shallow, steeped in artificiality, and devoid of interconnectedness...

I am sorry to have to use those terms in relation to American education. In this week's Time Magazine, Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, took issue with the SAT as being "part hoax, part fraud." The same can be said of American education, where too much information is reduced to yes, no, right and wrong answers, whereas in real life oversimplification of reality is not advisable.

Box by my student Richard Bell as featured in Lee Valley Newsletter

When you make something from wood, or play an instrument, there are a variety of approaches that can be taken, and there are decisions that can be made that lead to interesting and personalized results, that build creative judgement and expertise.

As I was on my evening walk last night, I thought about the odious word problems presented in math. There was one from the first SAT administered in 1926 in the margins of the Botstein's essay. It goes like this: "If a package containing twenty cigarettes costs fifteen cents, how many cigarettes can be bought for 90 cents?" It doesn't say how many multiple choices were offered or what they were, but the word problems offered in math are simply an attempt to show math used in contrived context in artificialized learning. The problem of word problems is obvious to anyone who has done math to solve real world problems as offered in wood shop.

Botstein asks that new tests be developed to replace the SAT. He says, "The truth is that the only legitimate test is one in which a question is put forward and an answer is required with no options or hints." I suggest that the only legitimate test is one in which the answer applies directly to real life, and its correctness is measured in the success of doing real things, not by the College Board. The questions to which there are right and wrong answers are the ones that are wrong to be asking kids if we are concerned about developing a lifelong love of learning.

Today I am signing a contract for another book, will travel to buy walnut for box making and will prepare for a weekend class. The tool box shown in the photo above was made by one of my students at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I remember when he worked on it is class and I suggested he send it to the Lee Valley Newsletter. It was published in this week's edition.

Make, fix and create...

That we learn best from (our own) discovery...

I am currently reading John Dewey for inspiration, and his words from an unexplored continent that reinforces common sense derived from my study of the manual arts.

John Dewey's book School and Society had enormous influence at the beginning of the 20th century, and Dewey noted the incredible economic and societal changes that were taking place due to the industrial revolution. These days, enormous social and societal changes are taking place to to the computer, digital device revolution. And so we must look back over one century ago for guidance on how to maintain a society and the intelligence and character of citizens in that society. It may not make sense that we do so for those who think they learn best only from what others say to them. But as they say, there is nothing new under the sun. We may have new devices, but the length of a thought is no longer than the length of a sentence and the sentence is no longer at best than a human breath, and we can learn from a re-discovery of John Dewey. His books are like a forgotten continent of education.

We are what our bodies make us, and having digital devices may connect us in new ways, but they do little to actually change who we are as human beings. Let's see what we can learn from an earlier time.

Back of the factory system lies the household and neighborhood system. Those of us who are here today need go back only one, two, or at most three generations, to find a time when the household was practically the center in which were carried on, or about which were clustered, all the typical forms of industrial occupation. The clothing worn was for the most part made in the house; the members of the household were usually familiar also with the shearing of the sheep, the carding and spinning of the wool, and the plying of the loom. Instead of pressing a button and flooding the house with electric light, the whole process of getting illumination was followed in its toilsome length from the killing of the animal and the trying of fat to the making of wicks and dipping of candles. The supply of flour, of lumber, of foods, of building materials, of household furniture, even of metal ware, of nails, hinges, hammers, etc., was produced in the immediate neighborhood, in shops which were constantly open to inspection and often centers of neighborhood congregation. The entire industrial process stood revealed, from the production on the farm of the raw materials till the finished article was actually put to use. Not only this, but practically every member of the household had his own share in the work. The children, as they gained in strength and capacity, were gradually initiated into the mysteries of the several processes. It was a matter of immediate and personal concern, even to the point of actual participation. We cannot overlook the factors of discipline and of character-building involved in this kind of life: training in habits of order and of industry, and in the idea of responsibility, of obligation to do something, to produce something, in the world. There was always something which really needed to be done, and a real necessity that each member of the household should do his own part faithfully and in co-operation with others. -- John Dewey, School and Society, 1899

From an educational policy angle, we have become such a nation of idiots. At one time our brains and hands were full of creative possibility through which we developed and exercised both intellect and character, but we have become overly dependent in too many cases on the checklist of information contained within our devices and the servers to which they are connected. The maker movement is one of the ways that Americans are attempting to regain our creative inclination, that was dulled blunt by our schooling. There will be a Mini-Maker Faire in New Orleans April 5. It seems that what kids don't get in homes or school anymore has to be stimulated by others, and the natural inclination of children to make and create is irrepressible if once recognized, encouraged and launched.

On another subject, I recognized an article in the Lee Valley Newsletter as being from one of my students at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. Making a box for some special tools.

Make, fix and create...

Today in the wood shop...

This is spring break week at Clear Spring, so I've been attempting to get some time in my own wood shop. But I have clean-up to do at school and had a crew here yesterday installing replacement windows on the house. If you are a craftsman, it is difficult to watch others work without feeling compelled to lend a hand. It is one of the hazards of being somewhat skilled, and having a sense of quality in how things should be done. Fortunately, the crew and I have come to terms with each other through other rounds of installation, and they take my interference with some degree of friendliness and respect.

