A third point

A third point in educational reform (one emphasized by educational sloyd and progressive educators from the time of Pestalozzi), was the relationship between the concrete and abstract. All abstract studies should be preceded by concrete learning to build a coherent and useful structure of knowledge. Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner and others have called this “scaffolding.” 

For example, we make a huge mistake pushing kids to read before they’re doing real things…. reading is abstract, doing is concrete. Building from abstraction leads to further abstraction, and we never outgrow, nor need we outgrow our connection to the real world. And all children, even those in fantasy worlds of their own making, know the difference between what's real and what's been made up for their amusement or distraction.

How can they possibly know? The real world is full of sensory data, conveyed through the senses without which students are left ill equipped to test the truth of what they are being taught.

In the World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford’s sequel to Shop Class, he’d written in his final chapter of the quote from me used as epigraph of chapter one of his first book, 

“In schools we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement… Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract, and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.” 

We put learning in a context of grades and test scores but in essence are telling students that what they're being taught does not really matter, as it appears contrived and undeserving their full engagement.

Crawford stated in his later book, “I don’t think this is true for every student, but it is true of enough students that we ought to worry about it." Taking a wider view, I contend that ALL students even those deemed most successful in the current model pay a toll for the artificiality of hands-off schooling, and they too, deserve more. In fact, as we turn the world over to new generations, we also deserve more, as I mention in my recent article in Front Porch Republic, AI, Misinformation and Manual Arts Training.

 https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2024/01/ai-misinformation-and-manual-arts-training/

Make, fix and create.