and mind so far, I want to consider the idea of conviviality. Is the purpose of life and education, that of better competing in the 21st century and maintaining dominance of one culture over another, or is the purpose of life, culture and education that of enabling us to get along with others, creating a more stable, and resilient human life?

I am in Manhattan, having come to New York to welcome my daughter home from Ghana, and to help her get moved into her dorm for her senior year at Columbia. She brought me a souvenir, perfectly representing the choice we face in attempting to achieve conviviality, a machete. In Ghana, machetes are an all purpose tool used to cut the grass and to keep the bush at bay, but in some parts of Africa, machetes have been used in murder. Each tool, as described by Illich offers an edge that can be turned to cut either way. Interestingly, the tool that Lucy took to Ghana that carried a sense of western conviviality was her genuine Leatherman tool. Not only did it provide a means to screw and unscrew and cut things, not having a real paring knife in their make-do communal cook-on-the-floor kitchen in their Ghanaian village of Obodan, the Leatherman sufficed wondrously. In our small rented apartment near the Flatiron building, and untrained in the full functionality of the machete, the built in phillips screwdriver of Lucy's Leatherman enabled me to fix the coffee pot. If there was ever an election for the most convivial tool of all time, the Leatherman would be a contender as to my knowledge there has never been one involved in the conviction of murder.

Illich idea of conviviality is an interesting index to use in the observation of human progress or decline and it is a great tool for people watching in the city. Manhattan is not exactly the place in which I feel most at home. Due to my being in New York, my posting may be sporadic. In the meantime, New York is a great place to consider conviviality and how it applies to the wisdom of the hands.

Our nation's cities are on the rise again after so many decades of flight to the suburbs. The cell phone and iPhone are important tools in facilitating this reversal of urban fortunes. These communications tools are making cities more convivial in tone as people stay connected with each other and use them to facilitate social engagements. At the same time, they, like any other tool, can give a sense of isolation and anomie. People use the same tool to connect with peers and loved ones, and simultaneously isolate themselves from unwanted social encounters. As an example, as my wife and I looked for a laundromat, we could have used her iPhone to find one, but she chose instead to ask, providing the opportunity for a friendly response. Those simple social interactions have long been the foundation of society as the means though which kindness is expressed to strangers. You may note that tools have the potential of being used with care and attention or mindlessly toward the destruction of meaningful relationship. How do we now take these exclusive items, much coveted by all, and make them tools for inclusion and conviviality? If we can work that out, being watchful of our excessive use of technology, and leaving space between calls for unexpected things to arise, our cities will become even more wonderful places to live and work. That's conviviality.

arts and science 2?

I have written on this subject before, and this post is inspired by listening to a program on NPR, in which they were discussing the varying intersections between what they perceived as separate disciplines, the arts and science. These guys were serious, but missing the whole point.

I have been reading Ivan Illich's book Tools for Conviviality and he recognizes one of the necessary shifts toward the restoration of Conviviality and restoration of celebratory spirit in human culture involves the Demythologization of Science. The idea is not to knock science from its lofty position but to make it more accessible to all men. If you've been reading here for a long time, you may remember my discussion of Admiral Beaufort If not, click on the preceding link.

This causes me to reflect, not only on tools for conviviality, but also upon instruments of scientific conviviality. How do we design instruments that bring the common man into the fields and folds of scientific exploration?

It seems the answer to that has always been in our hands. While on NPR, and in the eyes of most observers, the arts and science are two estranged disciplines, for the craftsman in his or her exploration of material properties and the capacities of tools and applied attention to change them, there is very little perceptible difference from what one might do in a laboratory, except that the artist or craftsman has a tangible product to put on the table as evidence of learning. It could be stated that science and the arts arose simultaneously from the creative life of man, and while we can build artificial intellectual constructs separating the two, diminishing the perceived value of one to enhance the other, both suffer from the separation. We all suffer from the perceived estrangement of science from the arts.

The illustration above is the hand of God touching that of man. Which would you say represents the arts and which science? Which is god? Do you sense in the painting that man is lazy and his finger is less than eager to touch his own creative power? Can that be the reticence of science to acknowledge its origins in the arts? The real power to bring change lies in the arts for it was from the arts that science arose in the first place and it is through individual craftsmanship that science arises as curiosity in each child.

