The moral implications of craftsmanship

Various religious beliefs and traditions are considered the primary sources of human morality. When it comes to the basics, however, evidence shows that mother ducks take care of their ducklings and even the dinosaurs cared for their young. For humans, particularly those affected adversely by the unfortunate complexities of life, morality is not so simple. Mothers abuse or abandon their children for a variety of very sad reasons, and husbands beat their wives and we’re left wondering how things could have gone so wrong. Even those we’ve trusted to be our gutter guards in the bowling alley of life, have their own versions of perversion, including priests fondling boys and being allowed to get away with it and TV preachers attempting to master the twin distractions of money and power. 

 

When in doubt, review the basics. Christ was the son of a carpenter. St. Paul was a tentmaker, who refused to make his living from his sermonizing. The Talmud insisted that every young man learn a trade and that children who were not taught a trade were being groomed to become robbers instead. And you can blame the priests for launching Pizzaro’s killing of thousands of Incan warriors.

 

As a woodworker for the last 50 years and a teacher of fellow artisans for about 30, I want to reaffirm the value of craftsmanship to the individual and society at large as an instrument for shaping a moral society. Regardless of our individual religious beliefs, and regardless of who attempted to teach us what, to craft an object expressing usefulness, beauty or both is a moral act that affirms the value of our humanity and the stability of our civilization. To apply ourselves, selflessly toward the goal of creating useful beauty is not only a benefit to others, it represents the attempt to craft ourselves into finer form.

 

The urge to create something and the subsequent urge to create something even better are apparently embedded in each child and in ourselves as well. Give a child a blank sheet of paper and some crayons and see what happens. Even children are compelled to make their mark and CEOs suffer from the same complaint.

 

Craftsmanship exercised in the pursuit of useful beauty was the building block of each earlier civilization. Given the right mindset we can read their ornamentions as clearly as we might read any scrolls, texts slabs of inscribed clay or quipu they might have left behind. 

 

Those civilizations that fell did so as a loss of craftsmanship. Paying attention to craftsmanship in all things provides the formula for our future success and our own individual growth. Craftsmanship and the pursuit of it lies at a deeper level in our conscious sphere than being told by others those things we must do or not do.

 

An odd thing is that we can believe whatever we want regardless of the truth or untruth of it. In a society that thrives on fiction, (it surrounds us) we can make something up, and insist upon its truth, and promote it to others even when evidence is lacking or piled in heaps against what we claim is true. But when you cut a dovetail joint, or drive a nail into the wood, there’s no lying about whether the joint was cleanly cut, or whether the nail went straight or was bent on its way in. The evidence is plain and there for all to see and measure with their own eyes.

 

In the 1880’s as manual arts were being introduced in American education, there were some who urged that all learning be hands-on and directly involve all the senses by doing real things. Charles H. Hamm had written in 1886, “The schools have taught history, mathematics, language and literature and the sciences to the utter exclusion of the arts, notwithstanding the obvious fact that it is through the arts alone that other branches of learning touch human life... At this point the school of mental and manual training combined--the Ideal School--begins; not only books but tools are put into the hands of the pupil, with this injunction of Comenius; "Let those things that have to be done be learned by doing them."

 

Hamm had further insisted,

“…the highest degree of education results from combining manual with intellectual training, the laborer will feel the pride of a genuine triumph; for the consciousness that every thought-impelled blow educates him, and so raises him in the scale of manhood, will nerve his arm, and fire his brain with hope and courage.”

 

It is without doubt for those involved in the maker movement and in crafts that making things of useful beauty can make us feel differently about ourselves. Also, in the early manual training movement that Hamm described lay the seeds of helping us feel remarkably differently about each other. Manual training in schools, where it was offered to all students including those planning academic careers was intended to develop a sense of the dignity of all labor, thus ensuring a society in which we hold each other and our mutual contributions with high regard and encourage each other in widely diverse paths. If you’ve even tried to cut a dovetail joint or hammer a nail into wood, and even if you were a complete klutz, you will have gained at least a modicum of respect for those who have the impulse to do well and master what you cannot.

