Shop Courses, Crafts, and Creativity
Shop Courses, Crafts, and Creativity
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/imagine/201505/shop-courses-crafts-and-creativity
Or, Why the Maker Movement Should Be In Schools, Not Competing with Them
Post published by Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein on May 11, 2015 in Imagine That!
A great deal of attention has been paid lately to the adverse
consequences of eliminating art, theater, dance and music programs from
primary and secondary schools – and we’ve added our two cents
to the discussion – but crafts and technology classes have been
disappearing just as fast, if not faster. The number of shop classes
offered in US schools has been dropping since the 1970s as the push for
everyone to attend college has taken hold (Moses, 2009 (link is external)).
For example, a recent decision by the Western Association of Schools
and Colleges to no longer grant college credit for shop and crafts
classes caused states such as California to cut over 90% of their shop
classes (Brown, 2012 (link is external)).
The assumption seems to be that only people who can’t cut it in
college should be taking such courses and that shop and crafts courses
convey no benefits to the brightest students. Both assumptions are
wrong. Our studies suggest that if society wants to foster innovative
scientists and inventors, it will have to put those shop and crafts
classes back into the curriculum.
As those of you who follow our blog know, we’re interested in studying very creative and innovative people in order to see what their formal and informal educational experiences can tell us about what might benefit everyone. We are, for example, currently in the process of completing a study of the avocations of all the Nobel Prizewinners in all the different fields in which these Prizes are awarded: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Physiology, Economics, Literature, and Peace. We’ve also completed a study of members of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering. We’ll discuss our findings in future blogs. For the moment, we want to focus on one particular finding that differentiates the most successful scientists and engineers from less successful ones: participation in shop and crafts avocations.
The statistics are compelling. Approximately 40 percent of engineers in the U. S. National Academy of Engineering have adult crafts avocations in woodworking, metalworking, mechanics, ceramics, glassblowing, electronics and/or recreational computing. Somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of physicists, chemists and medical researchers who win Nobel Prizes also have adult avocations in one or more of these crafts (Root-Bernstein, et al., 2008). In comparison, only about 2 to 3 percent of typical scientists and Nobel laureates in Economics, Literature and Peace engage in such avocations (unpublished data). Crafts participation is therefore one of the most compelling differences between very successful scientists or engineers and everyone else. Moreover, we found that we can differentiate those scientists and engineers who produce the most patentable inventions or who establish new companies based upon their lifetime crafts participation: the more crafts experience a scientist or engineer has, the greater their probability of making economically useful contributions to society (Root-Bernstein, et al., 2013). In other words, investing in crafts education will pay off in inventions and the new companies that produce them, thereby driving our entire economy.
Of course, adult crafts avocations almost invariably stem from childhood and adolescent experience. Many Nobel prizewinners explain why such experiences have been so important to their subsequent careers. Here are a few examples from the last twenty years, even as shop and crafts classes were disappearing in our schools:
In the late 1990s Richard Smalley, Nobel Prizewinner in Chemistry (1996), attributed his inventive bent to playful practice making things as an adolescent: “From my father I learned to build things, to take them apart, and to fix mechanical and electrical equipment in general. I spent vast hours in a woodworking shop he maintained in the basement of our house, building gadgets, working both with my father and alone, often late into the night. My mother taught me mechanical drawing so that I could be more systematic in my design work, and I continued in drafting classes throughout my 4 years in high school. This play with building, fixing, and designing was my favorite activity throughout my childhood, and was a wonderful preparation for my later career as an experimentalist working on the frontiers of chemistry and physics” (Smalley, 1996 (link is external)).
Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel Prize Physics, 1998) recalled that creative play as a child developed habits of thinking that influenced his later scientific approach: “I… used to take appliances apart when they broke in an attempt to fix them, which I rarely did successfully, being a kid. I am better at this now…. It was through such creative play that I first learned about pump impellers, refrigerant cycles, material strength, corrosion, and the rudiments of electricity, and more importantly the idea that real understanding of a thing comes from taking it apart oneself, not reading about it in a book or hearing about it in a classroom. To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed” (Laughlin, 1998 (link is external)).