Otto Salomon had said that if a person knew how to carve a parcel pin or cut dovetails he (or she) would become a much better consumer, and hold the work of others in society to a higher standard, and so by all students learning the manual art of woodworking, the whole human culture would rise to a higher level.

In our ongoing struggle with AEP/SWEPCO, we keep encountering a mountain of deception and ineptitude. The have asked the Public Service Commission for a rehearing, as they are used to getting their own way and are offended when the Commission balks at giving them everything they want. In fact, they found fault with the judge's demand that they alert bee-keepers in time for them to take precautionary action before spraying toxic herbicides to keep the right of way sterile of natural forest growth in perpetuity.

They claimed that there is no problem with them running the extra high voltage power line close to a school because the Rogers, Arkansas School Board did not object. They failed to note that the Rogers School board is represented by the same law firm that is trying to force through this power line. Of course that would raise a serious question as to whether or not that lawyer is giving his best to one client while ignoring his equally serious responsibility to the other. No doubt they've fabricated some excuses for that.

Please forgive me for going over all this power line stuff in a blog dedicated to hands on learning. But there are lessons related to the hands that can be acquired by examining what amounts to a mountain of malfeasance, and a low point of incomprehensible incompetence. Fabricating excuses is not the same as making real stuff.

In crafting real things, rather than sitting on the sidelines of learning, you learn that there is such a thing as truth, and that all things have cumulative consequences. You learn how to either fix mistakes or forgive them and move on. You learn your own interconnectedness with community and that what you do has real effects that can have unforeseen complications. You learn to care for materials, and to care for the earth from which all materials have come. And you learn some self respect... the kind of self respect that would make an attorney think twice before using his position as lawyer for a school board to keep that school board from protecting kids from the impact of an extra high voltage power line.

But maybe that's just me. I know that craftsmanship can lead to unreasonable expectations in a society that is in free fall. Turning things around requires us to take matters into our own hands.

On the very same subject, the president of Bard College wrote an editorial in Time Magazine this week claiming that SAT's are part hoax and part fraud. When students are called upon to do real things no artificially fabricated testing is required. the college president thinks we need some new and more accurate means of testing. I suggest a solution that would likely not occur to a college president... that schools approximate real life and for kids to do real things.

Today, I will put hinges on the silverware chest and send it off to American Woodworker Magazine for beauty shots.

Make, fix and create...

one more day to enter and win.

Fine Woodworking is having a give away of my new special box making edition that features 5 of my boxes and 4 by fellow box making author, Strother Purdy. To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on the blog post announcing the contest. The winner will be selected from among comment received before 12:01 AM March 19, 2014. Go to this page to comment and possibly win.

On the box making front, I am taking trial beauty shots of the silverware chest for American Woodworker Magazine in the hopes it can be photographed here rather than shipped.

I think the box turned out rather nice.

Make, fix and create...

lost in wonder

We had yet another snowstorm yesterday, with about 6 inches of heavy wet snow. The ground temperature was high enough that it melted on the roads, but blanketed the grass, the forest floor and the trees, that are beautiful under the weight of fallen snow. This morning I'm taking a friend to the airport in Springfield and going to Grizzly to buy a replacement motor for my 6" x 48" belt sander.

The following is from John Dewey's School and Society:

"When occupations in the school are conceived in this broad and generous way, I can only stand lost in wonder at the objections so often heard, that such occupations are out of place in the school because they are materialistic, utilitarian, or even menial in their tendency. It sometimes seems to me that those who make these objections must live in quite another world. The world in which most of us live is a world in which everyone has a calling and occupation, something to do. Some are managers and others are subordinates. But the great thing for one as for the other is that each shall have had the education which enables him to see within his daily work all there is in it of large and human significance. How many of the employed are today mere appendages to the machines which they operate! This may be due in part to the machine itself or the regime which lays so much stress upon the products of the machine; but it is certainly due in large part to the fact that the worker has had no opportunity to develop his imagination and his sympathetic insight as to the social and scientific values found in his work. At present, the impulses which lie at the basis of the industrial system are either practically neglected or positively distorted during the school period. Until the instincts of construction and production are systematically laid hold of in the years of by scientific methods, we certainly are in no position even to locate the source of our economic evils, much less to deal with them effectively."

No doubt the pinheads of today would claim that Dewey was a socialist and that therefore his methods were not to be trusted. They would have said the same thing about Otto Salomon for having a concern for the dignity of all labor. As a craftsman, I know the pleasure that can be found in making beautiful and useful things, and I've heard from friends that they feel something missing from their own lives. There is much to be said for simply plunging in to some kind of creative opportunity.

Make, fix, and create...

