Says Lynda Barry, quoted in "A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous" (NYT). Barry is a professor of "interdisciplinary creativity" at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
September 5, 2022
Students these days "don’t have a big relationship to their hands. I’ve had to show them how to cut a circle out of paper...."
"You keep the scissors there and you move the paper like this, and they’re like, 'What?' There’s so much dexterity that they, by and large, do not have.... [They] start keyboarding in kindergarten. Handwriting, that thing that we think is no big deal, there’s so much dexterity in it. Not just in the hand you’re writing with, but the nondominant hand is always in action, moving the paper, paying attention. I mean, there’s a reason people gesture while they talk. If somebody is trying to explain something complicated, and they have to sit on their hands, it’s much harder for them to explain it.... [With a phone] you’re no longer where you are. You’re no longer in the room. You’re no longer anywhere. The opportunities to have an interaction with the things around you are taken away. I just see the world as richer without the phone.... So something that closes you off to the world that you’re in — I mean, I could be on TikTok all night long. I keep deleting that app because I love it so much. But something that takes you out of your environment, you pay a high price...."
Says Lynda Barry, quoted in "A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous" (NYT). Barry is a professor of "interdisciplinary creativity" at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
Says Lynda Barry, quoted in "A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous" (NYT). Barry is a professor of "interdisciplinary creativity" at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
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70 comments:
but! But! BUT! at least (by age 8) they know how to put a condom on a banana!
The clock is ticking on us isn't it? Millenials and Gen. Zers are often referred to as dumb generations. We see videos of young folks interviewed in the streets who can't answer basic questions about current events, geography, etc. We read that school closures for Covid have had serious negative effects on math and reading skills. Now we can read that youngsters lack manual dexterity.
All is proceeding as planned. Ask the Democrats, the Marxists and the WEF.
Wiki entry on Lynda Barry, “ For a time, Barry dated public-radio personality Ira Glass.[42] She briefly joined him in Washington, D.C., but a few months later, in the summer of 1989, she moved to Chicago to be near fellow cartoonists.[11] Glass followed her there.[43] Reflecting on the relationship, she called it the "worst thing I ever did," and said he told her she "was boring and shallow, and...wasn't enough in the moment for him."[43] She later drew a comic based on their relationship titled "Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend", which was later included in her book One! Hundred! Demons!...”
No surprise re Ira Glass. NPR. Enough said.
I went to high school with her. She was one of the weird girls that always wore milkman/farmer overalls. No, I never said two words to her. I was taking German, and math.
She was cutting-out paper dolls in art class.
RHS 1974
This is the real harm to children these days at home and in school is the deprivation of arts and crafts and team sports and Athletics in general. The brain is almost exclusively tasked with moving the body parts around in a coordinated and graceful and precise way.
The other horrible thing being done to children as their constant watching of video cartoons when they're at an age when they're learning to speak and so they only way they know how to mimic a mouth moving is by a crudely drawn flapping of a character on a stupid show.
My advice: Introduce The Squid Game as an extracirricular.
I was actually thinking about this the other day. I used to hand-write things constantly as a chemist in keeping my laboratory notebook, but around 2005 or so, the company moved to electronic notebooks (we would still print out hard copies for signatures and binding), but I was suddenly only handwriting the occasional check for payment or simply signing my name. I noticed 5 or 6 years ago in writing a check that my handwriting had deteriorated badly due to disuse of over a decade.
About 18 months ago I started studying math again, and I was suddenly writing pages and pages of math problems for 2-4 hours a day. At first, my writing was awful looking, but within a few weeks it was suddenly back to the state it was in 2005- clean, crisp, accurate, and easily legible. I was writing a check last week and I noticed for the first time that the text I was writing had improved dramatically and that my signature hadn't looked that good and clean in a long, long time.
Use it or lose it.
As for smart phones, I suspect that 10,000 years from now, humans will have only thumbs as individual fingers- the other four will merge into a mitt.
"Students these days "don’t have a big relationship to their hands.'"
Western birthrates say otherwise.
When I taught school back in the oughts and teens I always counseled students to turn any and all notifications off except the call ring and have that turned to silent vibrate. That way you had all the advantages and positives of carrying a super computer on your pocket but none of the negatives. Recently I ran into an unrecognized middle aged adult on the beach - a former student. He said that was probably the best advice a teacher ever gave him - having a silent phone that you control instead of it Pavlov-ing you.
