Who says that white-collar work should be rewarded more with money and status than that of a blue-collar worker? Intelligent Hands is a new book that challenges this assumption.
The authors, Charlotte Abrahams and Katy Bevan, look at the historical precedents that led us here and demonstrate why hand skills are crucial in education and for lifelong learning. Recent years have seen a decline in craft and creative education in schools and a shift from practical to theoretical learning models in higher education. Young people are leaving school with no idea that craft-based careers are even possible, and graduates of craft-based degree courses are entering the workplace with so few hand skills that their employers must train them from scratch.
The authors seek to enlighten the uninitiated and persuade the nay-sayers who dismiss craft as no more than a nice hobby or believe that doing things with your hands is for those who can’t use their heads. And for the converted, we offer more grist to your mills, ammunition for funding applications, inspiration for those who plan school curricula and further reading for your speciality.
Intelligent Hands brings existing research and information together in an accessible format for those for those who don’t have time to trawl through all the information that is already out there. With a brief look at the history of practical education, the book collates some of the research that has been done in disparate fields to show that combining physical ways of learning with the conceptual in education is the way forward.
