Maslow had said, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails." But does it make a difference what kind of hammer you have? These are two different hammers offered by Home Depot online and one might assume the one on the right is for kids. In fact, I've seen similar hammers recommended for children's use.  One thing you'll notice is that the one the right is shaped for an adult grip and the one on the left is a lighter weight but with the proportions of a full-sized adult hammer. The diameter of the neck is an easy grip for a child. Which one would be better to give as gifts during the holidays while the usual Christmas paraphernalia is tied up in transit due to shipping and distribution delays? Of course the ham...

 Yesterday we began classes for our Kindergarten students at the Clear Spring School. Our "Rainbow Group" made tops and the small hand crank drills mounted in vises allow the students to decorate them with colored pencils. In addition to the Rainbow Group class in which each student made two tops ("Do we get to keep them? They asked) the outdoors study science class made bat bats. Since my link between my blog and facebook will only load one photo or video, I've posted additional photos to my instagram account which you can find under the user name douglasstowe. To make the bat bats, magic wands through which the blessings of bats may be conferred, the kids cut out pictures of bats, glued them onto wood, and then cut them out with scrol...

I am one of six box makers featured on this offering from Fine Woodworking Project Guides  https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/boxes Boxes remain one of the best ways to learn overall woodworking techniques. My next box making article for Fine Woodworking will be photographed in the ESSA woodshop in December. In the meantime, my new book, The Wisdom of Our Hands has made it through the copy editing process and will be headed to the printer on November 7. Hopefully, the paper supply problems will not delay the 2/22/2022 publication date. Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning likewise.

This year supply chain problems will severely impact the delivery of mountains of Christmas time toys and stuff. That will likely impact for additional months to come, the volume of broken stuff delivered to landfills.  Naturally President Biden will be blamed as children are deprived of meaningless stuff that would have been intended to generate Christmas time delight but that then would have been thrown out as meaningless in the months to come. How about taking matters into our own hands. We and our kids can make the things we need and my book, Guide to Woodworking with Kids can help. It is currently scheduled to be reprinted and I'm hoping that the shortage of paper doesn't interfere with a timely delivery.  If supply chain issues a...

When a student in Pestalozzi's school was told to look at a picture of a ladder, the child asked, "why should I look at a picture when there's a real ladder in the shed?" "We don't have time to go out to the shed," the student was told. Later when the child was presented with the picture of a window, the child asked, why do we have to look at a picture when there's a real window right there? We don't even have to go outside to look at it." The teacher complained to Pestalozzi and was told that the student was right. Whenever possible, lessons should be based on the real world. But we confine our students to classrooms and isolate them from deeper engagement.   “The sensational curiosity of childhood is appealed to more particularly b...

Today I'm sitting on the front porch with golden doodle daughter Rosie at my feet. She's chewing a long branch into short pieces and I'm attempting to compose my thoughts.  A friend, Elliot asked me if I'd studied Viktor Frankl and his book, "Man's Search for Meaning." Sometimes you get much of what you need from the name of the book, taken as an invitation to explore your own mind and your own experiences. As I explain in the introduction to my new book, some will get everything they need from the title alone as it invites them to explore the workings of their own hands and minds in the shaping of the world around us. Yesterday as Rosie and I sat on the porch, a doe walked out of the woods to present herself not 30 feet away. Of course...

In response to sharing the new cover design for my new book, Frank Wilson, author of the Hand sent this image of a young Christ among the doctors by Albrecht Dürer. It shows much more than a tangle of hands, old and young. It shows the passing of mind from one generation to the next. One pair of hands finds passages in the book. One pair marks a spot in his. One pair holds the book closed as the doctor looks on in wonder. One pair is attempting to instruct. The young Christ is using hands to reflect within. And there at the center, the entanglement of minds. Make, fix and create...

Yesterday I mentioned repairing a mirror that had fallen and come apart at the joints. This is what it looks like now with the joints re-glued. The  outer frame is cherry and the inner frame walnut, inlaid with strips of cherry, walnut and mahogany. It's now ready to hang for another 40+ years.  In the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City there's carved Quan-yin in their Chinese exhibit  that's a thousand years old. Inside a secret compartment the curators found a scroll with the names of the craftsmen who carved it. They are gone but what they did has not been forgotten. I'll not claim there to be anything special about my work. But things that have lasting meaning will endure, and the meaning in this case reflects a partnership betwe...

