By Barry Simpson
I am in complete agreement with long-term teacher and coach at Harwood John Kerrigan’s opinion in last week’s edition of this newspaper. He spoke of the need for resumption of the industrial arts and home economics programs at Harwood, a return to the eight-block schedule and questioned the value of doubling the administrative staff while reducing the teaching staff to “the lowest level in about a decade.”
When our daughter Sarah Simpson Spencer, who is now practicing large animal veterinary medicine in England, read John’s letter she promptly responded on Facebook:
“Andrew Spencer and I attended Harwood in the golden years when there were fantastic co-curricular programs in industrial arts, home economics and when honors classes were available. Honors classes helped me get the push I needed to prepare for two further university degrees and access to the VAST Program with Vermont Tech helped motivate Andrew to earn degrees in computer science. However, industrial arts and home economics gave us the life skills we value most as self-sufficient individuals who very rarely rely on mechanics, architects and builders, fast food restaurants and clothing retailers because we fabricate and repair everything from cars and clothes to houses and three meals a day from fresh ingredients. We were shown fantastic examples at home by our parents, but those classes helped these skills flourish and gave us the spark to carry on our skill set throughout life.
“Learning to work in three dimensions in physical terms on a workshop bench rather than in virtual terms on a computer is an undeniably essential skill which is being gradually lost by our cohort. In the future, I see Andrew and myself relying less and less on our university degrees and more on the basic skills of planning, preparing, constructing and repairing our home, our cars, our food, our clothes. Today our generation is largely under-employed or unemployed. If we spent more time learning what we are capable of creating with our hands and the satisfaction that comes from a hard day’s work away from computer screens, I suspect that would not be the case. If we become a society that hires others to do all these tasks for us and those tradespersons become fewer in number and our financial resources are reduced because the highly educated are mostly under-employed and poorly skilled in the trades what will happen then? Thanks, John Kerrigan, for sharing your views!”
I am also in agreement with John that Harwood would benefit from the presence of those students who are now spending an additional 1 ½ hours on a special bus every day to go back and forth to vocational school in Barre. Moreover, they lose the opportunity to participate in so many extraordinary programs that Harwood excels in including the music and drama parts of the curriculum that is better than the best in general-focus public and private schools.
But the aspect that distresses me just as much as the loss to the school of the people who will go on to become skilled tradespersons but the loss of the “workshop” availability to students who will need to know what skills they have or can develop in the realm of going.
Going from two-dimensional thinking to three-dimensional action is an absolutely critical skill for engineers, architects, surgeons, biomechanists, astrophysicists and, yes, even rocket scientists.
When I think of all the amazing projects that Sarah undertook at Harwood in addition to the woven baskets, round tables, small cabinets and other items that we still use and enjoy, I am always in awe of how much that work contributed to her education and understanding of what her capabilities are. These projects include but are not limited to the incredible folding ski waxing bench that is now on loan to Noah Eckstein and the cross-country ski poling exercise device which were both made at Harwood with oversight of a skilled facilitator.
I also recall that Sarah used all eight blocks of time to take subjects or pursue interests beyond the specific requirements, which enabled her to get the very best that Harwood had to offer. She still is regularly in touch with former teachers and of course coaches at Harwood and always has complimentary thoughts about her time there.
Claire and I are going to participate in a program at Harwood, four Monday nights in March, in discussions based on information that was presented in the video Most Likely To Succeed by One Potato Productions. The film builds on a curriculum expounded at “High Tech High” in California and other schools that deviates from the usual teacher as authority, rote le learning and memorization, testing and letter grades basis generally accepted as suitabeducational practice.
The shift is to a thorough reorganization of educational priorities calculated to prepare students for a very uncertain employment future. The focus is on exploration of ideas and innovative implementation, individual or team initiatives and a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving. While probing this approach to learning, students naturally develop communication and collaboration, critical analysis and project evaluation techniques.
If a program like this were to be instilled at Harwood, a restoration and restaffing of the withered industrial arts and home economics programs is certainly indicated, in addition to numerous other introductions over time to the curriculum and learning concepts that would benefit the community as a whole. But as an undertaking it might very well mean that the plumber you just hired to figure out why your boiler isn’t working on this very cold night or the surgeon who is just about to make an incision in that very sore place in your abdomen will have the manual dexterity, intellectual capacity and creative understanding of complex systems in order to provide the very best possible outcome for you.
Barry Simpson lives Warren.
