This morning the 5th and 6th grade students began working on topographical models of Mt. St. Helens volcano by using scissors to cut the topographical lines and by making scaled paper "z's" for attaching the various layers. You will understand this better when you see the finished models next week. Cutting exactly on the lines involves some development of skill, but also the application of attention and care. Making the small attachment pieces to hold the various levels in relation to each other involved a review of math, fractions and careful measuring, cutting and folding. Anything done with the hands is an expression either of care or hurry, either craftsmanship or carelessness, and the results are clear.

People for years have been advocating that values be taught in school. Those who speak the loudest in the US proclaim that schools without clearly delineated "Christian" values as expressed through organized prayer have become a moral wasteland, and that organized prayer offers the solution. But the real decline in our values has little to do with our choice of religions but with a more fundamental cause. The denigration of manual labor and ignorance of the values expressed directly through the creations of our human hands, concurrent with the promotion of entertainment, consumption and idle distraction as our primary values, leave our nation, our people and our schools at a tremendous loss. What we do, and whether or not we express care in how we do it is the fundamental choice in the expression of human values. We can profess in words-- belief in one thing or another, but in what we do with our hands as they express creativity, beauty and service, the real qualities of the human soul are revealed.