Dewey's occupation

Following the lead of Froebel in his understanding of the role of occupations in transforming the lives of children, Dewey said the following:

"The occupation supplies the child with a genuine motive; it gives him experience at first hand; it brings him into contact with realities. It does all this, but in addition it is liberalized throughout by translation into its historic and social values and scientific equivalencies. With the growth of the child's mind in power and knowledge it ceases to be a pleasant occupation merely and becomes more and more a medium, an instrument, an organ of understanding—and is thereby transformed. This, in turn, has its bearing upon the teaching of science. Under present conditions, all activity, to be successful, has to be directed somewhere and somehow by the scientific expert—it is a case of applied science. This connection should determine its place in education. It is not only that the occupations, the so-called manual or industrial work in the school, give the opportunity for the introduction of science which illuminates them, which makes them material, freighted with meaning, instead of being mere devices of hand and eye; but that the scientific insight thus gained becomes an indispensable instrument of free and active participation in modern social life. Plato somewhere speaks of the slave as one who in his actions does not express his own ideas, but those of some other man. It is our social problem now, even more urgent than in the time of Plato, that method, purpose, understanding, shall exist in the consciousness of the one who does the work, that his activity shall have meaning to himself." -- John Dewey, School and Society, 1899

It was my own sense that the wood shop was integrally connected to all things that led me to devise the Wisdom of the Hands project at Clear Spring School. And I learned through my own reading and exploration that the simple notion was not new to me, but rather had been a strong and neglected element in educational thought since the 17th century. Occupations were ways that children transformed the materials in their surroundings into more useful and beautiful form and were thus transformed from being idle consumers to being active celebrants and participants in society at large.

My 6 x 48" belt sander motor started smoking while I was at work yesterday making Froebel gift boxes. I must now either buy a new one, or replace the motor. The difference in cost is about $250 dollars. The difference in aggravation leads me toward fixing it, rather than replacing it. In buying a whole tool, I would face assembly of it, and then disposal of all the packaging. Fixing it will offer some level of satisfaction, that disposing of packaging will not.

The child whittling the stick forms hypotheses as he tests the angle of the blade against the hardness and grain of the wood. He observes carefully, lest he slice a finger on the sharp blade. If the blade ceases to cut with some level of ease, he sharpens it, again, paying attention to the proper angle of the blade on the stone. If he has been encouraged to be attentive to such things, his work is not a mindless thing. It becomes a creative, scientific investigation of material. How is it shaped? What thing of practical beauty can I make from it? And as Otto Salomon had pointed out, the value of the carpenter's work is in the object the carpenter makes. The value of the pupil's work lies in the development of the character and intellect of the child.

Make, fix, and create...

utilizing the social inclination

The following is from John Dewey, emphasizing the value of the manual arts and collaborative activities in schooling, and literally spelling out a revolution, that we as a nation embarked upon, and then chose to completely ignore as politicians and policy makers became obsessed with standardized testing.

"Upon the ethical side, the tragic weakness of the present school is that it endeavors to prepare future members of the social order in a medium in which the conditions of the social spirit are eminently wanting.

"The difference that appears when occupations are made the articulating centers of school life is not easy to describe in words; it is a difference in motive, of spirit and atmosphere. As one enters a busy kitchen in which a group of children are actively engaged in the preparation of food, the psychological difference, the change from more or less passive and inert recipiency and restraint to one of buoyant outgoing energy, is so obvious as fairly to strike one in the face. Indeed, to those whose image of the school is rigidly set the change is sure to give a shock. But the change in social attitude is equally marked. The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. Indeed, almost the only measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad sense of that term—a comparison of results in the recitation or in the examination to see which child has succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating, the maximum of information. So thoroughly is this the prevailing atmosphere that for one child to help another in his task has become a school crime. Where the school work consists in simply learning lessons, mutual assistance, instead of being the most natural form of co-operation and association, becomes a clandestine effort to relieve one's neighbor of his proper duties. Where active work is goings on, all this is changed. Helping others, instead of being a form of charity which impoverishes the recipient, is simply an aid in setting free the powers and furthering the impulse of the one helped. A spirit of free communication, of interchange of ideas, suggestions, results, both successes and failures of previous experiences, becomes the, dominating note of the recitation. So far as emulation enters in, it is in the comparison of individuals, not with regard to the quantity of information personally absorbed, but with reference to the quality of work done—the genuine community standard of value. In an informal but all the more pervasive way, the school life organizes itself on a social basis." -- John Dewey, School and Society, 1899.

You can see the impact of our schooling in social attitudes throughout the US. There is a tendency among some to demonize those they claim to be a burden on society. But if we understand that one of schooling's most important functions is to build society rather than to tear it into competitive units, we begin to understand the importance of wood shops and the manual arts. If we begin to understand the role of the hands in the development of character and intellect we know to ask children to do real things in partnership with others and create collaborative learning environments in which they may do so.

Here in Eureka Springs on March 29, a group of citizens plans to parade with their sidearms openly displayed. It is clearly a case of anti-socialism and public display of false bravado as a disguise for cowardice. In schools we keep pushing the competitiveness between individuals rather than the development of reasonable social interchange, and this, sadly, is what we get, individuals so enamored with their own power to kill, and they will make others uncomfortable in their presence to make a point. How did the possession of dangerous weapons become the mark of bravery, when to act unarmed is certainly a far greater sign of it?

