David Savage's Schwarz tool chest competition

[Eric The Viking]

I read about David Savage's excellent competition (for a Chris Schwarz tool chest) in Hand Tools, but I thought this rant belonged here (if anywhere)...

... My youngest has just finished school, and she's off to uni next year, but, after parenting through three sets of A-level choices, I've noticed a pattern. It's depressing to see how craft skills are so undervalued now in the 'arts' side of the house.

Photography springs to mind. All three of mine went to the same high-scoring school. It gets a lot of A and A-star results in many subjects, including photography, but the students are not taught how cameras can be used, and very selective photographic history.

My son considered the subject; we duly went to the open day; the teacher had heard of Ansel Adams but didn't like his work and had never heard of the Zone System. She said they didn't teach 'technical stuff' and looked at me as if I was some sort of C19th farm labourer rather than an aesthete (like her, obviously). The students' work on display lacked focus and was generally executed very poorly (which is hard to achieve with modern digital cameras!). I was taking better (and more interesting) pictures when I was ten, and developing/printing them myself.

I only pick a subject I know a bit about. It seems to be the same in design and technology (which has recently been renamed yet again - I think it's now "Dissident Materials" or sommat). They get to play with 3D printers, Sketchup and CNC, but can't make a bookcase. Ditto for Information Technology - no technical explanations, and definitely no programming, not even the simplest Web stuff.

Craft skills teach other "life skills" too: focus and concentration, attention to detail, planning and patience, and respect for our ancestors' amazing qualities - how many people, for example, actually stop to look at Grinling Gibbons' Choir in St. Paul's, or the joinery of Westminster Hall's roof? They probably do if they're directed to by the tour guide, I guess, but it should knock their socks off when they first glimpse it.

I understand the importance of sport in education, and it's now generally accepted that we need it on the curriculum. But I don't think our educationalists or politicians have a clue about the value of craft skills to society.

Shouldn't we be campaigning for more competitions like this?

E.

 

[Racers]

Sounds like the teacher was just playing at it, not liking Ansel Adams or knowing the Zone System is just wrong, I bet she has her lens hoods on backwards as well (tourist mode)
Resistant Materials seems to be a way of keeping the kids away from anything sharp.
My two boys had similar problems with the subjects they wanted to do not having enough people to do the subject.

Pete

 

[DTR]

It seems to be the same in design and technology (which has recently been renamed yet again - I think it's now "Dissident Materials" or sommat). They get to play with 3D printers, Sketchup and CNC, but can't make a bookcase.

SWMBO went to our local school's open evening last night. The technology teacher complained that part of the problem is their budget. Until the government decides that we need more engineers etc , they cannot afford to maintain the machines or buy the materials.

 

[Droogs]

It's just indicitive of our times. I am in the process of trying to establish myself as a business after a very lengthy period of being unemployed. I approached all the various agencies about my idea. Which will result in an end product that combines IT, Home entertainment, furniture making and boulle marketry, lapidary and jewellery making processes and techniques (think roentgen furniture built around computers and home cinema sytems). So after explaining my idea and showing that it involves design, technology (hand, power and CNC) plus the artistry of veneerig and marquetry, I was told by the various "Arts" bodies that it was not art and didn't qualify and by the various "Engineering and Technology" bodies that it was nothing to do with them. This was both for national and EU bodies.

As a consequence it has taken me 2 years to get to a position where I can look at doing this properly and all without any help or subsidies and while being told I don't qualify to call myself an artist or an engineer or a craftsmen by their definitions of such. What a load of guava. When I make it BIG I'll still make a loss stuff 'em
:lol:

 

[Silverbirch]

The Photography teacher David Savage refers to is a bit like an English teacher saying they don`t like Shakespeare and not being aware he wrote Macbeth. Mind you, judging by the newsletters David used to send out, (he seems much improved lately) I wonder if his old English teacher had a firm grasp of his subject?

 

[lurker]

One of my roles at work is to take graduate engineers and get them to do some actual practical work so they can appreciate the application of their design work
It's growing increasingly difficult as they have virtually nil hand skills
You just cannot trust them with say a Stanley knife. The place would be knee deep in blood!
These folk are 24 +

My own son did aeronautical engineering at Liverpool where they had to do stuff in a workshop.
The tutor told him it was obvious we had a workshop at home as his hand skills were so far in advance of the rest of the class.