[Sketching12] scanning food and future teenagers

[Wendy Ju]

It's hard not to read this article as a "Kids these days!" piece. I have
encountered technically clueless people of all ages.  This is not new. My
father used to tell all the jokes that other people refer to as "Polish
jokes" but in our household, they were "Software Engineer jokes."

I will say, though, for people who want to be reassured, that it doesn't
take a long time to remedy a whole lifetime of not tinkering with things.
As a specific example, when they do engineering education studies with
women who enter college without a lot of "making" experience, they find
that they indeed lack the mechanical intuition of their male counterparts;
however, within half an hour of a tinkering activity, there is no notably
measurable difference in performance or intuition. Which is to say, if you
just take the time to point out to someone where they need to hold the
hammer, or which way they need to turn the screwdriver, and WHY, then
they'll know, and they're unlikely to forget. Of course part of you wonders
how people got this far in life without knowing these things, but I do
think it's blowing things out of proportion to think this is holding
humanity back.

We all have our own blindspots... I, for example, am in my 30's and am
still really unable to ask other people for money, which seems like a far
more important skill than hammering...

Wendy

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Christopher T Palmer <ctp at ctpdesign.com>wrote:

>  On the article about "why your teenager can't use a hammer" it's a
> subject that is very much on my mind and has been for a long time now. I'd
> like to get on my soapbox for a bit, and then ask for help/comments/feedback
>
> I have no idea if I was a normal kid of my times. I was born in 1967. My
> father was a machinist for the school of science at a California State
> University. I grew up in a making household, and was a maker from early on.
> I built kits of all sorts, then I started building airplane kits - the kind
> that are a box of sticks and a paper plan. Soon after that I ditched the
> kits and designed my own planes based on what I had already learned. Same
> with model rockets. Et cetera, et cetera. I got to high school in 1980 and
> we still had an auto shop, and metal shop, and wood shop. I took metal
> shop, and decided to build a steam engine. The teacher asked if I planned
> to use a kit, I said no. He asked if I planned to use commercial plans, I
> said no. I drew what I planned to make, and pretty quickly he knew to just
> turn me loose and let me run with it. After high school I started college,
> and along side my general ed, and major classes I took machine technology,
> and welding. I just figured that to be as well rounded as I could be I
> should continue academics AND maker skills training.
>
> Fast forward a few years, and I had started a career in high tech, but I
> was continuing to take welding classes at the local community college. I
> was taking them at the two colleges that still had programs, since several
> others had been shut down permanently. While waiting for class one night,
> about 50 people showed up at our school hoping to get in. The only other
> welding program nearby had been shut down, permanently. BTW - these
> departments were being shut down to make room for information technology
> classes. Not computer science, or programming mind you. Microsoft, and
> Cisco, and the like were funneling in millions of dollars to set up
> programs to train MCSEs and CCNAs and such. All perfectly fine skills, but
> to sacrifice these other departments was completely
> short-sighted...horribly short sighted. All the while high school shop
> programs were being shuttered, along with art, music, and most everything
> else deemed not academically or fiscally important.
>
> I won't go on and on about this here, at least not like I am usually known
> to when the subject comes up. I know that we on this email list are in this
> little (but ever growing) bubble of the new makerdom. Clearly the success
> of Make magazine, and all the stuff associated - kits, books, blogs,
> companies, websites, conferences, etc - points to the re-prioritizing of
> what came to be pejoratively called "the trades" or "manual skills", so
> maybe my next question is moot.
>
> I'm going to ask it anyway.
>
> What can I do? Or more to the point what ELSE can I do? What else can we
> all do? Perhaps we are doing all we can. Maybe my head is out of whack with
> the expectation that until machine and wood shops are back in our high
> schools and colleges that we are going to stay screwed. Maybe we are now
> creating millions of people who will be able to use a hammer, and
> screwdriver, and solve mechanical problems, and all that has happened is we
> lost one generation...that it isn't a permanently downward slope. Maybe my
> teaching, writing, blogging, making, and mentoring is all I can do, and
> maybe it's having an impact. I need to say that I don't have words for the
> level of passion this mess raises in me, so I feel like there's no way I
> can do enough to right these wrongs. Or what I consider to be
> wrongs...egregious ones.
>
> Thanks for listening, and feel free to pass this along and post it places.
> I need to know.
> CTP
>
>
>
> At 12:04 PM 7/25/2012, alicia wrote:
>
> In the spirit of making Sketching longer than the weekend, here are some
> interesting videos and researches I found.
>
> Why your teenager can't use a hammer - great article from Canada but I
> think it's true in America too:
> http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/08/25/why-your-teenager-cant-use-a-hammer/
>
> Cheers,
> Alicia
>
>
>
>
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