Thinking and Doing

When my daughter Maggie tried to start her car yesterday, she discovered that she had left her lights on and the battery was dead. (She drives an old car that doesn't automatically save her from doing dumb things.) To my surprise, she got my battery charger and proceeded to connect it. She must have been listening during one of the simple lessons on auto maintenance I had subjected her to early on. I have frequently worried that I have not done enough to help my children understand how to solve the numerous household maintenance issues we all confront. Can they trouble shoot why the lawnmower doesn't start? Or their car? Can they make simple electrical repairs? Plumbing? Patch an inner tube on a bike tire? I know all of these problems can be solved by hiring someone to do them or simply by discarding "broken" things and buying new. But there is something gratifying about knowing you can solve your own problems. Maybe I feel this way because I was raised on a small farm by a father who NEVER bought anything new. We "repaired" everything and Pa expected his kids to know how to troubleshoot and fix. I still remember standing next to my Dad as he worked on cars and tractors, lawn mowers and milk machines. I'd be charged with fetching tools and holding the light. (It was not unusual to get a rap on the side of the head if I shined the light in his eyes too often!) As my brothers and I grew older, we were expected to solve these problems on our own to help run our farm. (We also used these skills to enhance our personal lives as well. I can't tell you how important it was to get that "59 Ford purring so you could cruise around town.)  It wasn't until later that I realized my Dad was running a "mentoring" program for his sons. His "problem solving workshops" helped all of us learn by doing. We also came to understand how satisfying it was to confront a problem and find a solution. (I still vividly remember when I solved an ignition problem on an old car my Mom needed to drive and she told me I was "acting like a man". I was 12 years old.)

I would come to understand that what he was doing explained why I liked classes in school that asked me to do real world stuff. In choir, I sang. In band, I played my trombone. In phy. ed, we exercised. In after school plays, we performed. In sports, we played football.  In the process, I continued to learn new skills, especially when I trusted my teacher. In his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Mathew Crawford argues that separating thinking from doing is misguided. The value of making things has been diminished by the notion that "knowledge work" is more important, especially in school. The challenge for teachers is to connect the thinking and doing in the classroom, especially when the main "doing" on a state test is filling in a dot.

A Poem:

Advice

Someone dancing inside us
   has learned only a few steps:
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
    the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
He hasn't noticed yet the woman
    standing away from the lamp.
the one with black eyes
    who knows the rumba.
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
    from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
    something unexpected will happen;
if they don't, the next world
    will be a lot like this one.

Bill Holm