a swing and a miss.

 As one of my students helped me to understand, we all love learning but may not feel so hot on being taught. Being taught involves power dominance of one person over another, fails to acknowledge what's already known and assumes the ignorance of one party or the other. Learning at its best is self-motivated and driven by a desire to understand.

The Arkansas State Legislature, driven by Trump's former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders passed the "Arkansas Learns Act" which is considered one of the most radical legislative actions in the history of Arkansas education. It purports to increase teacher salaries, but makes no recognition of the value of long time teachers and the learning that takes place in their careers. Teachers strive as we all do, to become better at what we do. Pay teachers all the same, and offer them no incentive for growth, and you've demoted them to the role of babysitter, the purpose being that of allowing children's parents to work three jobs while their kids are sequestered from real life.

A great thing about learning in my own shop is that I get to explore, play, and make decisions on my own. Sometimes I'm mistaken. A great thing about learning is that it can take place even when kids are not being taught and the real purpose of education should not be teaching, but providing the circumstances in which learning takes place. 

When John Runkle at MIT and Calvin Woodward at Washington University, launched formal industrial arts education programs in the US, thus becoming the "fathers of manual and industrial arts," it was because they'd noticed that the city boys then entering institutions of higher learning were ill equipped to understand engineering and math, subjects that were mastered more readily by those students who came from the farm, and had been thus engaged in doing real things. We might still learn something from that. 

Schools must become centers of active learning where kids do real things and where they discover and follow personal interests... places where they are allowed to measure their own growth. And learn... a thing the "Arkansas Learns" smokescreen Act fails to address. There's a petition going round to require the Arkansas Learns Act to be voted upon in the next Arkansas general election. Sign the petition, please. Then let's have another petition insisting upon the reform and renewal of public education.

The box shown has an experimental base using Shaker knobs as feet. They interject a bit of playful whimsey to an otherwise classic style. I'll likely go to plan b.

Make, fix and create...