EDIT: i promise you i have been told how good this is in like thirty different ways. please stop,
ok so a few weeks ago i was with @lace in baltimore for the day and we went to check out some local bookstores. to be honest the three or so we went to all kind of sucked? but that's not important. in our wandering we found perhaps the most confusing book of all time. here's a photo.
housebuilding for children.
this is an instructional book by les walker, originally published in 1977, with a reprint in the early 00's. at first you might think this was some sort of instructional book for parents. telling them how to include their children in various carpentry-related tasks! nothing too out of the ordinary.
this is not the case.
this book is literally for children--as in, children are the intended readers of this book. specifically, children within the ages of 7-10?1 as in, they have a cast page for all of the photos.
there are SO many photos of these kids using construction tools. here's one using a saw(!!)
the bulk of the book is just instructions on various things a kid can build, but it's worth pointing out that the beginning of the book details instructions on how to obtain tools.
in this section, the book says that "your parent or teacher may want to buy the tools for their use or they may want you to let you use theirs but it's best to assemble your own and have you responsible for them,"2 which is just one of several instances in which the book encourages children as young as seven to independently go and do things that i wouldn't expect (or trust!) most seven year olds to do! (including using a saw, as shown above--the book does mention once or twice that children should seek out supervision for their carpentry, but it's very lax about it. it's also very insistent that kids should do as much on their own as possible.)
it's a really weird book, and an extremely '70's one at that. it's interesting to get a look into what was considered safe or reasonable for kids fifty years ago! things really have changed.
if you want to take a look at it yourself, it's on the internet archive, available to be borrowed for free.
1the revised edition also includes a 13 year old but like Still
2the run-on sentence here is accurately transcribed.
Yes! This is actually a thing. I work in a museum that caters mostly to kids, and being a science center style museum, we have STEM topics, and a makerspace. One of the key tenants that modern pedagogy (the teaching of children) is that if they are given serious tools, the trust to handle those tools, they will take that responsbility seriously, and engage with it at quite a young age!
(supervision is still helpful to respond to questions, stop unsafe, accident prone behavior, and provide support (like strength) but otherwise, kiddos are left on thier own to make mistakes.)
This has been known for a while, but its hard to deal with how the american culture/media has warped approaches to parenting, reducing it to only a few techniques and styles. thanks.
if you want to read more about the topic, the "junk playgrounds" or "adventure playgrounds" pioneered by Carl Theodor Sørensen are a good place to start, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emdrup_Junk_Playground