I am holding off on applying finish to the silverware chest for American Woodworker until I have the go ahead from my editor, Tim Johnson. As the chest stands now, I can go back and restage particular shots if necessary. But when the finish is applied, the color of the wood will be transformed and there will be no going back. With the addition of a shaped maple lid lift tab, the chest is nearly complete.

Make, fix and create...

The real school

The most ridiculous thing about modern schooling is that it virtually ignores John Dewey's masterpiece of education, School and Society, which outlined how schools might become a part of real life rather than a sequestering of children from it. Part of the way that school was to bring real life within its walls was through the manual arts. The following is simply clipped almost at random from this book:

If you have the end in view of forty or fifty children learning certain set lessons, to be recited to a teacher, your discipline must be devoted to securing that result. But if the end in view is the development of a spirit of social co-operation and community life, discipline must grow out of and be relative to such an aim. There is little of one sort of order where things are in process of construction; there is a certain disorder in any busy workshop; there is not silence; persons are not engaged in maintaining certain fixed physical postures; their arms are not folded; they are not holding their books thus and so. They are doing a variety of things, and there is the confusion, the bustle, that results from activity. But out of the occupation, out of doing things that are to produce results, and out of doing these in a social and co-operative way, there is born a discipline of its own kind and type. Our whole conception of school discipline changes when we get this point of view. In critical moments we all realize that the only discipline that stands by us, the only training that becomes intuition, is that got through life itself. That we learn from experience, and from books or the sayings of others only as they are related to experience, are not mere phrases. But the school has been so set apart, so isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives of life, that the place where children are sent for discipline is the one place in the world where it is most difficult to get experience—the mother of all discipline worth the name. It is only when a narrow and fixed image of traditional school discipline dominates that one is in any danger of overlooking that deeper and infinitely wider discipline that comes from having a part to do in constructive work, in contributing to a result which, social in spirit, is none the less obvious and tangible in form—and hence in a form with reference to which responsibility may be exacted and accurate judgment passed.

The great thing to keep in mind, then, regarding the introduction into the school of various forms of active occupation, is that through them the entire spirit of the school is renewed. It has a chance to affiliate itself with life, to become the child's habitat, where he learns through directed living, instead of being only a place to learn lessons having an abstract and remote reference to some possible living to be done in the future. It gets a chance to be a miniature community, an embryonic society. -- John Dewey, School and Society, 1899

Today in the wood shop, I will be finishing the silverware chest and then work to complete the step by step instructions that will complete the article for American Woodworker magazine. The photo above shows routing the recesses for hinges to fit. At left you can see the chest sanded and ready for Danish oil.

Make, fix, create, and help make schools the place where children may do so, also.

following the interests of the child

Yesterday in wood shop, the CSS lower elementary students made toy clocks to practice telling time. They can set the hands however they want, but the clock faces they made and arranged themselves. It is simply a way of reinforcing a skill that is being lost among some children, and it was fun. Those who got done were offered the chance to make a real working clock with movements I had on hand.

My middle school students have been engaged in elective study of the Cherokee which followed a visit to a local museum. They each have clan identities and in wood shop asked if they could make wooden staffs with their totem wood and clan animals at the top. They asked if they could make the staffs from woods we gathered ourselves, so that meant a break in the planned activities for a hike in the woods for them to select materials from a pine thicket of trees gathered too closely together for any of them to reach significant size. When you follow the interests of the child, it will not lead to isolated, dull and encapsulated learning, but instead lead to what may seem much more like popcorn exploding all at once in the pan.

William James asked:

“Can we now formulate any general principle by which the later and more artificial interests connect themselves with these early ones that the child brings with him to the school?

Fortunately, we can: there is a very simple law that relates the acquired and the native interests with each other.

Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, together: the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing. The odd circumstance is that the borrowing does not impoverish the source, the objects taken together being more interesting, perhaps, than the originally interesting portion was by itself.

This is one of the most striking proofs of the range of application of the principle of association of ideas in psychology. An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total. As there is no limit to the various associations into which an interesting idea may enter, one sees in how many ways an interest may be derived.”--William James, Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals.

On another subject, I visited the new metals building at ESSA yesterday to see where it is now in construction. It is really going to be a work of art in its own right. It was designed by Architect and ESSA board member Dave McKee. Being one of the small group of local artists who founded the Eureka Springs School of the Arts,  for me it feels great to be witness to such progress. We now have a 50 plus acre campus, and a variety of studios, with plans for further growth. One problem with following the interests of the child. They will always lead to the arts in some form or fashion. Children (and adults if given an early inclination and capacity for it) have an interest in making beautiful and useful things.

Make, fix, create and enable others to do so.

An example from Dewey's experimental school

The following is from John Dewey's School and Society. This would be far too long to copy without infringement except that the book is now beyond copyright protection and the author no longer living.