 

It has been obvious in my own life as a craftsman that my customers and those who have most encouraged my growth have all come from a narrow field of those who know something about crafts. They, being educated enough themselves in arts and crafts, know the value of my work, what I put into it and why they would choose to invest in my growth. Those who know the pitfalls and travails of craftsmanship and the growth of the individuals involved also know the importance of encouraging the arts in our society at large. 

 

The intelligence of the hand and mind, grow together, as described by Dr. Frank Wilson, author of  The Hand: How its use shapes the brain, language and human culture. “The hand brain system, or partnership, that came into being over the course of millions of years is responsible for the distinctive life and culture of human society. This same hand-brain partnership exists genetically as a developmental instruction program for every living human. Each of us, beginning at birth, is predisposed to engage our world and to develop our intelligence primarily through the agency of our hands."

 

And yet, we’ve evolved toward a world in which the most common objects of our everyday lives are made by others and shipped to us at great cost to the environment, and as we fail to notice the degradation of our own communities and our own lives from failing to make things for ourselves. According to policy makers, we were to become a “service economy” in an “information age” in which Facebook and others would reduce us to data that can be sold to those hoping to sell us more meaningless stuff.

 

As a maker of things, I call “All hands on deck,” for the hands are symbolic of the whole person, deeply engaged, saving the ship, doing what all of us, adults, and children alike, are hardwired to do. We learn best by being of service to others. Teaching would not be so difficult if schools were to make learning more interesting to kids. School woodshops can play a role in that as will all the various arts. By enabling kids to do real things, we trust them and thrust them into a moral universe in which they compete and learn to be even better than themselves. People all over the world wonder how to design education for the 21^st century. I suggest we take our own hands into much greater consideration and learn what they can teach us about each other and ourselves.

If you've read this far,  I'll thank you for that. If you have children, give them a craft to fall back on.

Make, fix and create...

 

Every teacher and parent should read the following. Remember it was written in 1901.

Industrial Training in the Schools.

The following is the oration of Miss Ina Randall on the above subject, delivered upon graduating from The Manual Training School at Ellendale N. D., on May 17, 1901:

Since the purpose of education is the harmonious development of all the powers of man, it follows that a system of education which fails to accomplish this end is one-sided incomplete and unscientific. A training that can attain this result is one that unfolds the mental, moral and physical faculties of man simultaneously and ln so doing accomplishes an ideal and symmetrical education. It is this kind of instruction that a manual training school offers. The school that elevates labor and that honors the laborer, the school that trains man in his natural elements, the school that not only instructs but educates, not only teaches how to think but how to do—the secret of the progress of civilization.

The value of industrial training as a factor in general mental development, deserves emphasis on account of a widespread notion that such training is of importance only to those who intend to follow mechanical pursuits. To say that industrial training is of value only to prospective artisans, is as fallacious as to say that physical culture is of value only to would be athletes.

When manual training asks for admission in the regular school course it does not say, "Discard your books and use my tools," but it does say “With my tools what the brain informed by your books, directs." To neglect the education of the hand, is to lower respect for manual labor, and contempt for manual nation’s prosperity and the labor class stands in the foreground as the substantial element of its population, for it is labor, not territory, that is itssource of wealth.

Yet do not think it means the exclusive cultivation of the band, it has sprung from a purpose more profound—the recognition of the growing demand for a complete man, a man who possesses not only a well-informed mind, but one who sees with a true eye, executes with a skilled hand, thinks clearly, reasons logically, and acts wisely to requirements which enable him to follow successfully any vocation in life. To the white man, industrial training is the means of raising him above being a mere machine; to the negro it is emancipation from serfdom.

The object of work-shop practice, as a part of education, is not to teach a boy a trade, nor is it to produce the polished article of furniture; It is to teach the boy how to play the game of life successfully and it aims to produce the finished living man. And, although the carpenter’s bench and turner's lathe are employed as instruments of such training, it is not to create carpenters and joiners, but to familiarize the pupil with common substances and their physical properties, to quicken his perceptive faculties, to make him a doer instead of a mere listener and to teach him how to build character as well as to build houses.

