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Deskilling
Tuesday, 27th April 2010 08:21 AM
Someone on the UKworkshop forum pointed this out to me http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/9932/truly-old-school-woodworking, be patient and after about 45 seconds you will see some amazing skill with just basic hand tools. And thy all seem to still have afull set of fingers!
We have recently purchased a domino jointer for the workshop. This is a machine that makes very strong joints that can replace small mortice and tenons, in chairs etc. It also has many other uses which we have still to discover. It is a high precision tool which is a joy to use. David, who is into that sort of thing more than me, isecstatic about it! Whilst it will save use a lot of time without compromising on qualityI still have a niggling feeling that this sort of stuff deskills the user. Does that matter? I really don't know, perhaps some people would like to comment on that. What would the craftsmen shown in the film think if they could see the way we do things now? Would they think "brilliant the hard wok has been taken out of making things" or would they think "where have the skills gone that we treasured and where is the mark of the maker in the "stuff" we buy today"?
At the beginning of the last century there was a movement called educational slojd that originated in Sweden (where the film was made). The movement was based on the teaching of woodworking skills, especially carving, probably similar to that shown in the film. The idea was not that everyone needed to know how to carve, but that the discipline of craft is character building and imparts what we now would call portable skills. For a better description of slojd see http://chestofbooks.com/home-improvement/woodworking/Hand-Book-Slojd/First-Chapter-Introductory-Remarks-Educational-Slojd.html. I am disappointed by the abandonment of the teaching of hand skills in our schools, firstly because it is useful to have basic practical skills but also because the discipline of making is a useful attitude for life.
I think the concept of slojd is related to the idea of being in the zone that I have talked about previously. I think that using hand tools in the way shown probably takes you further into the zone than using the domino jointer!