Students these days "don’t have a big relationship to their hands"
Reminds me of a song.
But Rosie you're all right -- you wear my ring
When you hold me tight -- Rosie that's my thing
When you turn out the light -- I got to hand it to me
Looks like it's me and you again tonight, Rosie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wnzVMUbpV4&ab_channel=Mico
I hate funky Seventies graphics.
So much so that I have refused to "Keep on Truckin'."
What are all those dots on the kids' faces? Freckles? Pimples? Monkey pox?
I use my left hand while typing much more than I do when writing by hand.
Play is children's work.
We are heading for a generation that cannot do anything except keyboard. Meanwhile, skilled trades are disappearing.
“For every five tradespeople that leave the field this year, two will replace them, and it has been that for nearly a decade — we are looking at a crisis in the skilled labor market unlike anything we’ve ever seen — it’s just math,” Rowe said.
Increasingly, kids can do math either.
In other news, water is wet and Joe Biden is senile. The acquisition of physical skills, from cutting circles (hopefully with safe, round-nosed scissors and not those deadly assault-scissors with pointy ends) to earning a Black Belt in a martial art, requires practice and can be accelerated via skilled instruction. Always has, always will.
About half of my students (Juniors) can neither read nor write cursive.
I’m 72 with arthritic hands, but majority of young male adults I’ve encountered and assisted with repair and small construction tasks have what at first glance appears to be poorer motor skills than I: they can’t handle tools properly.
However, their real problem is that they don’t have a feel for, don’t understand how even simple tools work. They don’t naturally know how to work levers, whether pliers or a prybar. And forget about screwdrivers, especially with slotted screws where the size and angle of the screwdriver head as well as the correct direction of rotation are critical. And they wreak great havoc with power tools and are dangerous to themselves, others, and the immediate environment when even near compressed air tools. Just run away if you hear the compressor fire up.
Some of the kids are quite intelligent but fail to appreciate standards, conventions. I’ve helped this one kid with his car periodically and at least once jumped his battery to get the car started. He told me that one did not really have to always put black to negative / ground, one could use the colored cable for that and use the black for positive. I replied that he could, but he’d then have to think a little more about what he was doing and warn anyone who was helping. It was better, I warned, just to do it the way everyone else did. Of course, some months later, he did manage to blow up a battery and damage a vehicle electrical system.
1) This is true.
2) This is an Old Guy comment. Skill sets change based on the needs of the current era.
Another useless parasite heard from. Defund the Universities!
Comparing it to passive TikToking might suggest students don't have a relationship with their hands.
But throw all those conclusions out the window when it comes to gaming. Those who play video games have more dexterity and quick decision making skills.
Like with all things, the importance is balance. Do something manual outside, do something creative non-electronic, play video games.
TikTok is a bit like diet Coke, though, it's not really good for you, but can be refreshing or spark creativity if you're already in that creative mentality.
My young grandsons have gone to this the past two summers. I went this summer. It was fantastic.
Puckerbrush-Primitive-Gathering
"About half of my students (Juniors) can neither read nor write cursive."
I've heard that schools do not even teach cursive anymore. Is this not true?
"However, their real problem is that..."
...their elders were too busy ignoring them to teach them how to use tools.
Everyone learns from those who have gone before. If young folks don't know how to do things, it's because they weren't taught by the people who were responsible for teaching them.
"but! But! BUT! at least (by age 8) they know how to put a condom on a banana!"
From recent revelations, we've learned they don't/won't use condoms by 16 preferring abortion as their birth control. Taylor Tomlison has a hilarious bit about trying to get a 20-something guy off a dating app to wear a condom, liking it to trying to get a 7 yr old to wear a jacket over his Batman costume at Halloween.
Dr K said..
For every five tradespeople that leave the field this year, two will replace them, and it has been that for nearly a decade — we are looking at a crisis in the skilled labor market unlike anything we’ve ever seen
So True! Parents? Want your kid to succeed? Forget College, forget "learn to code"
Learn a Trade!! Learn to Weld!!!
i have cousins that own welding shops. They are independent businessmen. They make more money than gilbar did as a database admin. They are CONSTANTLY in demand.
One of them does Mobile Welding, driving around to people that need things rewelded;
because SO MANY people "welding" these days SUCK at welding.