You may know the law of the Pulley, but if you cannot apply it, it avails you nothing; you may be able to repeat the laws of Newton-—they are valueless unless you can put them to use; you may quote the philosophy of Bacon but if you cannot apply his methods, it shows that your education has cultivated your memory and allowed your reason to slumber. It has the misfortune of the old education to memorize words and not to assimilate ideas. If to memorize is learning to reason then the only requisite to become a Cicero is to memorize the rules of logic and rhetoric. Which shall we do? Shall we train eleven millions of school children simply to memorize the facts which others have discovered, to get only what someone else has digested, to toil for naught; or shall we train them to think, observe, compare, invent and classify for themselves? If the age wants a system of education that allows no faculty of the mind to lie dormant., if it wants a broad and impartial training, if it wants living men, with skilled hands as well as cultured minds for its citizens, then it is industrial education that supplies its demands. People learn to think, by thinking, they are useful by being taught useful things—dependent upon their own resources and not allowing textbooks and encyclopedias to solve their problems.

Those who think that industrial training fails to cultivate the aesthetic faculties and that industry and art are not closely related, listen to the words of Ruskin for he says, "Life without industry is guilt and industry without art is brutality." By "Art," he does not mean mere skill of the hand, nor amusement or trade, but a medium through which the mind may receive and give impressions, appreciate the great works of the past and aid in producing the great works of the future. The arts are so closely interwoven with the industrial pursuits that a decline of one would impoverish the other. You cannot acquaint yourself with manual training until you can read the language of drawing. It is a drawing that tells the machinist how to construct the locomotive, and it is a drawing' that directs every blow of the architect's hammer. Art may be represented by the carpenter with his square and saw, by the blacksmith with his hammer and anvil, as worthily as it is represented by the painter with his brush, or the sculptor with his chisel. So it is, that the useful arts are as fine as the fine arts. It is conceded by all that the fine arts stimulate a feeling of love for the good, the true and beautiful in nature, but it is doubted by some whether the fine arts are manual training, but they are manual training for any activity that employs the hand as its executor, is included in that name. As the poet puts his thoughts and ideals in words and verse, so the artist paints his in form and color, and the sculptor chisels his in marble. Drawing is the one universal language. A knowledge of the mechanical branch, enables the artisan to look at, a drawing of the steam engine, and while the untrained eye would see nothing but meaningless lines and angles, he would see in it that wonderful machine itself; the lines slide into the background, and the engine stands in bold relief before him. A knowledge of another branch enables the artist to take a canvas, of little value in self, and upon its surface reveal to us a new world endowed with the benefits of nature, making life seem large and beautiful and the meaner portion of our nature shrink from sight.

In looking at the beautiful works of art, so immortal is its spirit breathed into us that it stirs like a living voice although the busy brain and hand that fashioned them have long been dust. The poet may describe in glowing words the peasant life of France, but what he accomplishes by fifty pages—Millett does with a flash. You may look at Raphael's St. Cecelia with closed ears, but you still bear its heavenly music. Divert your gaze upon the Madonnas, and you are transported to another world, and breathe the atmosphere of the celestial beings. So great is the influence of the and beautiful that you cannot look upon the two pious figures in the "Angelus" unless you find yourself thinking as seriously and fervently as they.

If these are the emotions produced by looking upon the works of other men, how much greater will be the result by seeing nature with our own eyes, instead of the eyes of the old masters, and painting it with our own hands. Art opens the mind to a study and love of nature, and a love of nature begets a love for its Creator. It is a means of refinement, an ennobler of character, it refreshes our spirits, informs our tastes, and pours beauty into our very existence. These reasons alone should give it place among the factors that educate the world, for an education it truly is, and your character is not complete without it. Why must the Sphinx still be the greatest monument in the world, and why must Raphael's Sistine Madonna still be the most wonderful picture ever produced, and why do the old marble and canvas glow with a depth of color and eloquence that modern times cannot, produce? These facts show that the arts have been slighted and shoved aside to give greater room for more Latin and more Greek and more of the less practical things.