Yesterday a friend returned a mirror I'd made in 1978 for repair. The line from which it was suspended had broken. The mirror fell onto a table and then onto the floor, causing three corners of the frame to break loose.  In taking it apart I found a surprise inside. I'd used a page from our local Times-Echo newspaper as a backing for the mirror and there was a photo showing a candidate for Arkansas Governor visiting our city and a good friend Lucilla Garrett looking on. The candidate for governor is one others might recognize and not just in the state of Arkansas.  The mirror is reglued, reassembled and readied to hang for another 40 years. I left the paper inside to be discovered again. Make, fix and create...   

I received copies of the Advanced Review Copy (ARC) of my new book in the mail yesterday and took one by to a local mentor and sent another off to a friend in Berryville. The cover of the published volume may change and the last chapter received serious editing and addition after the print version of the ARC went to press. The purpose of the ARC is to get various reviewers and distributors on board with promotion of the book. In the woodshop at the Clear Spring School we've been at work making things needed for campus improvement. Yesterday we made sorting lids for recycling, and flag holders for class flags (more may be explained about that later.) Today we'll make book holders  of a new design that will be used in our school library. ...

I was reading this morning about Noel Gilbert, my violin teacher from when I was in first or second grade. I was thinking of him due to the important role that music plays in our lives and that the sounds of craftsmanship are not that very different from music. In woodworking there are textures and lines and punctuation points that help establish rhythm and meaning.  When I was in second grade my mother took me to audition for violin lessons with the director of the Memphis Symphony orchestra. I remember the audition in which he asked me to sing and then examined my mother’s fingers and my own. He noted that my pitch was OK and that my long slender fingers might be useful on a violin. The violin upon which I was to play had been my mo...

As many are also doing this morning, I look back 20 years ago to the morning when much of our world changed. On that morning, 9/11/2001, I was just starting as a part-time woodworking teacher for kids at the brand new Clear Spring High School. As the news began coming from New York of the terror assault on the World Trade Tower, we attempted to gather around a large TV. We were all shaken. And then responding to parental desires that they be able to hold their kids close, we closed early on that terrible day. Today is a milestone for our nation as it represents miles of twists and turns (many of them false and delusional) that followed from that day. Today also represents the start of my 20th year as a woodworking teacher of kids and mar...

Yesterday I began preparing materials for my students to make bat houses. While we could spend days with students designing their own bat houses, in this case it's important that we adhere to science and make use of designs that have already been proven in use. The four chamber bat house offers the opportunity for bats to seek warmth by congregating together and to move around inside to the spot they find most comfortable. We have a large colony of bats nesting in vents under the eves in one of our school buildings and while it can be a challenge to lure a colony of bats to a new location, luxurious new bat houses carefully engineered for their safety and happiness may help. Experimental designs my not. A good source of information about...

I'm working my way through the last of the edits for my new book, with just a few minor tweaks and corrections before it goes through the copy editing process. My article about making spoon carving knives came out in Quercus Magazine this month and I received a copy in yesterday's mail. In the meantime, I have meetings this morning with the teaching staff the Clear Spring School as we plan integrated woodworking projects for the coming months.  A friend of mine asked me about my writing processes. Typical questions are like this: "Do you set aside a number of hours each day to write?" "Do you set a target for the number of pages you hope to write each day?" I tried to explain how much of my work I do at night. Caught in that space betwe...

Yesterday morning we finished my box making with friends class at the Clear Spring School, and my students left with boxes they had made. Chuck noted that he could not have made his box without my guidance and support, and that's true. I provided the wood, the tools, the techniques and guided the process throughout, and was very happy to do so. The class was held as a fundraiser for Clear Spring Schoo, so they provided the shop space. My involvement did not diminish the pride they had for their boxes, which had become symbolic of friendship and their own learning. There are two kinds of educational scaffolding. One is where the teacher sets up all the stuff in the environment, including step-by-step instruction and observation to elimina...

In planning school learning experiences that involve doing real things in a relatively short period of time with a group of students, it's important to keep an eye on simplicity. The adult mind can get overly complicated and abstract as we follow proposed threads of inquiry. Most teachers teach the what we were taught, while the learning needs of our students are often different from that. Yesterday we were discussing making bat houses and spent 30 minutes doing so before we finally got around to actually look at where the bats nest on campus and learn a few things that would have been right before our own eyes had they been open and inquiring.  I'm reminded of the story of one hand clapping in which the young monk was challenged with t...

There are reasons that Educational Sloyd should be important, even to the educators of today. In Salomon’s Theory of Educational Sloyd he laid out basic principles of education that extend far beyond the realm of the manual arts. And while it would be unlikely that those engaged in academic style teaching would accept that they might have something to learn about learning from manual arts education, the principles are as universal as they are concise. They are:  Start with the interests of the child.  Move incrementally from the known to the unknown, And from the easy to the more difficult.  Move from the simple to the more complex  and always from the concrete to the abstract.  Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner without offer...