There is nothing which strikes more oddly upon the average intelligent visitor than to see boys as well as girls of ten, twelve, and thirteen years of age engaged in sewing and weaving. If we look at this from the standpoint of preparation of the boys for sewing on buttons and making patches, we get a narrow and utilitarian conception—a basis that hardly justifies giving prominence to this sort of work in the school. But if we look at it from another side, we find that this work gives the point of departure from which the child can trace and follow the progress of mankind in history, getting an insight also into the materials used and the mechanical principles historic development of man is recapitulated. For example, the children are first given the raw material— the flax, the cotton plant, the wool as it comes from the back of the sheep (if we could take them to the place where the sheep are sheared, so much the better).

Then a study is made of these materials from the standpoint of their adaptation to the uses to which they may be put. For instance, a comparison of the cotton fiber with wool fiber is made. I did not know, until the children told me, that the reason for the late development of the cotton industry as compared with the woolen is that the cotton fiber is so very difficult to free by hand from the seeds. The children in one group worked thirty minutes freeing cotton fibers from the boll and seeds, and succeeded in getting out less than one ounce. They could easily believe that one person could gin only one pound a day by hand, and could understand why their ancestors wore woolen instead of cotton clothing. Among other things discovered as affecting their relative utilities was the shortness of the cotton fiber as compared with that of wool, the former averaging, say, one-third of an inch in length, while the latter run to three inches in length; also that the fibers of cotton are smooth and do not cling together, while the wool has a certain roughness which makes the fibers stick, thus assisting the spinning. The children worked this out for themselves with the actual material, aided by questions and suggestions from the teacher. They then followed the processes necessary for working the fibers up into cloth. They reinvented the first frame for carding the wool—a couple of boards with sharp pins in them for scratching it out. They redevised the simplest process for spinning the wool—a pierced stone or some other weight through which the wool is passed, and which as it is twirled draws out the fiber; next the top, which was spun on the floor, while the children kept the wool in their hands until it was gradually drawn out and wound upon it.

Then the children are introduced to the invention next in historic order, working it out experimentally, thus seeing its necessity, and tracing its effects, not only upon that particular industry, but upon modes of social life—in this way passing in review the entire process up to the present complete loom, and all that goes with the application of science in the use of our present available powers. I need not speak of the science involved in this—the study of the fibers, of geographical features, the conditions under which raw materials are grown, the great centers of manufacture and distribution, the physics involved in the machinery of production; nor, again, of the historical side—the influence which these inventions have had upon humanity.

You can concentrate the history of all mankind into the evolution of the flax, cotton, and wool fibers into clothing. I do not mean that this is the only, or the best, center. But it is true that certain very real and important avenues to the consideration of the history of the race are thus opened—that the mind is introduced to much more fundamental and controlling influences than appear in the political and chronological records that usually pass for history. Now, what is true of this one instance of fibers used in fabrics (and, of course, I have only spoken of one or two elementary phases of that) is true in its measure of every material used in every occupation, and of the processes employed. The occupation supplies the child with a genuine motive; it gives him experience at first hand; it brings him into contact with realities. It does all this, but in addition it is liberalized throughout by translation into its historic and social values and scientific equivalencies. With the growth of the child's mind in power and knowledge it ceases to be a pleasant occupation merely and becomes more and more a medium, an instrument, an organ of understanding—and is thereby transformed.

Dewey went on to describe the essential role of crafts in developing the child's interest in scientific exploration and discovery.

Make, fix, create, teach others to do so, and make creativity and rediscovery an essential part of schooling.

this day only.

Each moment is a special flower that will not bloom again.

Today I plan to attend the Arkansas Governor's conference on Tourism to rally with friends and to support our efforts to stop the unwarranted power line from damaging the beauty of our home.

Ironically, the state law requires the transmission power line applicant to analyze the economic effect of such projects on small local communities, and that is one clause of state law that the Public Service Commission completely ignores. The power company admittedly did no analysis, and has maintained that making this place ugly will have no effect on tourism. The stupidity of that cannot be processed by any reasonable human being, but here we're dealing with agencies and corporations. A license for stupidity goes with that territory.

School boards too, like corporations and agencies, can be out of touch. The following is a thing John Dewey wrote in School and Society, and in it you will find reflected the concepts presented about occupations as taught by Froebel, Cygnaeus, and Salomon.

By occupation is not meant any kind of "busy work" or exercises that may be given to a child in order to keep him out of mischief or idleness when seated at his desk. By occupation I mean a mode of activity on the part of the child which reproduces, or runs parallel to, some form of work carried on in social life. In the University Elementary School these occupations are represented by the shop work with wood and tools; by cooking, sewing, and by the textile work herewith reported upon. The fundamental point in the psychology of an occupation is that it maintains a balance between the intellectual and the practical phases of experience. As an occupation it is active or motor; it finds expression through the physical organs— the eyes, hands, etc. But it also involves continual observation of materials, and continual planning and reflection, in order that the practical or executive side may be successfully carried on. Occupation as thus conceived must, therefore, be carefully distinguished from work which educates primarily for a trade. It differs because its end is in itself; in the growth that comes from the continual interplay of ideas and their embodiment in action, not in external utility.

