My new book The Wisdom of Our Hands: Crafting, A Life is to serve as a wake up call to American education, that we are failing to engage student minds, student ambitions, and student character, when we fail to engage their hands. As noted by Frank Wilson, author of The Hand, the hands and brain co-evolved as a learning/creating system over millions of years. To leave the hands aside in planning the education of our kids grooms them for disengagement in schooling and avoids using the most useful resource in education.
My book is one I’ve been working on for over 20 years and is based in part on my career as a woodworker, as I observed my own hands-on learning and realized that what was true for me, that my brains are in my hands, is true also for others. Even those who are readily adept at abstract learning find greater value in that learning when their hands share the burdens and joy of education.
Matthew Crawford, author of best selling, Shop Class as Soulcraft wrote the foreword to my book as it’s related to the epigraph he used to open chapter one of his. It was a quote from my blog Wisdom of Our Hands.
“In schools we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement… Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract, and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”
To be clear and to avoid disappointment to some readers, while I rely on a wide array of specialists and authorities in the various chapters of the book, a great deal of content is drawn from my own 45+ years as a craftsman and 25+ years as a teacher of woodworking for both children and adults.
This is my 14th book. When I was contacted by Linden Publishing, typically a publisher of woodworking books, they hoped that I might address the question, “How can artisans raise their work to the next level?” I’ve attempted to do that, but then the answer lies in raising our society to the next level and using our own lives as makers of beautiful and useful things to do that. That’s why I think the book might appeal to some members of this forum.
A thorough review is offered by Josh Pauling at the Front Porch Republic. Other reviews are available in other places. For some readers, the simple notion that our brains are in our hands may suffice.
You will find the book on Amazon and other sites.