Harbor Freight Fellows is republishing some of my blog posts on their site, that can be found here: https://www.harborfreightfellows.org/post/doug-stowe-wisdom-of-the-hands-2 I received an announcement advertising my class with the Alabama Woodworking Guild August 21-22. The details can be found on their website: wp.awwg.info Click on the education tab and select classes. You can register and pay using PayPal. I've begun receiving edits from my new book, Wisdom of our hands. Using track changes on word, I can accept or reject changes and provide clarification where asked for. The book should be ready to send out review copies in a month or so for publication in February. Make, fix and create...

Here we are in  a world where our forest are undervalued and plastics are making a huge mess of things.  Republicans and Fox News will insist that human induced global warming is not real. They've done so for decades now as they've sheltered the fossil fuel industry from taxation. They've never met a single use plastic they don't love. And when faced with the mess they've made they will will continue to assert that nothing is ever their fault. This photo shows the effects of man, even at an earlier date. The book from which this photo was scanned was published in 1908. There are large logs as far as the eye can see and filling the Hudson River from one bank to the other. Make, fix create and protect.  

Last night a man driving a truck and pulling a 26 ft. long travel trailer came up our road, pulled up very close to the house and attempted to pull the blamed thing around our circle drive that's narrow even for cars.  Rosie the dog was barking at the confusion, and I was incredulous.  Earlier in the day I'd posted new signs warning that our road is private with limited opportunity to turn around. My putting up new signs was inspired by a slate of similar events like a few months ago when in the dark a couple men came up our road in a huge pickup truck and pulling a 24 ft. pontoon boat. The pickup and pontoon boat together were probably 50 ft. long. At least the folks with the pontoon boat showed enough judgement to avoid the circle dr...

 https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/07/07/american-south-biomass-energy-mg-dp-nws-orig.cnn It's a shame some folks are willing to go so low as to destroy the world's forest in this manner.

Yesterday I walked outside and found a bird flopping in the ground with its feet helplessly entangled in this thin plastic thread.  One end was wrapped around the bird's feet and the other tangled in the grass so the bird had no way to take flight.  I went into the house and got scissors. By grabbing the end tangled in the grass, I was able to pull the helpless bird close to my hand where I was able to snip the line free. The bird took off and I hope is OK despite his misadventure entangled in errant human technology. Some may recognize the plastic thread as coming from the gradual disintegration of a plastic tarp, of the kind that are sold in the millions. I've bought to many myself. Just as the bird was helplessly entangled, so are w...

My article about Bill Coperthwaite arrived in the mail yesterday within the latest issue of "Quercus Magazine." I hope readers notice it and find it interesting, as Bill and his work need to be remembered.  You can learn more about my visits with Bill using the search term "coperthwaite" at the upper left hand column of this blog. If you are reading on Facebook and not directly from the blog site, I'll note that the blog where this was originally posted is the better place to read, as that's where the direct search function is provided. http//Wisdomofhands.blogspot.com  In the meantime, I'm busy working on things for Linden Press prior to the publication of my new book, "Wisdom of our Hands, Crafting, A life." It is part memoir and par...

Self-proclaimed self-made men, it seems are a dime a dozen, if we were to accept what they say about themselves. The idea of the self-made man is well-rooted in the American concept of self... the rugged individualist we cherish in the press, history books and American mythology.  Frederick Douglass, former slave, famous author and orator, whose writings should be featured in every high school course in American history held another view which he described in his lecture, "Self-Made Men."  https://monadnock.net/douglass/self-made-men.html  In it he wrote: "Our best and most valued acquisitions have been obtained either from our contemporaries or from those who have preceded us in the field of thought and discovery. We have all either ...

I sent one of my spoon carving knives to a friend in Norway and got a note and photo in return.  The photo shows a spoon being carved from beech along with the spoon knife, carvers axe and sloyd knife used to bring it to this point. Knud had carved a number of spoons in the past but said that the use of this spoon knife for forming the bowl felt like an extension of his own hand.  Knud's  spoon is a lovely thing as we witness finished form emerging from rough wood. My spoon carving knives are different from the usual in that the bevel is ground on the inside of the curve, allowing it to be sharpened with a dowel wrapped in sand paper, and the curvature is tighter, allowing it to make very small cuts on the inside of the spoon's bowl s...

This box is made of ash, oak and walnut with a lift lid and is made for the ashes of my friend Roger Dale.  The walnut handles are designed so that you can lift the whole box or lift the lid separately. The wood used in the lid has the markings from a rotary saw mill, reminding that wood tells stories just like we do. (if you're paying attention.) Make, fix and create.  

