Cob: RE: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with a cookbook could do this stuff!

[Donna Strow]

This was the most thought-provoking reply I got; You've really started me
thinking about why more 8 year olds don't build barns.

But before I share some of my new thoughts, I had some thoughts about how I
appear to be overdoing the whole thing.  Robinson Crusoe (albeit fictional)
builds his own house and stuff although he has nobody to talk to and
certainly no stores around.  I bend everyone's ear, chat on coblist, talk to
the local building supplies retailer, stake out the local quarry.  Countless
primitive folks throughout the ages, with no books to refer to, have built
serviceable structures.  But I go ahead and digest a couple books before
getting my hands dirty.  I can't imagine that the U.S. settlers circa 1780,
who left the land of big business and factories to construct stone and log
houses in the New World, had the benefit of a "workshop;" and yet there I go
off to a 10-day intensive hands-on training.

But getting back to the third grade, I was thinking... Suppose Bobby and
Suzie climbed up a tree, nailed a few boards together and decided they had a
castle.  With imaginations like that, who needs a barn?

Lessee, what else have I been thinking all afternoon and evening while doing
housework?...  I did hear abut some young children, in the Orient I believe,
who had a really great house-building experience.

And I was thinking, too, that kids like to crow about how they can do this
and they can do that, but sometimes there is an element of make-believe.
And they really need to see themselves doing it before they realize, "Hey, I
really *can* do this -- no make believe," and, while the experience is not
what helped them learn *what* to do (the cookbook was, really,) the
experience was what showed them that it could happen outside of their
imaginations, if they really follow the instructions.

And this gives me a thought... Thinking is hard right now because my tummy
needs a soda to cure its ills, and there ain't no soda... The thought is
that I could market my workshops to scouts, because experience has its
lesson to deliver to young children -- the lesson that, yes, they can.
Every weekend a scout master pays for is a weekend I can afford to devote to
natural building and to empowering our youth.  Also, I admit, many young
children do learn better from action than from a cook-book.  It depends on
the child.

And I had more thoughts but really I'm in pain right now.  Please write,
all.  I appreciate all the thought-provoking comments.

One more thing:  I have yet to see Habitat promote natural building.  My
understanding is that Habitat homes make use of many costly conventional
materials and their owners usually end up owing some money.  But when
children see that beautiful, fanciful structures are within their
nonexistent budgets, courtesy of free dirt from the ground, perhaps more of
them will build their own barns -- or atleast playhouses.


-----Original Message-----
From: (name witheld because it was mailed to me personally)
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2003 4:54 PM
To: Donna Strow
Subject: Re: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with a
cookbook could do this stuff!


You ask a great question. Do they charge folks to volunteer for Habitat for
Humanity?
Yet, why don't more 8 year olds build barns?
Dulane