Serious Question
IF you don't have hand skills
AND you don't no math, or reading, writing, or and other old fashioned 'skills'
What The HECK are you going to do for a living?
here, let me rephrase that
IF you don't have hand skills
AND you don't no math, or reading, writing, or and other old fashioned 'skills'
What The HECK are you going to College for?
JK Brown said...
we've learned they don't/won't use condoms by 16 preferring abortion as their birth control.
that's WHY i specified BANANA.. I doubt many of them realize you can put them on anything else
I used to think XKCD was a cartoon, but now I recognize it as photo realism.
Mind and Hand,
both are critical to education. Sad we have to repeat the movement of 130 years ago. But in the 1970s, some education "expert" had the idea of not having shop class. Separating those icky vocational classes off to another campus, at least for half the day. Or that's what happened the year I entered high school in 1976. And, though I tried, there was no way to spend half a day at vo-tech and take the college-prep classes.
But 20 years ago, John Ratzenberger making the point that kids no longer helped their dad fix the lawnmower because dads/parents didn't do that anymore. And yet what employers in the trades want more than anything is a new hire that at least knows how to use a hammer, can identify screwdrivers, etc. Being able to read a tape measure makes you in the top 1%.
No doubt most parents would be horrified by this, but I suspect it is grandpa who is letting this boy learn to use tools
https://ampervadasz.tumblr.com/post/693356446129307648/pajjorimre-itt-a-fiad
You want to empower the younger generation, teach them how to use tools. Thankfully, we aren't dependent upon teachers, professors or even parents anymore. There are youtube channels that are very popular with the kids, especially boys who are being deprived by those charged with teaching them
=======
In the light of this analysis Carlyle's rhapsody on tools becomes a prosaic fact, and his conclusion—that man without tools is nothing, with tools all—points the way to the discovery of the philosopher's stone in education. For if man without tools is nothing, to be unable to use tools is to be destitute of power; and if with tools he is all, to be able to use tools is to be all-powerful. And this power in the concrete, the power to do some useful thing for man—this is the last analysis of educational truth.
—Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1900) (1886)
I think I've shared this before, but an older professor at a well-regarded engineering school has mentioned a few times to me that when he began his career, engineering students arrived on campus having built houses or rebuilt engines, and the university's job was to give them the math and academic knowledge needed to participate in the field. He says that now engineering students arrive on campus with advanced math skills, but they've never swung a hammer and struggle with elementary physical tasks. As a result, the university has had to invest in "design centers" and "maker's spaces" so that students can learn what many, if not most, teenaged boys knew how to do fifty years ago.
We have multiple ways of knowing. What happens if we limit one of the ways of knowing?
A clip of Lex podcast interview with a professor. Copy pasta to your browser 👉🏽 https://youtu.be/WL0Wkl_qQZQ
From 2015, John Ratzenberger on "free college" and the denigration of knowing how to do things with your hands
https://youtu.be/r9svKztiX98
Of course, we should note these articles, like the one that prompted this post, are about the college kids, the young people who are learning to work with their hands are the "invisible" men and women to the journalists and professors.
When I applied to a surgical residency program an older surgeon asked me if I had worked with tools or played a musical instrument. I had a yes on both questions. Later I met surgeons who had done neither. Surgery is more than just plumbing but, if you can 't do the hands thing, you will probably become a professor. Nelson Rockefeller's wife Happy, had a mastectomy for cancer performed by the commanding general of Bethesda Naval Hospital. He took seven hours !
On welding, I interviewed a kid applying to the military who did underwater welding. I can't even get my head around that.
She's not incorrect. And many, many people would probably agree. But pandora's box has been opened for quite some time now. The greebies fly among us and they're not going back into the box.
Begley- nice bit about Ira Glass. I keep getting him mixed up with Ira Einhorn, who is famous for both being an early environmental activist and Earth Day starter, and for killing and composting his girlfriend. At least NPR's Ira didn't do that. But both are 'by the book' Leftists. Some are just more...true believers.
madAsHell said...
I went to high school with her. She was one of the weird girls that always wore milkman/farmer overalls.
So did she have a thing for emus?
Howard said...
This is the real harm to children these days at home and in school is the deprivation of arts and crafts and team sports and Athletics in general. The brain is almost exclusively tasked with moving the body parts around in a coordinated and graceful and precise way.
The other horrible thing being done to children as their constant watching of video cartoons when they're at an age when they're learning to speak and so they only way they know how to mimic a mouth moving is by a crudely drawn flapping of a character on a stupid show.