These are two important poems by W. S. Merwin: Native Trees : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43126/native-trees and Trees : https://merwinconservancy.org/2017/11/trees-by-w-s-merwin/  One of the very special things about working with wood is the way it connects us so seamlessly with our natural environment. It provides an interpretive framework for examining the forests that surround us if we're lucky,  or that once surrounded us if we are not.  Native Trees addresses the child's natural curiosity about the forest in the face of parental ignorance and disinterest. Trees is simply a celebration.  There's a sycamore tree convenient to our student's path between classes. Its limbs are at the right height for our younger students...

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop my Kindergarten students made pencil holders as you can see. Each is personalized and decorated.   During the month of June I have a mixed age group in the wood shop with students first through 10th. The editor for my new book is almost ready to submit her version of it the publisher.  It is a long wait for me as it gets put into final form. It should be available to readers in March, 2022. The pencil holders are an easy thing to make and the drawing showing the parts and their dimensions is shown on my blog. The teacher cuts the parts and sets up the drill press for drilling the holes. The student assembles the pencil holder following the teacher's guidance using nails and glue after first sa...

What is it? Can you guess? One of my first grade students made it. Can you put your mind in the eyes of a child, and consider the things that a child might consider important, and then understand the need to create representations of those things? This of course, is a lego block, a bit larger than most, held together by glue and tape. But it's a thing that one of my students conceived and planned the making of. In modern life, even the toys children play with are designed and made by others, cutting off from the child the natural progression of things, from easy to difficult, from known to unknown, from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract. But these are not just the principles of educational sloyd, they are also the map descr...

The students in wood shop at the Clear Spring School often have things in mind that can't be easily explained. For instance Sid's Motor Tank has been in the works for weeks as he's explored various ways to add more and more pieces of wood, in defiance of gravity. As you can see, more and more tape has been needed to hold pieces together. I asked how he would improve it if he was to make another. He said, "I'd make it metal." And so we can see prototyping in action. We also witness art in action, as the process of creating art transcends boundaries even when masking tape is necessary to do so. With the motor tank complete Sid began attaching wings, proposing another attribute of the arts. It's that one thing leads to another. In cross pos...

We are finishing up student projects in the woodshop to clear the decks for an experiment in learning during the month of June in which Clear Spring students will be divided up into three multi-aged groups.  It's an experiment that would be impossible in most schools. For us it will further extend a family style learning in which students take greater responsibility for each other. Each group has a theme and students are grouped to get along withe each other and to meet student interests. I'll be working primarily with the "camping group" that will be centered on outdoor learning. My students Grace and Sola are making a board game for classroom use. It has four turned game pieces, and a central dragon, all on a board carefully laid out ...

I've been doing some writing about my friend Bill Coperthwaite which along with photos I hope will become a magazine article. In this poem you will likely understand why. Love Thy Neighbor "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself..."  As much as I love myself?  I did not understand. Then it happened. Could that possibly mean love thy neighbor as a part of thyself? Suddenly it came alive: a rule to live by. My neighbor and I are one - as fingers of one hand  My neighbor's welfare is my welfare - His poverty my poverty, His happiness my happiness. Time passed. The old commandment has grown to mean:  Love thy planet as a part of thyself.  Treat it with love and kindness,  With care, gentleness, and thanksgiving.  Any harm done to my ...

Some of my students in woodshop told me that they are designing a classroom board game and needed game pieces to be turned on the lathe. I turned these following their instructions and close supervision.  Of course woodworking is a collaborative experience as is much of life. We work together on things and step in to play our own parts, which in this case for the students became sanding and then coloring of the game pieces using crayons.  We each bring forth skills and interests that augment the whole. And of course that's one of the problems with education that attempts to separate us into classes. There are social classes, and classroom classes and being stuck in one or the other may offer value to those who manage others and assert ...

Kids in Kindergarten (our rainbow group) will gladly make anything, as there's excitement in the use of tools and in seeing what you're learning develop in concrete form. My student Lane asked, "Do I get to take this home?" That's an important question that shows a direct line from home to school, that builds important links. The students are proud of what they've made and want to share. That they have  a concrete expression of what they've learned makes that age old question, "what did you do in school today?" easy for children to answer. Yesterday's project was making "flag poles," each being a piece of wood tenoned to fit in a base and adorned with wooden flags. The kids  (with help)operated the drill press and a cordless drill with...

When it comes to poverty and what's called the upper and lower class, class is quite real and we've been contending with that throughout the rise of the modern economy. Salomon's Educational Sloyd was deeply concerned about the barriers presented by class and the struggles that were arising as modern economies took advantage of the poor. By engaging ALL students in the manual arts he hoped that ALL, even those who would pull the economic strings of industry, would develop a sense of the dignity of labor and be willing to reward for its full value. But there's another meaning to the word class that Salomon regarded as illusion, the idea that you could take a group of kids of the same age and put them at desks and lecture them through an e...