Is this such a hard thing for anyone to understand?

In the meantime, a lawsuit maintaining that a South Korean video game software maker is responsible for a 51 year old American's debilitating video game addiction is being allowed to go forward in American courts.

Craig Smallwood says "Lineage II" left him unable to function independently in daily activities, such as getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.

Smallwood says he's spent more than 20,000 hours playing the multiplayer online role-playing game since 2004. He says NCSoft Corp. never warned him about the danger of game addiction.

Do you think he will be able to get dressed and show up for court? It is a sad case. Maybe his mother will help. According to the ten thousand hour rule, (mentioned by both Malcolm Gladwell and Richard Sennett) it can take 10,000 hours to master a craft, and this poor man could have chosen to do something much more meaningful with his life (and with his hands).

On a more important subject, a friend, Elliot Washor has published an article on Huffington Post, High School Education: Multiple Pathways and Student Choice The article addresses the two tier pathway which isolates those going to college from those involved in career and technical education. Elliot states, "The caste system is defunct. Let's get over it." Check out the article. It is a good read.

good bye MacMansion?

Home sizes are declining in the current housing market and CNN Money proclaims the end of the MacMansion. It always struck me as disappointing that we would have so many people building outrageously large homes while so many in the world suffer from homelessness. You can find some of my earlier comments here.

It's not something a person would want to brag about, but it seems I was quietly predicting the decline of the housing market during early 2007.

Big houses are a maintenance and cleaning headache. Cut the size and even the rich may find they have more time to play music and make art. They might also discover themselves as makers, put their own consumption in check and apply their spirits and energies toward the creation of community.

trained assessment

Back in 1971 I was employed by Porter-Leath Children's Center 868 N. Manassas in Memphis with a variety of job titles which seemed to shift as new things were found for me to do each day. When something needed to be fixed, I was the "maintenance supervisor." If the kids needed to do art work, I was named "director of arts and crafts." I was also the amateur staff photographer, filling the bulletin boards with photos of mothers and kids, the love being palpable between them.

One day as "director of arts and crafts," I was sitting on a small patch of grass growing up through broken concrete with about a dozen students and 8 year old Leon was busy with black, blue and red crayons making bold strokes on his paper. As he darkened the page edge to edge with his harsh markings, I asked what he was drawing. "Can't you see?" he asked. "It's the Vietnam War." If I had not asked, I would have never known. But having seen the television images myself of the Vietnam War on the nightly news, I could not have done a better job myself. If I had looked at Leon's art without asking the question, I might have assumed his work to be extremely immature, just random marks on paper, but knowing what he was attempting to illustrate gave a clear view of sophistication well beyond his years. Children and their work in arts and crafts reveal a great deal to anyone willing to pay attention and take seriously what they express.

These days both political parties, and all the high dollar administrators they have hired to shape American education are obsessed with standardized testing to measure progress. In an earlier time, teachers were trusted and trained to observe the growth of their children in normal classroom activities. Instead of hiring outside experts, schools had internal expertise in the form of teachers trained to assess real time, more sensitively and without disrupting the child's learning.

So what if we gave up on standardized testing? How would we measure individual and school success? Arts and crafts provide parents and teachers insight and assurance that children are on the right track. Teachers can again be trained and trusted for that. Our national policy is to remove autonomy and judgment from classroom teaching and invest it in external standardized testing authority. What kind of idiocy is that?

Just as a child may be a craftsman, naturally compelled to learn and grow in his or her manipulation of tools and materials, teachers given a choice, will choose to do their best work. The misguided assumption by some that they are not to be trusted with autonomy to do so is a great tragedy in American schooling.

You may or may not realize I'm presenting something remarkable, and perhaps original in modern times, and who in their right mind would suspect a woodworker of that? But here is the nutshell...

Through understanding what children express in the classroom, we can safely discard almost all of the intrusive, artificial means that have become the driving force in American education.

I don't expect anyone from the Obama administration to be reading this, but still, it is past time that we do something about it. Can it be that the reason that Finland's schools are so successful is related to the idea that teachers be trained to observe the growth of their children and trusted to teach?