At the end of the day I hope to proceed with photos for my article for American Woodworker magazine. I took photos of assembling the silverware chest yesterday, and as is usual with glue up operations, getting things just right became of greater importance to me than risking failure while obsessing over photos. I may have missed one that will need to be re-staged. In any case, let this day not catch you with your hands underutilized in learning. When what you've learned is measured by resultant creativity you've expressed real learning...

While in the Bentonville, Arkansas area this afternoon, I drove over with friends to see the size of the power line that AEP/SWEPCO had planned to pass through my small acreage from one end to the other and just 75 feet from my deck. It is enormous. Some may have thought I was joking about the size of it. What you see as small dots of orange are my wife and daughter and friends dwarfed by the monstrous extra high voltage tower. Can you understand why we would fight like cats to keep this unnecessary monstrosity from marring our landscape? On a positive note, in his speech to the tourist convention, the Arkansas governor called us heroes for fighting this thing.

Make, fix, create. Teach others to do so, too.

people simply need art...

Home

Cities need arts, and all citizens need to be involved in the making of beautiful and useful things. It is transformational. The young man or woman standing at the lathe is changing the shape of wood, but also changing the shape of his or her own life, and shifting his or her relationship to others. To make the turn from consumer to maker is a powerful transformation.

Unfortunately creative acts breed intolerance for ugliness. I really don't want everyone to come to Arkansas and trash this place. What I do want is for folks to make Houston beautiful again. There is more shopping there than anyone could care for. There are too many cars waiting in lines going nowhere fast. Where folks in their vehicles escape from the lines, they speed ahead at breakneck speeds as though to make up for lost time and to remedy the sense of impatience and constraint that has grown within.

There is recompense for this in the making of beautiful and useful things that slow down the process of thought to the point at which time ceases to pass. It can take years of purposeful neglect for a beautiful forest to arise. And it will take years of careful cultivation to restore beauty to a place that has been trashed by too much shopping, too many cars and too few personal acts of making art.

If you live in the beauty of nature, participation in the arts is not quite so essential to the human spirit.  You may have the opportunity to bask in creation. But if you live in a city like Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Chicago, or Detroit, engagement in the arts can  allow you to cope with your situation or even better yet, help you to begin to transform the whole of the place you live.  Artist Theaster Gates was on the Stephen Colbert show on Friday, to make that point.

Make, fix and create... teach others to do likewise.

something one might vehemently dislike

a·nath·e·ma

əˈnaTHəmə/

noun

1. 1.

   something or someone that one vehemently dislikes.

   
   

I've been in Houston, Texas for a cousin's wife's funeral and I am reminded of all that I love about Arkansas. My home is so beautiful. When we go someplace in the car, it is through wooded valleys or on roads winding among mountaintops. We see hills and forests, and then I arrive at a place like this where there are too many cars moving much too fast or much too slowly, one extreme or the other. The sky is a tangle of wires strewn with purpose, but binding the earth which is left barren beneath.

It would be impolite for me to tell Houstonians that their place in the scheme of things is rather unpleasant except for the private escapes provided by back yards and neighborhoods. But that, it seems is the case. People know it and make no apologies for it. People here manage to escape the ugliness by retreat into quiet neighborhoods and easy access to distraction. My cousin has a large greenhouse in his backyard where his wife had purposefully created her own creative paradise. The inside of his home is filled with art gathered over a lifetime, and that, too, helps to compensate for hazards and frustrations of traffic and the challenges of coping with urban life.

If you are stuck in a place like this, seek refuge in beauty of your own creation. For those living in Houston at the moment, check out the opportunity that woodturning will provide. A friend of mine, Alan Lacer, will be here to teach with the Gulf States Woodturners this month.

Fortunately, I'll be home for classes on Monday morning.

Make, fix, create, and help others to do so.

grasping...

Anaxagoras contemplates the Universe

In discussing the mind, we come to the best understanding of it through the use of metaphor and analogy. When we describe the acquisition of an idea, we say that we grasp it, thus using language of the human hand as though that idea is an object and the mind is an abstract hand with fingers exploring tangible and tactile qualities.

I am on my way to a funeral in Houston and had dreams last night in which I was viewing the interconnectedness of all things.

Our hands in their exploration of objects inform us of the separation between them. It is by making things from raw materials in our own hands, that we come to grips with the origins of distinct objects.

The wooden box is not distinct in full form from the forest in which the wood grew. Nor is it completely distinct from its ultimate destination as it's abandoned to decay and to return to the soil from which the forest came. By being involved deeply as a creator, we come to grip  with the origins and destinations of all things. By crafting objects in our own hands, with our eyes directed toward the capture of beauty and the creation of utility, we begin to grasp the interconnectedness of all things.

When we begin to do so  conventional things begin to fall apart. English class is no longer just the study of language. History is not only a dry recitation of the past. Mathematics is not just numbers, as the student has learned it has use in the interconnectedness of all things. And woodworking in school is not just making objects from wood, but instead is the process through which the child begins to grasp the interconnectedness of all things.