John E. Sulston, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002, attributed his success to the development of manipulative skills acquired through creative play and craftmanship: “As far back as I remember, and earlier, I was an artisan, a maker and doer… I'm not a books person but a hands person… And that was the beginning of my scientific career, if you can call it that” (Sulston, 2002 (link is external)).
Thomas Steitz, the Nobel Prizewinner in Chemistry in 2009, particularly praised the hand knowledge he acquired in secondary school: “I have found that the basic skills in working with tools and materials that I learned in the shop courses have proven invaluable for me in subsequent years, at home and in the laboratory, including constructing models of proteins. I think it is unfortunate that such courses have been eliminated in many schools today as being unnecessary or too expensive” (Steitz, 2009 (link is external)).
Testimony such as this is compelling. Why should top chemists, physicists and physiologists be so ready to rest their laurels on creative play and crafts training they received as children and youth? The answer is, because the lessons they learned and the talents they honed stood them in good stead for a lifetime. No wonder that many express great concern for the dwindling of early craft practice among the current ranks of student scientists and engineers. Just three years ago, Heinz Wolff of the British Institute of Engineering and Technology proclaimed that the elimination of crafts classes has resulted in the “death of competence”:
“With these things [opportunities to work with the hands] you effectively develop an eye at the end of the finger, and you do this when you’re seven years old…. But it’s gone…Our engineering students can’t make things. They might be able to design things on a computer, but they can’t make things. And I don’t believe that you can be an engineer properly… without having a degree of skill in making things” (Wolff, 2012 (link is external)).
Scientists and engineers need craft training. And oddly enough, people from all walks of life – employers included – seem to want it, too. Eliminating crafts classes from schools hasn’t entirely eliminated the personal drive to acquire craft skills and or the economic need for craft knowledge. There is such a huge shortage of people able to make and fix things that many businesses requiring shop skills are now donating money to school systems across the United States in order to re-introduce the needed classes (Beltran, 2013 (link is external); Quinton, 2013 (link is external)). Simultaneously, society has witnessed the rise of the “maker movement,” a self-organizing crafts movement that is exciting people of all ages around the globe, informally, outside of school walls, to become inventors and entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers (Wikipedia (link is external)).
“By hook or by crook” might be the motto of our future Nobelists. Or quite possibly, our educational system will wake up to the vital importance of making and crafting from childhood on up for everyone, including future scientists and engineers.
© 2015 Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein
References
Beltran K. 2013. The death of the shop class is greatly exaggerated. https://www.cabinetreport.com/curriculum-instruction/death-of-shop-classes-greatly-exaggerated-just-ask-collision-repair (link is external)
Brown TT. 2012. The death of the shop class. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabrown/2012/05/30/the-death-of-shop-class-and-americas-high-skilled-workforce/ (link is external)
Laughlin RB. 1998. Robert B. Laughlin - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 11 May 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/laughlin-bio.html (link is external)
Moses, A. 2009.Shop classes and vocational education. http://www.edutopia.org/shop-classes-vocational-education-technology (link is external)
Quinton S. 2013. The future of shop class. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-future-of-shop-class/282389/ (link is external)
Root-Bernstein RS, Allen, L., Beach, L., Bhadula, B., Fast, J., Hosey, D., Kremkow, B., Lapp, J., Lonc, K., Pawelec, K., Podufaly, A., Russ, R., Tennant, L., Vrtis, E., Weinlander, S. 2008. Arts foster success: comparison of Nobel Prizewinners, Royal Society, National Academy, and Sigma Xi Members. J. Psychol. Sci. Tech. 1(2):51-63.
Root-Bernstein RS, Lamore R, Lawton J, Schweitzer J, Root-Bernstein MM, Roraback E, Peruski A, Van Dyke M. 2013. Arts, crafts and STEM Innovation: A network approach to understanding the creative knowledge economy In: Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development, Michael Rush, Editor. Washington D. C.: National Endowment for the Arts and The Brookings Institution, pp. 97-117.
