Active Learning

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[promotional video for Squishy Circuits on Kickstarter]

Grant Feller writes in The Telegraph’s “Thinking Man” column about his take on the shift from “dad skill” and DIY in Britain to hiring someone to do it. By definition, any column under the mantle “Thinking Man” will be male-focused, but there are resonances here that have value for those of us thinking about how to frame our maker programs. The maker movement — especially as portrayed in popular media — often overlooks “traditional” hands-on acts in favor of experimentation with new technology.

But the more I work with libraries in small cities or rural communities to plot next steps forward based on community needs, the more I hear that the community has needs that don’t necessarily mean they need an influx of new technologies. Take a gander at some of Feller’s thoughts, excerpted below, and see what resonances you hear that speak to what your community might need.

A recent survey revealed that only a fifth of men can sort out a leaky tap, fewer than half can wire a plug and three fifths would call in a plumber to unblock the toilet …

Some of us … lack any kind of “dad-skill”. There is only one number on my speed-dial and that’s Robert’s – the hero in my hour of need and self-appointed guardian. I am pretty sure that he cares for me as deeply, if only because I am helping to pay off his mortgage with alarming rapidity. Robert is my Polish man-who-can, shamelessly exploiting the fact that I am so obviously a man-who-can’t. Who can’t – please don’t laugh – even change a light bulb. Just before our New Year’s party, the lights started flickering in the kitchen and I immediately called Robert.

“Can you come round,” I pleaded. “There’s something wrong with the circuits you installed, there’s some kind of power surge and it’s causing the lights to flicker. I know it’s Christmas but I’ll give you a bit extra.” … So Robert rushed round … and solved the “power surge crisis” by changing a bulb … And I paid him £50 to do so …

“Aren’t you even a teency bit embarrassed that you’d rather put on a pinny than hammer in a nail?” suggested my long-suffering wife (who, incidentally, repaired the lock mechanism on my daughter’s door handle after I failed to find the correct screwdriver to even dismantle it) …

Alison Winfield-Chislett set up The Goodlife Centre five years ago, and it joins the swelling ranks of DIY clubs that have sprung up throughout the country. She realised that her personal interest – studying the history of British hobbies and DIY – chimed perfectly with the emergence of a new generation of men who were embarrassed that they had inherited no practical skills from their fathers.

Alison’s first DIY learning course was entitled “tools for the terrified” and she now teaches both sexes everything from basic skills to complex woodwork. She believes that it’s principally the changing aspirations of the working and middle classes that have led to a sharp decline in DIY skills. And also a sharp decline in DIY stores. In the past two years, for instance, Homebase closed a quarter of its DIY stores and B&Q [both UK home improvement stores] a sixth because a “less-skilled generation” just can’t be bothered.

“It used to be that there were many more people in manual labour,” Alison says. “People were more confident about doing things by and for themselves. Then a generation of labourers at the beginning of the century began to encourage their children to use education as a means of finding an office job or a skill that wasn’t necessarily manual. In the rush to find employment, we stopped learning practical skills. And that has led people, especially men, to become frightened that they don’t know things that their parents and grandparents learnt at a young age.”

The generation coming of age now are not, according to Alison, going to be much better. They have been traumatised by a barrage of health and safety regulations, and by the difficulty and expense of getting hold of a home to call their own. “Young people are scared of what will happen if they try DIY,” she says. “Especially if they’ve grown up in a new-build house and then, with their first foot on the housing ladder, find they’re in need of some make do and mend. It’s not that they are lazy, they’re ignorant. And if they don’t own the property, they don’t care so much either. They don’t possess the housemaking pride of previous generations.

“And so when men come to us they’re ashamed – ashamed that they can’t do what their fathers could, ashamed that their wives think less of them and ashamed that they are paying a fortune to tradesmen for even the simplest tasks. It is as if when they come to us they are fighting with their demons and our first role is to help them overcome that learning block” …

We are a society whose ability to know has grown at the same rate as our ability to do has shrunk. There’s a reason, say academics, that the word recreation is synonymous with having a hobby – it derives from the ability to recreate. Past-times were about making, not doing. Wielding a saw not a golf club. Now that “maker” philosophy seems to have been usurped by mostly-male television chefs who’d rather dirty their hands with Parmesan than wood shavings. They’ve helped to redefine masculinity as something, well, a bit more feminine, with just a soupçon of testosterone.

Mark Miodownik, professor of material science at University College London and author of Stuff Matters, believes there is an indelible link between using our minds and our hands to solve problems, and how they combine can affect our mood dramatically. Tasks such as DIY, and other skills that we used to take for granted, have a profound effect on our cognitive abilities. Building a shelf, for instance, connects us to a part of our mind that simply isn’t sparked into life by sitting at a desk with a computer. “When the body and mind are in harmony, that’s a beautiful thing,” he says. The way we have learnt to use materials and “fix” things is, he believes, the most important factor in the development of civilisation. “Materials are an expression of who we are.”