How do we have education that creates such morons as what we see at Tea Parties, television, and congress? It may have to do with an education system that is out of touch.
Throughout the first 300 years of modern pedagogy, educators including Francis Bacon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johan Amos Comenius, John Lock, Sir Isaac Newton, Johann Pestalozzi, Freidrch Froebel, Rudolph Steiner, Maria Montesorri, and John Dewey all recognized the role of the hands in building intellect. These early educators were all well aware that the hands and brain are an integrated learning system, and that concepts are learned more thoroughly and retained longer when the hands are involved in the exploration of objects and the making of real things. This was recently confirmed by research on the study of science at Purdue, and is the subject of current research in the field of embodied cognition.
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was first to come up with the concept Nous (mind) and interestingly, he also proposed that man is the wisest of all animals because he has hands. More recently (1840) Sir Charles Bell, Scottish anatomist, surgeon, physiologist and natural theologian, stated in his treatise, The Hand: its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design, "It is in the human hand that we have the consummation of all perfection as an instrument." In addition to his study of the human hand, Bell was the first scientist to distinguish between sensory and motor nerves and laid the foundation for modern study of the brain. So you can see that the idea of the hands and brain being linked as a learning system has been fundamental in our exploration of consciousness and scientific reality. Jacob Bronowski attributed our ability to develop abstract concepts to two simple hand gestures, that of cutting apart, and putting back together.
So while we may go through our days largely unconscious of the role our hands play in the development of our intelligence, what they do in human life is astounding.
With the rise of public education in the early 1900’s came a simultaneous impulse and responsibility to save money, and the easiest way to save money is to cut the hands from the learning equation. For instance, a room full of woodworking students require materials, greater working space, involve slightly greater risk, so even though all educators might be willing to agree that students could learn their math more effectively in a woodshop, doing real things (measuring, trig, calculus), blackboards, lecture and chalk are cheap in comparison and you can crowd more students in a room full of desks than workbenches. Besides, there was a fear that those who were involved in making things would become tradesmen, and among the general populace the integration of hand and brain and the contributions of the hands to the development of intellect is little understood. After all, we use our hands unconsciously in many thousands of small gestures and discrete actions each day.
So, the question arises, If the use of the hands makes you smarter, how can you account for all the joe the plumber types, who work at manual employment? Why aren’t they smart enough to run the world? Why are so many mired in anti-intellectualism?
If there is wisdom in the hands as I maintain in my blog, Wisdom of the Hands, and the use of the hands builds intellect, why isn't Joe the Plumber smart? Of course Joe the plumber might be very smart about plumbing, how to fit pipes together, and unstop a toilet or sink... tasks that many more educated people would never even want to get good at. And yet, while being smart in one area, to make the assumption that intelligence can be broadly applied doesn't necessarily pan out in real life. In many areas of normal expertise, Joe the Plumber could be dumb as a post.
There are lots of reasons for academic success, or the lack of it, and not all have very much to do with the capabilities of the child.
For instance, while schools are busy pushing reading in kindergarten, it has been proven that most boys and many girls are not ready to learn reading until they are seven or 8. In stark contrast, in Finland, the country that leads the whole world in 8th grade reading and math, schools don't begin to teach reading until age 8. And by some miracle (not really) kids rapidly catch up because they are reading ready. But here, where we think we are better at everything, we put the kid in school, push him or her to learn things for which he or she is not ready, and the parent and kid are both notified with teacher concerns for his or her stupidity. Teachers in small classes might give Joe some extra help, and possibly notice some things about Joe that would counter the suspicion of his lack of intelligence and reinforce Joe's sense of confidence, but sadly, small classes like those are rare in public education. Even with the most dedicated teachers, some Joes fall through cracks. So, Joe's noticed something that will stick with him his whole life. His assessment? "School is stupid." Even at a tender age, he can see plenty of evidence of dumb-ass things. And by extension, all things academic are stupid as well. In later life Joe sees ample evidence... he is called to work by people who put stupid things in their sinks and toilets, having little sense of the workings of fundamental down-the-drain reality.
And of course Joe is not really stupid. He has merely closed himself off from his innate limitless human curiosity and abandoned the means through which he could become better educated and informed. And of course stupidity is a two way street. I recently visited with a retired philosophy professor from Virginia. He told me of the clueless, out of touch, and essentially irrational professors in his former department (not naming names)... and that he felt his summer employment in agriculture and construction provided a foundation for his philosophical explorations, seemingly unavailable to his peers.
All this is related to the observations of early educators, particularly followers of Pestalozzi who had noted that education should move from the concrete to the abstract and from the known to the unknown. You can have lots of concrete knowledge about pipes and dripping faucets, but at some point, entry to the abstract realm through which we share knowledge with others is required for real wisdom to grow. Equally damaging is when children are pushed into abstraction before being firmly engaged in concrete reality. They may have a false sense of knowing nearly everything that will go unchallenged, as in the days leading up to near complete financial collapse. These days you can band together with like believers, nary a soul in touch with reality and go completely off the deep end.
Our entire culture, society and economy suffer when children's hands are left disengaged in their educations. So, let's get a grip. First thing is to get hold of the notion that our hands do shape intelligence as well as human culture, and acknowledge that to leave any child's hands untrained in skill and sensitivity is to do damage to all.
Fixing things will not be easy. Anti-intellectualism runs deep. But here's the deal in a nutshell:
"The mind and hand are natural allies. The mind speculates; the hand tests the speculations of the mind by the law of practical application. The hand explodes the errors of the mind, for it inquires, so to speak, by the act of doing, whether or not a given theorem is demonstrable in the form of a problem. The hand is, therefore, not only constantly searching after the truth, but is constantly finding it. It is possible for the mind to indulge in false logic, to make the worse appear the better reason, without instant exposure. But for the hand to work falsely is to produce a misshapen thing—tool or machine—which in its construction gives the lie to its maker. Thus the hand that is false to truth, in the vary act publishes the verdict of its own guilt, exposes itself to contempt and derision, convicts itself of unskillfulness or of dishonesty." Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand, 1886
In other words, what we see in the Tea Party movement and in the Republican party is what happens when people get completely out of touch.
I invite my reader's comments and discussion, either here or at Wisdom of the Hands. I am a teacher, author of woodworking books and professional woodworker.