May 26, 2015 05:13 PM
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodwo...-beginners
EXCERPT: Do you start a kid (or kid at heart) down the woodworking rabbit hole via hand tools, power tools or both? The more time I spend teaching woodworking, observing students learning and contemplating the woodworking teaching process, the more I’m leaning toward the idea that power-tools should be eliminated, or drastically reduced – particularly for young woodworkers. I am not against power tools at all. In fact, I’ll only give up my band saw when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
[...] I knew all the technology lessons I taught would be worthless to these ninth graders by the time they graduated college. Where was technology eight years ago? We were just getting into HTML 4.0 and were still JavaScript dependent for interactivity. YouTube, Mobile, Facebook, wireless, biometrics, Twitter and such weren’t around. Most of us online still used dial-up (some had upgraded to 56k!). The programs we used in webmastering no longer exist or have morphed so much to become unrecognizable! So if I’d focused the course on that specific technology it would be disposable ed. Fun for a while, but filling the figurative landfill shortly.
[...] Which brought me back to woodworking. No matter how I analyzed the situation, teaching machinery-based woodworking to the kids seemed to lock them into the machines’ limitations. Hand tools could allow the kids to more easily understand what is happening in the interaction with the cutting edge and wood – the students would as a result better raw material for employers to mold into their businesses best interest....
EXCERPT: Do you start a kid (or kid at heart) down the woodworking rabbit hole via hand tools, power tools or both? The more time I spend teaching woodworking, observing students learning and contemplating the woodworking teaching process, the more I’m leaning toward the idea that power-tools should be eliminated, or drastically reduced – particularly for young woodworkers. I am not against power tools at all. In fact, I’ll only give up my band saw when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
[...] I knew all the technology lessons I taught would be worthless to these ninth graders by the time they graduated college. Where was technology eight years ago? We were just getting into HTML 4.0 and were still JavaScript dependent for interactivity. YouTube, Mobile, Facebook, wireless, biometrics, Twitter and such weren’t around. Most of us online still used dial-up (some had upgraded to 56k!). The programs we used in webmastering no longer exist or have morphed so much to become unrecognizable! So if I’d focused the course on that specific technology it would be disposable ed. Fun for a while, but filling the figurative landfill shortly.
[...] Which brought me back to woodworking. No matter how I analyzed the situation, teaching machinery-based woodworking to the kids seemed to lock them into the machines’ limitations. Hand tools could allow the kids to more easily understand what is happening in the interaction with the cutting edge and wood – the students would as a result better raw material for employers to mold into their businesses best interest....