I'd written about this matter before. If the use of the hands makes you smart, then why are there so many folks at odds with those who attain advanced degrees? And the simple answer is that education often fails to bridge the gap between the concrete and the abstract.  According to the theory of Educational Sloyd, education was to start with the interests of the child, then build from the known to the unknown,  from the easy to more difficult, from the simple to the complex and from the concrete to the abstract. Launched from student interest and built through steady progression, education was to provide a firm foundation for exploration of the abstract.  Imagine you are building a bridge from the concrete to the abstract. You start w...

I'm fascinated by the workings of mind... the ways we make connections between things, and these connections and how the mind works are as much drawn from the unconscious and that which we barely know about ourselves as they is from the broad daylight of conscious knowing. And so, what's the purpose of education? Is it to have those connections clearly drawn out between lines, or to provide us the tools to chart our ways through the unknown and unknowable? And so, while administrators would like teachers to be more like newsreaders laying out what the station owner wants the community to know and believe, teaching is more of an art through which students discover themselves and their own relationships to the world at large. In my how-to ...

I attended "Slabberday" at Rackensack Kilns between Gateway and Rogers this morning and was pleased find friends attending from the Stateline Woodturner's Club who were there to demonstrate wood turning. It is a wonderful operation turning wood into lovely slabs of wood that are for sale to woodworkers.  It's  become a destination for area woodworkers and offers a variety of species of lumber, all in large form. They mill it, dry it and plane it flat for your use.  A couple days ago I got some new jigs in the mail, sent by a reader who took my flipping story stick technique from my books and articles and made a jig that duplicates the process. Instead of making  story stick for each box, you adjust the jig to the length and use it to...

Today I'm going with friends to an event called "slabberday," where a man will be cutting logs into large slabs of wood. It is an annual event. In the meantime, this article about a young chess master is an important thing to read.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/sunday/homeless-chess-champion-tani-adewumi.html It concerns a young man proficient at chess, and suggests that we need to offer all children the advantages they need to succeed. The young chess master, in his wisdom says "I don't lose, I learn." And I ask "when will we learn?" that all children and parents need the opportunity to find success, not delivered on a platter or slab of wood, but that they work for and that's within reach. Make, fix and create. Assist ot...

Yesterday in the woodshop at the Clear Spring School we made tiny house napkin holders with the Rainbow Group (kindergarten). At that age the children are so excited to make things and simple things bring great joy. To prepare for this project I cut front and back pieces and a strip of wood to be nailed between. After the students had sanded the parts, I drilled pilot holes for the nails to give them a head start in entering and joining the pieces. Glue was also applied between parts. Education that's left overly abstract allows students to think that you can just make things up. Education that involves doing real things, gives children an understanding that discovery of truth is related to powers of observation through the senses. In 19...

My new book is in the hands of an editor and her work will be complete in a week or so. There will be questions for me to answer, high resolution images to supply. The title is not yet finalized.  Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop students will be working on a variety of non-weaponry projects from their own imaginations. My Kindergarten students, called here at our school, "the Rainbow Group" will continue to make toy cars and trucks.  I'm hoping to bring the letterpress, typography art to our Eureka Springs School of the Arts by arranging a visit by John Horn and his portable letterpress studio described in his blog here: http://www.johnthetypesnob.com/2019/04/23/a-portable-print-shop/ Some may know John as one of the foremo...

Yesterday I tempered the spoon carving knives that we'd forged at ESSA last week, putting them in the oven at 425 degrees for an hour and letting them cool gradually to room temp. With the blades ready I was able to sharpen and add a handle to one, designing it to feel good in the palm of my hand. My high school students will work on their's today. Without tempering hardened steel can be brittle. Tempering restores some of its flexibility while maintaining the steel's ability to hold a sharp edge. This thing is sharp. The handle is made of ash. Have you had the experience of making a tool for your own use? If so, you'll know that it feels good to feel what you've made, touching it and exploring its use in your own hands. Just think about...

Today I'll temper the spoon knives we forged last week so my high school students can begin adding handles. The spoon knives shown in the photo were made by Bill Coperthwaite and used for an article I wrote for Woodwork Magazine a few years back.  Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning likewise.