As we make things of useful beauty, with the simple hope that they will last through the ages, we are in alignment with creation and the forces of the universe.

Make, fix, create, and share with others the opportunity to do so.

resources...

I have been reading David Whittaker's book, The Impact and Legacy of Educational Sloyd, and have arrived at the point of conclusion. There is little he could say here that I've not witnessed in my own hands, and those who take the time to observe the relationship between the use of the hands and the development of intellect will also know what we know. And yet, it is good to hear what we know expressed in the words that others have used.

For instance (and as quoted by Whittaker) Juhani Pallasmaa, one of Finland's most distinguished architects said "philosophers regretfully continue to emphasize and value conceptual, intellectual and verbal knowledge over the tacit and non-conceptual wisdom of our embodied processes." Whittaker quotes philosopher Honore de Balzac as follows "A hand is not simply part of the body but expression and continuation of a thought which must be captured and conveyed." One single book about the hands can lead the reader to new resources worthy of exploration.

I want to remind my readers to participate in the book-a-zine giveaway on the Fine Woodworking Website, in which you be one of two winners to receive a free signed copy of a new magazine issue featuring boxes by Strother Purdy and me.

I am nearing the time to assemble the Silverware chest to be featured in an article in American Woodworker magazine. The photo above shows the interesting way I devised for the three piece top panel to fit.

On another related matter, AEP/SWEPCO has hired a public relations firm from Washington, DC  to fix the problems created by their own malfeasance in proposing an extra high voltage power line through Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri. The PR specialist visited area newspapers claiming that the power line would bring economic benefits to their local communities. I would recommend that she actually read their environmental impact statement before making any such claims. The particular public relations firm hired by AEP/SWEPCO, Capital Results, claims as their motto, "Perception is reality." This again is an example of what Matti Bergström called "finger blindness" in that those who've not had experience in the actual physical reality of crafting beautiful and useful objects are narrowed in their capacity to perceive intrinsic values. Just as those who are blind of eye cannot see objects, the finger blind are blind to the value of precious things and important cultural relationships.

Make, fix, create, share and teach...

compare and contrast: senseless destruction, purposeful creation

The photo comes courtesy of Dogwood Alliance. and shows "Enviva logging site in Northampton, NC. Sites like these are Ground Zero for the destructive rush towards unsustainable biomass energy."

The trees stacked at roadside represent thousands of acres of American forests stripped barren of natural forest growth. This mountain of material will be chipped, pelletized and burned for power and heat in Europe. The assumption of biomass energy is that once forests are cut, they will grow back given enough time, and so it is considered "green energy" and "renewable" by those who are dead from the neck down.

This level of stupidity can't be blamed on the lack of woodworking education in schools, but that we have schools that foster complaisance and allow kids to be out of touch with nature, creates a culture in which money drives all and our natural environment is available for corporate plunder. Anyone who is not disgusted with this would most surely be an example of finger-blindness, in which all reasonable cultural values are distorted by failure in the engagement of the hands in learning and creating.

We have had no school at all this week due to a snow storm that hit on Sunday night. In addition to heavy snow, severe cold has keep the snow and ice on the streets and roads longer than is usuall for Arkansas.

I've been working on an article for American Woodworker, and have nearly arrived at the assembly point in making a rather large box for silver, and the photo  shows sanding the curved surfaces for the front of the box.

On another front, I had an interesting conversation with a wood shop teacher yesterday who is has been teaching box making. His administration puts serious limits on student use of power tool, particularly the table saw. His 100+ students love box making, and he asked if I could help with a box design that could be completed by students using the band saw and drill press to form the joints.

This is a design that could work.The holes are drilled after the box is assembled and are for 3/16 in. dowels to lock the joint.

On another box making note, Fine Woodworking is giving away two copies of the new book-a-zine featuring wooden boxes done by fellow Taunton author, Strother Purdy and me. Each copy is signed by each of us. Go to this link and leave a comment. Every comment left on the FWW blog post has a chance to win.

Make, fix and create... then teach others what they can do.

discovery

The word heuristic refers to learning that is based on experience and discovery. As an example, I used a technique yesterday that I discovered on my own as a way of installing a new zero clearance insert in my router table. Th old one had worn over time... a thing that happens a router bit spinning at 22,000 RPM continuously hurls sawdust against it. My technique for installing zero clearance inserts involves the making of a log cabin routing template.

I call it a log cabin template because its structure is secured by overlapping corners that can be simply glued or nailed together log cabin style around an object. The making of this jig forms an exact representation of the object the jig is built around, thus creating a rigid structure around a negative space that can be used to guide a router in forming the exact same negative space in another material. This process may seem complex and abstract, but it is extremely accurate and effective. I use the same thickness of stock as chinking between the corners to provide a smooth guide surface for the bearing on the router bit.

Build the log cabin structure around the object. I made the zero clearance inserts first and used the log cabin corners to attach parts together cut from thin plywood.