Industrial training demands that male and female education be placed side by side, just as God intended It. He put the sexes beside each other in Eden. He places them beside each other in the family and why not in the schools? No land will be what it ought to be, until woman is given opportunity for thorough and practical education with man. If woman is to be barred from the trades and professions, let her be trained, at least, in that one great art which she alone can perform, she alone can idealize and perfect—domestic science. True it is that when the expert dressmaker or scientific cook is wanted, demand is sometimes made upon a man, and a minority may even excel woman, but to make an artistic garment or to prepare a palatable meal is not one-half of domestic science. It means a knowledge or all kinds of household duties, economical purchase of family supplies, and general household management, and above all, it means the art of homemaking and man can never occupy the chair of this sacred profession. By training in domestic science, one is aroused in the hope of being raised from the lower mission of housekeeping to the higher mission of homemaking; from the lower mission of providing bodily comfort to the higher mission of providing the heart comfort. Woman, if she wishes to influence or rule must labor as the man, and when to be a laborer demands to be less than a woman, is time to cry halt and prepare for defense for an enemy of childhood advances.

History has told the story of the crown. Epic poetry has sung of the sword. The poet has sung the praises of the plow. And domestic science sings the praises of the needle. Skill to wield this small but powerful weapon makes a pleasure out of an occupation that once was drudgery and gives the assurance that all may become artists in their daily work. Teach your fingers cleverness with the needle and you get results which are amazing, you get thrift, a cunning hand, uprightness of soul and you will find that when you complete a garment by sewing scientifically, you have not only added to your bodily comfort, but you have added to your character. The purpose or this training, is to show that it is impossible to hide the results of error and carelessness, that it is noble to despise sham and idleness, and that it is imperative to acquire patience and perseverance. By the acquaintance of this art, the needle that for ages has punctured the eye, pierced the sides, and made terrible massacre, transforms itself from the oppressor to the cheerful slave. Stitch! Stitch! Thomas Hood has it to the music of poetry, let us train our fingers to work harmoniously to his accompaniment.

Cooking is another accomplishment of which no lady can afford to be ignorant,for it is one of the finest adornments that beautify woman, and those who are above going into a kitchen to learn this great art by actually working at it would better migrate to another world where home, industry and husbands are unknown. In cooking, there is no such thing as good or bad luck there is only good or bad management. It demands accuracy, appliance of principles, and its chemistry is as precise as the chemistry of the laboratory. This phase of industrial training commands a scientific knowledge of the nutritive value of foods, composition of simple substances, finding combination of food· stuffs that will secure the greatest strength and growth of body and brain. It demand recognition not only for its usefulness and practical value but also as an educational factor. A kitchen reflects the character of its occupant and what she cooks will tell you what her health and the health of those dependent upon her will be and how she cooks will tell you whether her knowledge of it is scientific, or whether it consists of nothing more than cookbook lore. It is bad cooking and unpalatable food that make the Americans the greatest dyspeptics on earth. Teach scientific cooking, the "whys" of its principles, and the sluggish minds, morbid dispositions and wrecks of humanity will gradually decrease.

The age of ornamental learning is passing away, the age of science and art has come, the age of industrial and practical development has begun. Educate woman in the practical things of life, place the two sexes on an equal footing, and you have a force more powerful than trained regiments. With their trained eyes, they will see into the future and foretell its needs, with their well-equipped minds devise and invent for the next generation, and with their skilled hands imprint their ideas upon matter, thus preserving them forever. This well-drilled army of workers will ever press onward and scale the highest peaks of learning until the mount "Excelsimus" is reached, then man will look backward and see how he has molded raw material into living things, and in his crown of excellence will be emblazoned these words, "Behold what my hand hath wrought," and industrial training will point to the ships that sail the sea, to the machinery that harnesses the torrents, to the bridges that span the streams, to the statutes that breathe forth life, to the homes that ensure happiness, and say “Behold my handiwork.” 

Make, fix and create...

Looking back...

 “Looking back over twenty-five years of growth, the class of 1901 feels that the N. I. is a school which has fostered the idea that work of any kind is honorable—that there is dignity in labor be it that of the mechanic, the artisan, the famer and the housewife or the teacher.”

