Crafting

We stopped using sandpaper for smoothing wood on field courses years ago. Sandpaper is sand, or grit, glued to a piece of paper in a thin layer. It doesn’t last very long, which precludes it from being taken on long trips. A simple alternative is to take a piece of fabric (denim or cotton duct works great) and a handful of sand, then use that to smooth the piece you’re working on. The fabric holds the sand. The only thing lacking is the glue, and if you need to hold the sand more stationary you can mix some lard or other fat with the sand and it will hold it together (this can be useful for improvised sharpening). It’s easy to transport because you only carry the fabric. You could also wear a pair of gloves and palm the sand.

Another sandpaper alternative is using shards of broken glass to shave wood. Less portable, but it’s hard to go anywhere where you can’t find an old beer bottle.

There are usually numerous creative substitutes for things we think of as necessary. The challenge is in recognizing them, which can be difficult even if the solution is right in front of you.

“Craft teaches our dependence upon the natural material world directly and practically – not as an abstraction.”

-  Zabe MacEachern, from her article Crafting as a practice of Relating to the Natural World in the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (CJEE), Vol 5, No 1 – 2000.

Crafting is often seen as a way to kill time by making trivial items (think decorated placemats, ash-trays and gift shop knick-knacks).  I see it as the physical point of connection between a person and the landscape.

More of our lives are abstract than at any point in history.  Crafting is an antidote to that abstraction by creating a real, tangible link to our environment.

Children are raised as perfect consumers, producing nothing while consuming items from the four corners of the earth.  Our culture teaches them to want things, and even to be prideful when they find a deal.  But when they learn to make what they need rather than buy it, the world is a different place and they become more empowered people.

This holiday season (or season of covetous mammon), as the relentless messaging machine says if you love someone you’ll buy them stuff and that to consume is our hightest calling, consider taking some time to make something useful.  Anything.  And if you have kids, make something useful with them.  It may seem like a small act, but the results of the mental shift that making something can bring about are powerful.

I’ve been researching the role of crafting on the learning process recently.  There is a mountain of how-to information on crafting, but most of it on how-to-do things; the questions of why and what are the impacts are aren’t as common.  Since crafting is one of the seven core elements of the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School process, and working with the hands to make useful items is a large part of our immersion programs, I’ve been studying to expand our curriculum to include more about the impact of crafting on learning.

I’m currently reading Frank R. Wilson’s book The Hand; How it’s use shapes the brain, language, and human culture, from which I pulled this quotation on page 7:

I would argue that any theory of human intelligence which ignores the interdependence of hand and brain function, the historic origins of that relationship, or the impact of that history on developmental dynamics in modern humans, is grossly misleading and sterile.

The hand is certainly discounted in modern education.  But at what cost to the learner?  I believe strongly that know-how, or being able to do accomplish practical tasks, is equally as important as, and a foundation of, abstract thinking.

Our educational system has become increasingly abstract over the last hundred years.  Instead of instruction in sensory development and hands-on skills, we focus almost exclusively on the intellectual and the abstract.  Much of this is the result of the influence of Jean Piaget and his stage theory of cognitive development from the 1920′s.  He viewed abstract intellectual thought as a higher-order process of the mind, and his influence resulted in schools moving away from sensory intelligence and focusing solely on abstract intellectualism.  But was he right, and was this a good move? I don’t think so. It’s led to us becoming a soceity of thinkers and debaters, but not doers. Which is why we’re developing the idea of bushcraft education which views sensory intelligence, or know-how, as equally important as debate and explanation.

This is a clay image of the sensory homunculus from the British Museum Of Natural History.  The exaggerated size of the hands, lips, etc., exist because it’s a model representing how much of the brain is used to process information from those parts of the body.  From the image we can determine that a much larger part of the brain is devoted to the hands than, say, the knee cap.  But our education system focuses almost exclusively on the abstract capabilities of the brain, while ignoring the hands except for writing, using scissors, and other classroom-appropriate activities.

Developing a model that includes both rigorous intellectual work and hands-on learning underlies all of our long-term programs at Jack Mountain.  The forests and waterways of Maine are our educational laboratory, and while we haven’t written much about it, we’ve had great successes in understanding the learning process and designing learning programs that include both the head and hands.

If you’re interested in learning more about our ideas on education, join our free online course starting November 21st.   More information is available on our online network.