Clamp the template to the surface you plan to route for the insert to fit. Use a router bit with bearing to follow the inside surface of the template and rout to the desired depth. Once the zero clearance insert has had its corners rounded to the required radius, put it in place and raise the router to cut through. To fit this bit, I first had to rout through with a smaller one to remove the material at the center of the insert.

With a guard over the cutter, I use this insert to support stock to form tenons on the ends of stock for making the fronts and backs of small boxes.

The things that you learn heuristically, through personal experience and discovery are so much more powerful in shaping character and intellect than those things that are simply told to you. It's a shame educational policy makers seem to have not noticed.

Yesterday, as I was reading David Whittaker's book, the Impact and Legacy of Educational Sloyd,  I found that my own writings had been mentioned in it, and had served to point out the impact of Educational Sloyd on American education. My own contribution amounts to nearly 3 pages in the book.

Make, fix, create and inspire.

To neither cramp nor deaden...

The following is from John Dewey's "Pedagogic Creed."

"I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends.

I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

I believe that the school must represent present life life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.

I believe that education which does not occur through forms of life, forms that are worth living for their own sake, is always a poor substitute for the genuine reality, and tends to cramp and to deaden."

One of the things that makes woodworking at Clear Spring School so exciting for students is that in the wood shop, everything is real. The tools are the same ones that adults would use. The processes are the same that craftsmen have used for ages. The materials are real, and once modified in some way, retain the condition to which they are shaped, whether by error or intent. The level of cooperation required to attain success is real and demanding. When a child makes something in the wood shop, he or she is able to self-assess the results of effort, and carry home useful objects representative of real learning.

We have had another snow and ice storm in Eureka Springs, and have no school today, due to roads and streets in hazardous condition. We started out with freezing rain, then pellets of ice all day Sunday, then  another four or five inches of snow overnight. If you are suffering under such conditions, there is no better place to learn and enjoy the day than in a wood shop as shown above.

Make, fix, create and teach.

The hand off or brush off.

The focus in American education has become that of preparing children for the next prescribed level. If they are in Kindergarten they must be prepared for first grade. If they are in first, they must be prepared for second. If they are in high school, they must be made ready for college or trade school. After College, if kids are lucky enough or persistent enough to get that far, or can afford it, kids are often left to fend for themselves and figure out some way what they've invested their whole lives in leads to some form of employment. What about preparation for life? The following is from John Dewey's "Pedagogic Creed."

"With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently."

In reading David Whittaker's book on Sloyd, he mentioned that John Dewey and William James had each become interested in Otto Salomon's Educational Sloyd through the promotional work of Gustaf Larsson. Larsson had been the teacher selected by Salomon to carry the Sloyd method to the US and whose Sloyd teacher training school in Boston had great impact. I had wondered about how William James and John Dewey had become advocates of Educational Sloyd and the Manual Arts and now I know. When children are helped to conquer life, we offer our own skills in a hand off to future generations. When our system is set up to simply pass children to the next level of an artificial construct, schooling, we give them the brush off. To change that we set the hands to real work doing real things as stimulation, inducement and reinforcement of the mind's engagement and growth. John Dewey, like so many educators of his time, believed in the use of the hands in learning as a stimulant for the development of character and intellect.

 Make, fix and create... be a resource and inspiration for the children in your community.

real cultivation of the mind

Children at play with saw horse.

As described in David Whittaker's book on Sloyd, Salomon's view was that

"Real cultivation of the mind has nothing to do with learning vast amounts of usually prescribed facts. Education, cultivation of the mind means what is left when we have forgotten what we learned in school. As a logical consequence of this, Salomon thought it advisable to reduce the number of subjects taught at school -- he used the expression 'concentration of teaching'."

In other words, it was learning at greater depth that brought the development of character and intellect. Proper subjects for teaching in schools  in Salomon's view should fit the following criteria:

1. Does it suit a child's capabilities?
2. Does it excite and sustain thirst for activity?
3. Is is capable of being used at home and elsewhere?
4. Does it engender respect and pleasure in manual labour and dexterity?
5. Does it train in habits of exactness and self-reliance?
6. Does it foster cleanliness and neatness?
7. Does it instill a sense of form?
8. Is it a benefit hygienically, e.g. by compensating for passivity?
9. Does it allow of methodical arrangement and progress and development of skills and patience?
10. Does it exercise bodily skills particularly those of the hand and eye where visual sensations plan an important part in developing understandings?

At the moment I'm interested in number 8 from the list. Is passivity characteristic of problems related to children's health? Is the general level of passivity practiced as a discipline in schools counter to the needs of all children? We know this to be true and very few policy makers care to do anything about it.

I thank David Whittaker for this list, and the reminder that Educational Sloyd was not just about woodworking, but about developing the whole child toward realization of his or her full human potential. For provincial Sweden, Salomon's ideas were ahead of his time. But as David Whittaker points out, the world at large was almost ready for a new view of education... just as we should be.

Make, fix, create, and model the joy that others can also find in self-directed discovery and growth.