Smalley RE. 1996. "Richard E. Smalley - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 11 May 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/smalley-bio.html (link is external)
Steitz TA. 2009. "Thomas A. Steitz - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 11 May 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2009/steitz-bio.html (link is external)
Sulston J. 2002. Autobiography. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2002/sulston-autobio.html (link is external)
Wikipedia. 2015. Maker culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture (link is external)
Wolff H. 2012. Manual dexterity. http://micromath.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/manual-dexterity/ (link is external)
As those of you who follow our blog know, we’re interested in studying very creative and innovative people in order to see what their formal and informal educational experiences can tell us about what might benefit everyone. We are, for example, currently in the process of completing a study of the avocations of all the Nobel Prizewinners in all the different fields in which these Prizes are awarded: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Physiology, Economics, Literature, and Peace. We’ve also completed a study of members of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering. We’ll discuss our findings in future blogs. For the moment, we want to focus on one particular finding that differentiates the most successful scientists and engineers from less successful ones: participation in shop and crafts avocations.
The statistics are compelling. Approximately 40 percent of engineers in the U. S. National Academy of Engineering have adult crafts avocations in woodworking, metalworking, mechanics, ceramics, glassblowing, electronics and/or recreational computing. Somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of physicists, chemists and medical researchers who win Nobel Prizes also have adult avocations in one or more of these crafts (Root-Bernstein, et al., 2008). In comparison, only about 2 to 3 percent of typical scientists and Nobel laureates in Economics, Literature and Peace engage in such avocations (unpublished data). Crafts participation is therefore one of the most compelling differences between very successful scientists or engineers and everyone else. Moreover, we found that we can differentiate those scientists and engineers who produce the most patentable inventions or who establish new companies based upon their lifetime crafts participation: the more crafts experience a scientist or engineer has, the greater their probability of making economically useful contributions to society (Root-Bernstein, et al., 2013). In other words, investing in crafts education will pay off in inventions and the new companies that produce them, thereby driving our entire economy.
Of course, adult crafts avocations almost invariably stem from childhood and adolescent experience. Many Nobel prizewinners explain why such experiences have been so important to their subsequent careers. Here are a few examples from the last twenty years, even as shop and crafts classes were disappearing in our schools:
In the late 1990s Richard Smalley, Nobel Prizewinner in Chemistry (1996), attributed his inventive bent to playful practice making things as an adolescent: “From my father I learned to build things, to take them apart, and to fix mechanical and electrical equipment in general. I spent vast hours in a woodworking shop he maintained in the basement of our house, building gadgets, working both with my father and alone, often late into the night. My mother taught me mechanical drawing so that I could be more systematic in my design work, and I continued in drafting classes throughout my 4 years in high school. This play with building, fixing, and designing was my favorite activity throughout my childhood, and was a wonderful preparation for my later career as an experimentalist working on the frontiers of chemistry and physics” (Smalley, 1996 (link is external)).
Robert B. Laughlin (Nobel Prize Physics, 1998) recalled that creative play as a child developed habits of thinking that influenced his later scientific approach: “I… used to take appliances apart when they broke in an attempt to fix them, which I rarely did successfully, being a kid. I am better at this now…. It was through such creative play that I first learned about pump impellers, refrigerant cycles, material strength, corrosion, and the rudiments of electricity, and more importantly the idea that real understanding of a thing comes from taking it apart oneself, not reading about it in a book or hearing about it in a classroom. To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed” (Laughlin, 1998 (link is external)).
John E. Sulston, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002, attributed his success to the development of manipulative skills acquired through creative play and craftmanship: “As far back as I remember, and earlier, I was an artisan, a maker and doer… I'm not a books person but a hands person… And that was the beginning of my scientific career, if you can call it that” (Sulston, 2002 (link is external)).