I think these are both great points! I wonder how many studies have been done on the effects of your second point, it is something that doesn't seem to be talked about nearly enough. It certainly seems to me that very young children's entertainment is moving more and more to very crude animation with people (I think that animated animals might be in a different class, but I'm not sure) and I have often wondered about how the mix of extremely exaggerated expressions and blank minimalist faces in something like anime has on social development later in life too.
I think art in animation isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, it can be really creative and even thought provoking! I'm talking specifically of the effects on young minds who exposed to larger and larger amounts of it.
RideSpaceMountain @ 9:34: Threadwinner.
gilbar said...
because SO MANY people "welding" these days SUCK at welding.
My nephew went through a welding program at his high school, and he has been pretty horrified since he started working at both the standards and training of some of the guys already working in the field.
How well I recall my grandfather's consternation that I could adequately handle neither a double-bit axe nor maul while chopping firewood. My six-in-hand driving skills, he was convinced, would kill someone someday. Damn progress. Damn technology.
Narr said...
"Play is children's work."
And, work is child's play.
If you want to see something both hilarious and scary, watch a typical 30 year old male of today try to drive a 16 penny nail with a hammer.
And, if you see one with an actual nail gun, run away!
Ha, they're all thumbs. What Andrea, Siri, Alexa did to me.
Paddy O said: "But throw all those conclusions out the window when it comes to gaming. Those who play video games have more dexterity and quick decision making skills."
**********
I was nodding along in agreement with comments until I came to this one. Look I'm as tactile and hands on as they come: started drawing at very young age, LOVE working with my hands engaging in a multitude of crafts, use fountain pens and write in cursive....
THEN recalled how all of that dexterity falls apart once I hold a PS controller and try to play "Call of Duty" or "Mass Effect". It is a different kind of dexterity but dexterity, nonetheless.
dawn remade:
I don't know of any studies of early crude cartoon exposure leading to infantile mushmouth in toddlers and older. It was obvious to me anecdotally and conceptually. The vast majority of toddlers I see in public are hard to understand and appear to struggle to speak.
https://sparkpe.org/advocacy/academics-physical-activity
I keep a diary on my phone using an app called Diarium. Entries may include text, photo, and video. I enjoy using it, yet I also see how different it is from keeping a diary or journal on paper by hand in cursive as I once did. Something is gained in this electronic way, but something is also lost. I think my brain would process events differently when I wrote out my thoughts by hand.
In a similar matter, I read the Bible now using an app on my phone or tablet (YouVersion). It's easier on my old eyes because I can make the font larger, but I miss the physical feel of holding a Bible in my hands, especially one I may have carried around from place to place for years. Large print Bibles are big and bulky, so I'll stick with the Bible on screens, remembering what I've gained and lost there.
I read this stuff and it's not that I don't believe it, but I definitely don't recognize my kids and their peers in these statements. Are my kids already too old (19 and 22) and we're talking about an even younger cohort? My younger son builds bookshelves and other random items without any written plans. The older one spent a summer on a school maintenance crew when he was in HS; they rebuilt wood decks and fences all around the school. Both know better than to take notes in class with a laptop - and the older one is thinking he'll even handwrite his law school outlines to help him memorize. They assembled 9 pieces of IKEA furniture together a few weekends ago - each with his own drill and toolkit by his side, talking happily the entire time. They are both really good cooks. My younger son's best friend has a metal forge at his house and makes knives to sell (he's also in college and studying for his RE license). I could go on. My two definitely spend A LOT of time on their iPads and phones, but they haven't failed to learn a lot of other real-world stuff as well. Most of their friends are the same. I know this is an issue on a macro level but when I look at the micro level, I don't see it.
Robert Cook, even when my boys were small the only school that bothered with cursive was the Montessori my older son attended 2007-2009. I think cursive is long-dead by now.
Howard, my younger one (and pretty much all the guys he knows from middle school) would love that event.
The County Clerk's Office near me has what is called "The Records Room". Among other things it contains copies of deeds and mortgages dating from the founding of the county in 1805. Hand written until about 1913 if I remember correctly. Most beautifully done, some maybe by a political appointee. I recall one that was written by a left handed clerk (not easy when using a quill or fountain pen). At one point, in the middle of a sentance, a right hander took over. Did lefty die or was he just pulled from rotation?