Our lower elementary school teacher Rigdon, has a chart on the white board in his room on which his students have listed the various things they're good at. The idea is in part that when they finish their work, instead of insisting on starting something new and that their teacher provide that for them, they can offer their skills to assist others, and those who may need help know to which fellow student they might turn. That's the way things work in families. And that's the way things worked in Pestalozzi's novel  Leonard and Gertrude, centered on the life of Gertrude, a mother who taught her own children in a manner that caught the attention of the local duke.  The success of Pestalozzi's novel brought him fame through which he attemp...

Yesterday I was told to no longer allow my students to carry sharpened sticks from the woodshop, as they failed a test, violating the rules of such things. Kids love whittling, and the level of interest they apply to sharpening sticks with a knife is amazing. But being allowed to sharpen sticks carries a burden of responsibility. Sharp sticks are not to be displayed as weapons or held in a manner that suggests they might be used as weapons. I got a texted photograph from the head of school, warning, no more, so that's that. The rules were simple. Sharp sticks must be carried down at the student's side, not brandished, and upon returning to the main campus were to be put immediately in backpacks and not gotten out during the day, but kids...

Yesterday I took a group of high school students to the blacksmithing studio at ESSA to begin the process of hardening their spoon carving knives. Each used the forge to heat their blades cherry red and then quenched them in oil.  None had done anything like it before. All will likely want to become students at ESSA so they were asking about classes and scholarship opportunities. I'll return to ESSA with another group on Thursday, and I remembered to get a few photos of the process which I'll share in an article in Quercus Magazine in the UK. The simple point is that students deserve the opportunity to do real things, making the real world clear to them, developing in them an appreciation and understanding of our material planet. School...

John Horn sent me this small booklet containing Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech. The printing and binding are flawless. Jean and I are grateful to receive it. Letterpress is nearly lost art, saved only by enthusiasts like John and important words set in type have greater effect when brought to us through the artist's touch. The message in the book, "I have a dream" must become one of "We share this dream."  If you've ever driven by mistake to "the wrong side" of the tracks, or ridden on the commuter train through areas where the planners chose that it not stop, you can assess for yourself that poverty and racism yet stand in opposition to the dream described in this thin volume. Today I'll take some of my high school students to ...

While modern education seems to have fallen on the narrow shoulders of the alphabet, and so many children (even in pre-school and Kindergarten) bear the heavy burden of letters and have chosen to shrug off such a heavy load,  Pestalozzi had recommended an "alphabet of form". The idea was that there were things other than reading that offered value of study. Form for instance. All learning was to arise from the senses first, and from the child's direct experience. The illustration above is from  How Gertrude Teaches Her Children , Pestalozzi's book that proposed a revolution in education. It was based on how an exceptional mother might take care of her children and influence her community. If you think of progressive education as a rela...

Today I'll be doing some prep work at school for this next week's classes. In the meantime, there are two critical school and non-school factors that have the strongest influence on student success. These are no-brainers, meaning you don't have to be an educational expert to understand their effects. The first is poverty. The longer a student spends in poverty, the more limited his or her educational outcomes. This affects drop out rates, college and community college enrollment, how early a student is forced to enter the job market, and their overall sense of potential for future attainment. The second is class size. Small classes lead to better educational outcomes. This has always been true. It's been studied, but again the brain can ...

Yesterday at the Clear Spring School we had the pleasure of guests from the Future School in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Allison Montiel is the principal of the school, and Boyd Logan is one of its founders and currently director of operations.  They are going through a seven million dollar expansion, so the difference in scale between our two schools is enormous. But the focus of our schools on the individual needs of our students is the same. And both schools are focused on bringing meaningful change to education at large. Children need to learn in a concrete manner from the real world, not from a whole lot of canned and contrived stuff.  Real world learning involves two strategies. One is to do real things in school connecting the various ...

Last year, for the first time in my life, and as we were adjusting to the new reality of Covid-19 restriction, I discovered an interest in pulling weeds.  My favorite to pull is commonly called cleavers. It grows in long frond like forms that lay on the ground or will climb up and rest upon other plants and it appears to have as its survival strategy the ability to entangle and to be carried along by animal life. It is only barely rooted and pulls up from the earth with ease. It's not one to cling desperately in the soil like a dandelion, so perhaps by pulling it, I'm  enabling  its spread. Why else would it come loose with such ease? Galium aparine  ('aparine' from Greek 'apairo' [απαίρω [2]  with many common names including

I realize that when I challenge academia for failure to acknowledge the intelligence expressed through the hands, some might be offended. After all, who am I, a simple teacher and craftsman to challenge modern education? My purpose is not to offend, but to simply assert the value, the intelligence, and dignity of hands-on work and hands-on learning. To that end, I quote the following from Elliot Eisner's the Arts and the Creation of Mind :  "...a lesson that the arts can teach education is that literal language and quantification are not the only means through which human understanding is secured or represented.  So much of schooling privileges discursive language and the use of number that types of intelligence and forms of understan...

