useful from the child's standpoint...

Yesterday in the wood shop at Clear Spring School, my students walked into class, gathered their guitar parts and went straight to work. I had my hands full answering questions. "Is this OK? Am I doing this right? What do I do now?" I direct some of their questions to their own capacity to observe, for authority must at some point come in their own hands. How does the neck feel as you move your hand down its length? If you move the rasp this way instead of that, what are the results and how do they differ from the results you have gotten so far? I sometimes briefly take the tool and demonstrate what I mean. Sometimes I warn, "Slow down and examine what you've done so far." The students, almost without exception, are excited about the project, because they see it to have potential use to them and because they see their own ideas taking shape in it.

It is a very patent fact that a great deal of the ordinary work which children perform at school, they do not see the value of, i.e., the value either to themselves or to those immediately related to them. If they saw the true value or utility to themselves of any subject, they would take much more interest in acquiring a knowledge of it. Hence in Sloyd it is a principle that the models must not only be useful, but be useful from the child's standpoint. Children are far more interested in making objects when they know that they can make use of them— i.e., they love the labour connected with their manufacture. It is well, too, if the parents regard the work of the children as advantageous and useful. This will be the case if objects be made that can be used in the house. The children will be delighted to assist their parents by doing so, and such acts will foster in them a spirit of unselfishness and consideration for others.– Otto Salomon, the Theory of Educational Sloyd

Today in my own wood shop, I will be applying Danish oil finish to boxes and lining the insides. Boxes I finished yesterday morning are shown in the photo above.

This morning I used the search function in this blog (upper left) to find what I had written about Carl Malmsten, and found a  blog post related to how I use Educational Sloyd in the Wisdom of the Hands program at Clear Spring School. Finding that creative edge may be useful to anyone wanting to incorporate the spirit of sloyd in their school. Educational Sloyd was not intended to be as rigid as it may have seemed to those incapable of exploring its depths.

Make, fix, create, and extend to others the opportunity to learn likewise.