“This outstanding feature has tended to break down class distinction, and instilled among the students a democratic spirit which fulfills one of the principal objects for which schools are created.” — Ina E. Graham, Ellendale, N. Dakota

350 times?

 27.   Currently, top American CEO's make an average of 350 times the average corporate salary. This compares with 20-30 times the ratio in Europe and Japan. It is interesting that the current economic crisis started in the US where we have been paying too much money for too little expertise, but in Europe and Japan, they've had better corporate leadership for one tenth the expense. 

That should be telling us something. We should discharge the lot of them and hire some people with hands-on practical experience who know without a doubt which end of the wrench fits the nut.

"The civilized boy in school is taught many theories but is not required to put any of them in practice; hence he enters upon the serious duties of life unprepared to discharge any of them." This is from a discussion of the subject of technical education in London, 1885 and is quoted from Charles H. Ham's book Mind and Hand as part of his discussion of the civilizing aspects of the education of the hand:

 

“It may be said that he (the civilized boy) is in real danger of the penitentiary until he learns a profession or a trade. "Of four hundred and eighty-seven convicts consigned to the State Prison for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1879, five-sixths had attended public schools, and the same number were without trades." It is noticeable also that during the same period "not five were received who were what are called mechanics." In the State of Illinois four out of five of the convicts have no handicraft. The fact that the skilled workman is far more likely than the common laborer to keep out of the penitentiary is a powerful argument in favor of joining manual training to the mental exercises of our common schools.”

 

Many of the early advocates of hands-on learning made this point... that education of the hands was a means to lift the moral fiber and integrity of the common man. But they were careful to also point to its value in the lives of all children, even those of the upper classes. Unfortunately, educators only got part of the message. And now we have CEOs in America who make 350 times the salaries of their common employees and feel that they have acquired such unreasonable amounts in some way other than the moral equivalent of theft.

So don't be diverted when people propose that craft training is only for the lower classes. The values inherent in craftsmanship and the expression of hands-on learning and skill can be important to ALL children.

Educators in 1904 and before had noted that students learned faster in less time and retained the knowledge longer when they learned through their hands. But we have made a mockery of education, attempting to increase class sizes and cut costs at the expense of our children's future.

When we know someone is all blown up with self-importance losing touch with reality, we say they are on a "head trip." I have a very strong sense of purpose in writing this. It is a "hand trip." It will take us places. Join me. All you need to do is take greater notice of the things dangling at the ends of your arms. Watch how they make you smarter, more creative, and even wise about physical reality. Then join me in pushing for hands-on learning in schools.

Make, fix and create...

On-line learning?

According to an article on the Columbia University website, How is digital technology changing the way kids' brains learn?

"The average American kid between 8 and 18-years-old spends eight-and-a-half hours a day on a computer, listening to an iPod, watching TV, or paying attention to some form of digital technology. To put that another way, over half of an American child's waking hours are spent plugged-in. To YouTube. To Facebook. To their cell phones, you name it. As they get older, they begin to spend even more time online."

To reverse things with our kids, we must, as early as possible teach them If they are online, they are not learning the things that children have always learned in the past, how to observe directly their environment, and to make from it beautiful and useful things. And so our uncontrolled experiment in the relentless distribution of digital technologies involves the pruning of dendrites, the steady decline of human faculties, and offers profound implications for the future of human culture. 

If you want to know more about fixed and stubborn, pick up a chisel, and if you are unused to the muscularity of its use, give it try and see what you can do with it. Most adults in the US have become trained in the disuse of their muscular faculties. Is that what we want to give to our kids? Or shall we offer them the full range of human expression?

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Make, fix and create...

Making finger-jointed boxes

I am in the process of making finger-jointed boxes for use with art supplies or sewing. Lids and hinging will come next.

Make, fix and create...

Inlaid cherry box

Here is a recently finished project. 

Make fix and create...

 

New Winter woods boxes

 I am finishing a group of new Winter Woods boxes and working on a new book proposal to replace my now 28 year old book Creating Beautiful Boxes With Inlay Techniques.

Make, fix and create...