Empathy

"Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings, perspectives, and experiences of another person, often described as "walking in someone else’s shoes". It is a critical, teachable skill comprising cognitive (perspective-taking), emotional (feeling with), and compassionate components that foster relationships, reduce prejudice, and improve emotional regulation."

It is what Froebel perhaps had in mind as he was inventing Kindergarten. How do you share those feelings, perspectives and experiences of another person unless you have been introduced to them. The illustration of Froebel's song about the charcoal maker comes to mind. Its is from his book Mutter - und Kose-Lieder translated in English as "Mother Play," which is directed toward German mothers to help them become their child's first teacher. 

At the top left is a drawing of a hand gesture with the child's hands forming the shape of the Charcoal maker's hut. The charcoal maker when he came to town would have been a stranger to most children and frightening to some degree, being covered with soot as he sold his filthy wares. The song and illustration showed the mother and child that the charcoal maker, strange as he might be, was an important member of community life. The blacksmith working at his forge and the mother feeding her child, warmed by the fire were evidence that the child might understand and take to heart.

So, here we are at war, when we might have chosen our leaders to have empathy instead and built bridges of understanding. It's what we should have learned in Kindergarten. 

To arise unchanged?

 Norwegian author Jan Kjærstad wrote about the fearful power of fiction:

”We know hardly anything about our strength and possibilities. Sometimes I see man as a creature all folded up. We walk upright, but we have not managed to raise thought. Mentally speaking we are cripples …. I further imagine that books, fiction is just about the best tool for making us unfold …. And that is precisely why I am worried; why am I not hunting in a more determined way those books which will make me rise, which will make me grow a few centimeters? Because I no longer wish to be changed? I admit it: because I am afraid”.

How many books can you read that leave you essentially unchanged? There is a danger, in that if you do nothing from what is offered in what you've read, you may feel in some ways impotent and diminished. If Mr. Kjærstad or others think that reading may lead to a fearful transformation, they might try making things for awhile instead.

The change will offer less and even more to be afraid of. One might worry, "Am I to become a tradesman because of this?" Don't despair. Or be afraid. Your first efforts will not bring your whole life to such a point of risk. And even tradesmen have a value in the vast scheme.You would have to actually get good at something first, and by that time you will have discovered that what you've done is something noble that makes you of greater real value to others, easing your transition into a more meaningful life.

Today I'll cut box lids to size and fit the motion sensor light on the edge of the garage that broke off and was hanging loose. I could have called a tradesman to fix things and deprived myself of the satisfaction of having fixed it myself.

Make, fix and create...

As is often the case.

As is often the case, I've been making parts for about 30 inlaid boxes. The woods are walnut and basswood. The fronts and backs are tenoned and the ends are routed for these parts and the floating panel bottoms to fit. Both the mortising, tenoning and the forming of the edge of the floating panel bottoms are done easily on the router table.

Next I'll make the patterned inlay and begin making the inlaid lids.

As I've done for many years, I try to keep a selection in stock, but they don't last long. You can find my work at http://dougstowe.etsy.com or at a few locations in Arkansas.

Make, fix and create...

Woodworking with kids.

I am attempting to share a few woodworking projects that may be helpful to you as well.

https://mailchi.mp/2ccdf2238339/touching-base?e=7aba398381

Look for more in the days, weeks and months to come.

Make, fix and create...

Verbundenheit

"Connectivity" –– what we learn in one subject area should connect us with what we learned in others. Freidrich Froebel used the German term "verbundenheit" which has been translated as conscious connection or "connectedness." The following is from my book Making Classic Toys that Teach. https://amzn.to/4kPsV85

"The Third Principle: Connectedness

Froebel’s third principle was "connectedness." While one could focus attention on facts and things in isolation, those facts and things are also deeply connected through myriad means; the child, too, should learn to see himself or herself as a part of the larger unbound world. As outlined by Froebel in The Education of Man, “Education should be one connected whole, and should advance with an orderly and continuous growth—as orderly, continuous and natural as the growth of a plant.”

One things that Froebel did not mention directly is where the connections should be made. There is a risk of creating contrived rather than discovered connections, when the teacher creates the connectiveness or connectedness and lays it before the child, rather than allowing children to discover connections on their own. So connectedness should take place within the child, in relation to his or her own experience, not be purposely laid out as one more fact to be taken in that was laid out and arranged by teachers. Just as the artificial boundaries between fields of study make school studies artificial, artifice used to stitch fields of study back into an integrated whole, sustain a disconnection between the child and the real world.

One of the points that I try to make is that learning must surprise, and thereby touch upon the sense of personal discovery that brings us to a state of educational preparedness in the form of physical, emotional an intellectual alert. A case in point is a shape that Froebel called "the doll," that was left for the child to discover on his or her own through play with Gift number 2.

Throughout the literature by and about the teaching of Froebel's kindergarten, the doll receives no further mention or illustration, as it was to be deliberately left for the child to discover without the form of interference in learning we often call "instruction."

So the question must arise for each of us, "how do we make learning as natural for others and ourselves as the opening of petals on a flower?" We do it though a process in which the student is allowed to make the connection between all things.

 I am working on a series of white oak boxes with faceted top panels and legs. They are nearly ready for lift tabs and hinges. The rubber band is to hold the legs in place. They will be much prettier when coated with Danish oil finish.

When things are not to your liking, to make beautiful and useful things is an act of resistance. Do not sit idly by.

I have made thousands of boxes over the years and the vast number of them have found their homes as these will. They will be a bit more lovely when a Danish oil finish brings forth the colors of wood.

Make, fix and create...

Lift yourself through the arts.

 Architect Will Price address to the Eastern Manual Education Association, 1904:

"Man at first was a naked, cold, hungry animal in a cold and strenuous world, and out of that, because of that, man is becoming worth while. That very weakness, that very nakedness, tested the ingenuity of man, compelled him to invent. Out of such invention two things came to him; in the first place, a great joy in the sense of creation; in the second place, a development because of that work.

"Man then endeavored to express his new point of view; because with his development came a new outlook, a new meaning to the rolling cloud and to the rushing water and to the lightning, to the song of the birds; and so, art was born. Art is not, as has been said, “the visible evidence of man’s joy in his work,” because it is that very joy and that very work itself.

"If art was the visible evidence of man’s joy in his work, then the rich would indeed, as they think they do, possess the hoarded treasures of the world; whereas they but gather the crumbs that fall from the artist’s table.

"The real joy, the real good there is in art (and by art I mean the art of making the dishpan as much as a statue of Phidias), the real motive of art after all, when you analyze it, is simply to make us worthwhile, to made us fit to love and be loved, fit to live together."

Make art. Lift yourself through the arts. Make the world a better place.