I have been compiling a list of educators and educational theorists who have had impact on my understanding of the teacher's responsibilities.... particularly with regard to progressive education. Elliot Eisner came to mind, and I had to dig back into old blog posts to remember why.  https://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2009/10/educational-social-science-and.html Eisner against the rising tide of standardized education, asserted that teaching much more an art than a science. As an art it brings the recognition that we're not at our best the first day out, and that we have no limits, except those we accept or that are demanded by others, for how good we might get. Today, as my students are studying ancient Egypt, we'll be making pyramid bo...

Yesterday I finished a new bathroom vanity for our home to replace a mass produced oak cabinet of an unpleasing style. Next in the room will be the installation of a new countertop and replacement of floor tile that had to be pulled up from an earlier renovation. There's pleasure to be derived from making our own mark on things. And that applies to all things in human life. A reader asked what tools he would need to begin box making, and there are a few basics, table saw, planer, jointer, band saw, router table, that I use very regularly in my work. But caution is advised.  Not only are tools potentially dangerous, each requires a steadily growing familiarity and appreciation, and beginners can be quickly overwhelmed. Each offers a huge...

Pete Moorhouse has been engaged in researching the value of woodworking in early childhood education and his ongoing study can be found here:  https://irresistible-learning.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/The-Value-of-Woodwork-in-Early-Childhood-Education-Moorhouse-initial.pdf  The results of woodworking in school are well known here at the Clear Spring School, measured in the joy our students feel in response to their own efforts and deep engagement. In Matthew Crawford's book about the world beyond our heads, he dedicated his concluding chapter to the quote from this blog that he used as the opening quotation in his first book, Shop Class as Soulcraft.  In Schools we create artificial learning environments for our children that the...

Serendipitous is a long word, but useful as it suggests flexibility and direct response to changing circumstances. It may be irksome to some teachers to have interruptions as they are trying to deliver lessons. Some teachers, on the other hand, welcome intrusions from real life... life that we know is real because real life is in flux and subject to change and offers the opportunity for discovery based learning.  The other day I had a great big cardboard box and at my wife's suggestion, I delivered it to the lower elementary school classroom, where the teacher, Rigdon, noticing what a big beautiful box I was delivering, welcomed a 180 degree shift in plans for the day, and the next day as well. It is currently being painted to become wh...

Yesterday I introduced my Kindergarten students to making tops. Each made one and then of course wanted to make more to share with their families. I have a small drill press set up for making wheels and it's safe enough that my lower elementary school students can use it without supervision. With the Kindergarten students, I supervised closely, making certain that each wheel blank was secure before the student turned on the drill and turned the handle to lower the drill into the stock.  With hand crank drills mounted in vises, the students can decorate the tops with colored pencils and markers. To mount the drills in the vise, I cut v shaped grooves in pieces of 2 x 4 lumber and then used u-bolts to secure the handles of the drills in t...

Today I introduced the lower elementary students at the Clear Spring School to the new work bench to be used in their classroom. Grady made a sloyd trivet. He didn't know or care what a sloyd trivet was or how it's used. He wanted to make one because he liked how the parts moved in relation to each other. And of course he liked making it from a kit that I prepared during the time when due to Covid-19, the kids were not in in-person school. It is a pleasure for all of us to be safely back, and as new cases in Carroll County and Arkansas continue to fall. An editor for my new book has been selected and will begin work soon. Make, fix, create and assist others in learning likewise.

A friend, Charlie Plant who coordinates the Big Picture School's Harbor Freight Fellows program, has written a lovely blog post about the beauty of everyday things.  https://www.harborfreightfellows.org/post/travels-with-charlie-the-beauty-of-everyday-things Charlie calls into question the artificiality of the line drawn between the arts, crafts and the trades. I'm reminded of the man, who used to do telephone installations here in Carroll County, working for Ma Bell. To see the insides of the junction box he installed was to witness his meticulous concern, with each wire left twisted and coiled in perfect shape. He left his own distinctive craftsmanship as a signature for others along the line to discover: the next lineman to open the ...

The news this morning is like the news of too many other mornings: More people killed through gun violence as the enraged or insane deliver mayhem on the soul of our nation. If all politicians cared about people and not power they would have fixed things after Sandy Hook when teachers and kindergarten students were targets of wrath, but if that didn't move them toward action, what can? That they refused to fix things then still amazes me. This interesting editorial by David Brooks, "Wisdom isn't what you think it is," suggests that wisdom is more about listening to others than about what we can say. And I pray for the development of wisdom.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/opinion/wisdom-attention-listening.html One of the rules I ha...

