poor motor function, failing grades?

This report in the New York Times suggests a relationship between motor skills and success in schools.  Motor Skills May Predict Success in School By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Poor motor function, physical inactivity and obesity, the researchers found, contribute independently and in complex interrelationships to academic underachievement. Poor motor function, in other words, may set a child on the developmental track to poor grades.

This was a thing commonly known by earlier generations of educators who saw correlation between the use of the hands and the development of character and intellect.

Thanks, Abigail, for the link.

Johann Bernhard Basedow (1723-1790) wrote,

"It ought to be acknowledged as proper to the idea of education that the children should be occupied with good and useful work--or, at least, with what seems to be good and useful--six hours a day, at least, for those who in later years are to gain their livelihood by manual labour (beginning as young as possible, and increasing in amount little by little); and in the case of those who are to follow intellectual pursuits, at least two hours daily....  

A boy ought to learn the use, to a certain extent, of the tools of the joiner, the carpenter, the turner, the tailor, the mason, the gardener, which are so often needed in the household in a small way" "The higher classes, since they have unfortunately been trained in no hand industry in their youth, find themselves in riper years with no resources except reading and writing."

And to have no resources except reading and writing is a sorry state.

Make, fix and create...