Regardless, it is a good place to practice reading cursive, if so inclined.
I had a semester of woodshop that involved a lot of mechanical drawing, and have always been a fairly decent sketcher, draftsman, and freehand cartographer. Until my teens I was an airplane model making-and-painting fiend. Had worked my skills up to the point that Kenny and I went halves on an airbrush . . . when he veered off to the slot-car craze and we got interested in girls.
My son, now 36, is much more talented as a graphic artist but didn't have any vocational classes; he was in architecture school briefly and had some shit jobs, but in the last five years ago he has become something of a carpenter and cabinetmaker by learning on the job in shops and at sites.
More power to him.
We have a very highly-regarded technical college here that he could get into, but he doesn't want the hassle.
More power to him.
I've never played a video game and he's almost never played any other kind except for D&D.
I can well remember an electrical engineering prof. who was just hell on EE students who didn't seem to know which end of a soldering iron to pick up.
Aside from being a useful practical skill, how do you learn practical circuits without taking stuff apart and tinkering? Are simulations really just as good?
For that matter, how much would you trust an EE who's charged with troubleshooting some complex system but then immediately calls for a tech upon discovering a failed solder joint- and is helpless if one can't be found?
Indigo Red said...
How well I recall my grandfather's consternation that I could adequately handle neither a double-bit axe nor maul while chopping firewood
the thing of it is, though; things like screwdriving, sawing, hammering; are all Still in HUGE demand.
don't get me started on welding aluminum or stainless steel
My cursive handwriting is so bad I switched to slightly-more-legible fast printing in high school. I only use cursive on my formal signature, and sometimes I skip that and go to a bolder, clearer printed version, which has some chance of being read by others.
Yancy beat me to it. A rougher I knew said 3 whacks with a hammer for 16 penny nails.My best friend through high school was not interested in class. His counselor took me aside and asked what could be done to motivate him. His older brother, valedictorian, accepted at Stanford, was fully 30 I.Q. points lesser student. My buddy went on to auto mechanics but could troubleshoot and fix almost anything. Made his own tools, never went to Kent-Moore. Made a bundle and retired early.
If you want to see something both hilarious and scary, watch a typical 30 year old male of today try to drive a 16 penny nail with a hammer. And, if you see one with an actual nail gun, run away!"
I used to think everybody has some skills at making things. I didn't even regard them as "skills". It's just stuff you did on the way to making things.
Late in life I came to realize that's not true.
"I interviewed a kid applying to the military who did underwater welding."
I remember tv ads here in SoCal that advertised a training school for that, emphasizing the high demand. Probably 20 years ago or more, of course.
I deciphered many a handwritten letter or diary when I worked--mostly 19th C but not all.
Came across a letter my father wrote to a friend when he was in the AF in 1944--returned because the friend (a B-17 pilot) had been KIA. My father's cursive was as small, neat, and flawlessly formed as any I've ever seen. Machine-like.
My dad helped his dad build their house in the 1950s in Hacienda Heights. His dad was a mechanic for P-38s in WW2 who also built his own dune buggies out of VW Bugs up through the 1990s.
I learned a little from my dad, I rebuilt the engine of my '68 Karmann Ghia in the early 1990s and assorted other household projects, but nothing near building our own house.
Laws won't allow doing that now without major training and permits, and cars in the last 20+ years are made to not be messed with except in the most basic ways, unless that's a major passion (and expense).
Even more so for my kids, now 10 and 8, girl and boy, but any time I do anything around the house, I have Youtube to help me learn anything I don't know and always invite my kids to help out, making it a fun and learning experience for us.
My WW2 veteran grandpa retired from Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the 1980s because 1) he could do that at age 55 then and 2) because he didn't want to learn the computers that they were requiring his role to learn.
Meanwhile, I can repair laptops and PCs, assess software issues and built my own desktop, even though I'm very, very far away from being in a technology field. Kids know how to do video, audio, other software much more intuitively than others.
So it's all about need. People learn what making a more comfortable life requires them to learn.
Which is why when I read Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court I realized how entirely useless I would be if I went back in time. Meanwhile that main character changed society. I think 19th century engineers were probably in that sweet spot of technology and building from scratch that was useful for any era.
I just see the world as richer without the phone ...
I guess she's never sent someone a picture. Or a video. Or a song. Or a link.
But something that takes you out of your environment, you pay a high price....