Thomas Steitz, the Nobel Prizewinner in Chemistry in 2009, particularly praised the hand knowledge he acquired in secondary school: “I have found that the basic skills in working with tools and materials that I learned in the shop courses have proven invaluable for me in subsequent years, at home and in the laboratory, including constructing models of proteins. I think it is unfortunate that such courses have been eliminated in many schools today as being unnecessary or too expensive” (Steitz, 2009 (link is external)).
Testimony such as this is compelling. Why should top chemists, physicists and physiologists be so ready to rest their laurels on creative play and crafts training they received as children and youth? The answer is, because the lessons they learned and the talents they honed stood them in good stead for a lifetime. No wonder that many express great concern for the dwindling of early craft practice among the current ranks of student scientists and engineers. Just three years ago, Heinz Wolff of the British Institute of Engineering and Technology proclaimed that the elimination of crafts classes has resulted in the “death of competence”:
“With these things [opportunities to work with the hands] you effectively develop an eye at the end of the finger, and you do this when you’re seven years old…. But it’s gone…Our engineering students can’t make things. They might be able to design things on a computer, but they can’t make things. And I don’t believe that you can be an engineer properly… without having a degree of skill in making things” (Wolff, 2012 (link is external)).
Scientists and engineers need craft training. And oddly enough, people from all walks of life – employers included – seem to want it, too. Eliminating crafts classes from schools hasn’t entirely eliminated the personal drive to acquire craft skills and or the economic need for craft knowledge. There is such a huge shortage of people able to make and fix things that many businesses requiring shop skills are now donating money to school systems across the United States in order to re-introduce the needed classes (Beltran, 2013 (link is external); Quinton, 2013 (link is external)). Simultaneously, society has witnessed the rise of the “maker movement,” a self-organizing crafts movement that is exciting people of all ages around the globe, informally, outside of school walls, to become inventors and entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers (Wikipedia (link is external)).
“By hook or by crook” might be the motto of our future Nobelists. Or quite possibly, our educational system will wake up to the vital importance of making and crafting from childhood on up for everyone, including future scientists and engineers.
© 2015 Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein
References
Beltran K. 2013. The death of the shop class is greatly exaggerated. https://www.cabinetreport.com/curriculum-instruction/death-of-shop-classes-greatly-exaggerated-just-ask-collision-repair (link is external)
Brown TT. 2012. The death of the shop class. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabrown/2012/05/30/the-death-of-shop-class-and-americas-high-skilled-workforce/ (link is external)
Laughlin RB. 1998. Robert B. Laughlin - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 11 May 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/laughlin-bio.html (link is external)
Moses, A. 2009.Shop classes and vocational education. http://www.edutopia.org/shop-classes-vocational-education-technology (link is external)
Quinton S. 2013. The future of shop class. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-future-of-shop-class/282389/ (link is external)
Root-Bernstein RS, Allen, L., Beach, L., Bhadula, B., Fast, J., Hosey, D., Kremkow, B., Lapp, J., Lonc, K., Pawelec, K., Podufaly, A., Russ, R., Tennant, L., Vrtis, E., Weinlander, S. 2008. Arts foster success: comparison of Nobel Prizewinners, Royal Society, National Academy, and Sigma Xi Members. J. Psychol. Sci. Tech. 1(2):51-63.
Root-Bernstein RS, Lamore R, Lawton J, Schweitzer J, Root-Bernstein MM, Roraback E, Peruski A, Van Dyke M. 2013. Arts, crafts and STEM Innovation: A network approach to understanding the creative knowledge economy In: Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development, Michael Rush, Editor. Washington D. C.: National Endowment for the Arts and The Brookings Institution, pp. 97-117.
Smalley RE. 1996. "Richard E. Smalley - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 11 May 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1996/smalley-bio.html (link is external)
Steitz TA. 2009. "Thomas A. Steitz - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 11 May 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2009/steitz-bio.html (link is external)
Sulston J. 2002. Autobiography. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2002/sulston-autobio.html (link is external)
Wikipedia. 2015. Maker culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture (link is external)
Wolff H. 2012. Manual dexterity. http://micromath.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/manual-dexterity/ (link is external)
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