  Yesterday my Kindergarten students made color wheels, a project that had some hammering for the first time. Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning likewise.

Today my Kindergarten students will have their first weekly lesson in the wood shop at the Clear Spring School. We're off to a late start due to Covid-19 precautionary delays. We'll make cool color wheels. Unlike the color wheels used by artists, these are made of wood and the wheels can be spun to visually mix colors.  The project includes sanding, nailing, drilling, assembly and decoration. This was a favorite project introduced in 2018 and remains a project that even older students enjoy.  Make, fix and create... assist others in learning likewise.  

I've been thinking about Teacher Effectiveness Training and found this interesting article in the New Yorker, "The Repressive Politics of Emotional Intelligence," by Merve Emre. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/the-repressive-politics-of-emotional-intelligence The article points out the 25th Anniversary of the very influential book by Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence , that promoted the idea that we are each responsible for our own emotions and the effective management of them to thereby fit into the prevailing culture and economy. It suggests that those who manage to control their emotions manage to get ahead. Goleman's book starts with a quote from Aristotle that avoided an important part. I've highlighted in bold th...

Today ESSA will offer a short video in which I'll demonstrate matching grain in making a mitered corner box. The video will go live at 10 AM Central time and was made in the wood studio of the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. My thanks to Darla and Hilka at ESSA for producing the video. This page has links to the auction and to the various demonstrations. https://essa-art.org/events/2021-hands-on-essa/ I was awake for a time in the night thinking about Teacher EffectivenessTraining and ways that we practice being more effective in our communication with each other. I was first introduced to Teacher Effectiveness Training as a younger man just out of college when working with kids at the Porter Leath Children's Center in Memphis, TN. ...

Bidding starts today for small works of art to support the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. Please join us for this celebration of hands-on activities. Tomorrow at 10 AM Central time, I'll demonstrate online. A schedule of other free presentations, can be found at this link: https://essa-art.org/events/2021-hands-on-essa/ Among the small works of art for sale are my own Postcards on edge. Each is made from vacuum laminated veneers and is stamped and postmarked by a clerk at the Eureka Springs Post Office. You will need to register to bid on these and many other fine works. Please join us.  Make, fix and create... assist others in learning likewise.

Some readers may notice that I've not been sharing as much of late. It's because we're preoccupied with getting back to school, home repair and I'm attempting to write other things. So I'll share an earlier post and a photo from that.  https://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2016/01/beautiful-useful-and-that-can-last-ones.html  In education there's a widely held belief that learning is something that centers primarily in the head, but nothing could be a more foolish view than that.  ESSA, our school of the arts is having a fund raiser/ annual event, Hands-on ESSA and I urge you to attend on-line.  https://essa-art.org/events/2021-hands-on-essa/ Among the activities are an auction and presentations from a variety of instructors. I will hav...

  The photo shows Lucky with his longboard, a project we started before the Covid pandemic and carried proudly home yesterday where he plans to add trucks. He's welcome to bring it back later if he needs further help. It is exciting to get back to regularly teaching kids in person in the wood shop at the Clear Spring School. Covid case loads in our county have fallen to less than one case per week. So the horizon looks hopeful. Lucky said he wanted his longboard to look like a surfboard. I think he got that effect. The project was a fun one. And even without the added trucks provides evidence of learning and pride of accomplishment. The students selected strips of wood of different species that I provided, glued them up in patterns that...

Yesterday in wood shop I introduced my high school students to making spoon carving knives. I began with a short video on spoon carving and then a second short video, part one of making a spoon carving knife. Of course the problem I encountered is that in order to perform a task you must first have an idea of the finished object in order to assess whether or not you are getting the results you want. In order to see the results you want, you must look and shape with an idea of what you are looking for in mind. Øyemål. I explained that in watching an instructional video, not merely to be entertained by it, they needed to watch very carefully, for very shortly they'd be attempting to do what they'd seen me do in the video. I had spoon car...

Øyemål is a Norwegian word meaning "eye measure" and is related as a concept to a phrase used by boat builders when they describe building a boat by "the rack of the eye." The word "rack" is related to Norwegian and Swedish as well as Scots Gaelic meaning straight or direct, and is related it seems to both the ability to discern proper form by eye, and the process of building direct without being encumbered by plans... to go from the mind to the finished form. This is important, as developing a sense of form is related to math in the form of spatial sense. Spatial sense is an important part of mathematics that lies deeper and more foundational than the manipulation of numbers and number sense. In woodworking,  "godt øyemål" or good ...

I am beginning a  project with my high school students in which they will make their own spoon carving knives as shown in thisvideo and two more to come. Make, fix, create and assist others in learning likewise.