But something that can put you into a new environment, one you can create and mold, can be infinitely valuable ... if you are willing to practice and learn.
Maybe she's just not very creative.
Reading the article makes it more clear that the "kids" she's teaching to cut paper circles are college students!
There's a lot more wrong here than just their inability. Why are colleges driving teenagers into debt for this dreck? Why is a woman who can barely form sentences being paid to do this?
I do have an anecdotal story about the connection between screens and physical world interactions.
One of my nephews loved the Baby Einstein dvds as a very young infant, he was especially mesmerized by things like this for example. And as he got older (2-4 years roughly?) he was also extremely interested manipulating things in the physical world., even more than his very active brother and sister. One vivid memory I have of him at that age was that he would push and pull on the pedals of an inverted bicycle - he loved to make the chain move and the tires spin, and it could entertain him for a surprisingly long stretch of time. Even later, he was also fascinated with rubik cubes, loom bracelets, and later building PCs and other mechanical engineering hobbies.
To be fair, I don't know the cause and effect there, it could very well be that his early interest was because of an inclination that was already there. But I think there's a good chance that the videos helped nurture the interest, even if they didn't spark it.
Thanks for the link, Howard!
Yes, it seems obvious to me too. Of course, the last couple of years have been so unusual for infants and toddlers that it does muddle the waters quite a bit on what factors are having what impact on social development. With increasingly easy access to outsourcing playtime and learning to screens, plus potentially limited casual contact with people outside your household in general (plus for at least awhile there was very little that contact for some kids that wasn't masked) I think we will be seeing some rapid changes that I fear aren't going to be good.
I think it's also easy to underestimate the impact of babies spending the majority of their early years cuing off of people who are paid to take care of them instead of family too. Learning social interactions from the face and body language of someone who loves you seems like it would be very different someone who may care about you, but is primarily there for a paycheck first.
Which is why when I read Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court I realized how entirely useless I would be if I went back in time. Meanwhile that main character changed society. I think 19th century engineers were probably in that sweet spot of technology and building from scratch that was useful for any era.
There's an "homage" to CYiKAC, written by a man called Frankowski called Cross-time Engineer. It becomes a series. This one is much more fantasy than Twain's. The main character is a Polish engineer from the late 20th century.
I have never sent anyone a song, video, or link (maybe a link or two in the course of a work email).
I can neither receive nor send MMS on my cellphone, and don't intend to start.
Life is good.
Gahrie, thanks for that. I've been looking for a new read.
I volunteer in a library, and I heard a young man (early 20's) ask if a member of the staff could read a document for him that was written in "cursive" -- i.e., handwritten. I guess I've now lived long enough that handwriting has become a secret code.
I'm not too exercised about the loss of cursive -- I can read cursive, roundhand, and copperplate, but can't write in any of them. But then, I can't write in Sutterlin either. It's just not that useful.
I wouldn't have thought school would play much role in the development of manual dexterity or that TV would have much adverse effect. I watched a lot of cartoons as a child (most, much more crudely animated than the stuff on TV today, anime or otherwise -- some golden age Disney, but mostly crudely animated Hanna Barbera stuff, Transformers, etc.) but my parents still taught me origami and cats cradle and patty cake and nursery rhymes. I learned piano from my mother. I picked up drawing mostly on my own -- motivated at first by wanting to draw characters from cartoons, as it happens. I don't think this is an either-or.
All that said, I do think children benefit from seeing and playing with lots of stuff when they are young. crafts, songs, poems, conversations, flowers, animals, etc. For some children, preschool and school may be the only time to experience it because their parents are busy or exhausted, but I don't think that is true of the majority.
Re: Bunkypotatohead:
Reading the article makes it more clear that the "kids" she's teaching to cut paper circles are college students!
. . . what?
I was distracted by the bit where she is talking about children and the photo of her with children but I think you are right. That seems like a waste of college tuition on the one hand, but on the other, how is someone who is puzzled by cutting paper circles in college?
Don't get me started on how young people (under 25 or so) hold a pencil.....
"...their elders were too busy ignoring them to teach them how to use tools."
"Everyone learns from those who have gone before. If young folks don't know how to do things, it's because they weren't taught by the people who were responsible for teaching them."
Oh lord, my father ignored me perfectly well and I still learned how to handle tools.
A meme: Lock a millennial in a room with a dial telephone, an analog clock (with roman numerals), and a TV with no remote. Leave them instructions written in cursive.
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