March 2022

I learned yesterday that my new book, "the Wisdom of our Hands" will be published in March 2022, which for me feels like a very long time to wait given the fact that it's been 20 years in the writing. But that's evidently the way some books and the market for them work. Hopefully, the delay will be useful for marketing and preparing the market for the book's success. 

I'll have to be patient and find other things to write about. One thing that interests me is the history of progressive education, and how the torch has been passed along from one generation to the next. It started with Juan Luis Vives and was passed along to Comenius, then others. You recognize the passing of the torch in what one author has been quoted by the next.

The word "progressive" can be easily misunderstood as meaning "progress" which tends to be whatever is "new" on the educational landscape. But we've learned that new is not necessarily good. In fact, far from it.

Progressive education is actually about the inward and outward development of the child following patterns of natural development, as contrasted with ideas and ideals wrongheadedly imposed by adults. So the history of progressive education, quickly told, would be a worthy tale to be told. Each of the fathers and mothers of progressive education played as important a role in stripping away destructive patterns as in modeling new ways. 

Vives, for example, even though educated himself in Latin, insisted that education might be exercised in the vernacular, the native and natural language of the lower classes rather than in Latin or Greek. In that, he recognized the inherent value of each child, and the value of the culture within which that child was being brought up.

In the meantime, and as I await March, 2022, I'll stay busy and the time will fly by.

Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning likewise.