re: History: Woodworking Classes

We do still have woodworking classes for boys and girls in our primary and youth (jr. high?) schools here in Norway. The problem is that the teachers really don’t know much about woodworking as they no longer have dedicated ‘shop’ teachers.

Just some thoughts about the real importance of woodworking shop classes for youth. Woodworking classes were first devised (in Sweden as far as I know) not to teach woodworking per se. The real and very conscious purpose was to teach exactness, the rewards of good work, the importance of maintaining tools and keeping an orderly shop, safe working practices, and the pride that comes with a job well done. It seems that woodworking being both a physical and mental exercise has the most influence on behavior and the molding of character than just book learning or doing tasks with no obvious product (like cleaning up your bedroom for example). These were all valuable learning points and particularly relevant at the time since most of those boys would eventually be working in jobs with their hands and probably with hand tools. The learning experience could only have been reinforced by the fact that woodworking is also a lot of fun and that their class project became a wonderful Christmas gift for their mother which she would cherish for the rest of her life.

In my view, woodworking classes for our kids remains an effective way to build character to this day and schools should continue to place an emphasis on this part of a youngster’s education and we don’t need a vast array of expensive machines to do it with either, just capable teachers and shop classes with sufficient hand tools.

PS I thought it was fun to see all those hats hanging in the background of the first photo.