Most interesting discussion, and in terms of the One Child program, as horrifying in its own way as the Holocaust. Indeed, I was pretty well aware of much of what was happening during the Great Cultural Revolution at the time it was happening due to parts of my army experience in the late sixties and early seventies.
I most appreciated the idea of a return to the idea of valuing and teaching manual skills among American kids. Admittedly I speak as one of just over 80 years whose youth was full of hobbies of all sorts, but I also spent the last 19 years of my professional life as a teacher in an elite NYC elementary school which required what we used to call ‘shop’ in addition to all the rest of the curriculum, which paralleled that in my own education. Indeed one of the graduation requirements was the creation of a carved wooden plaque about eight inches square, all of which, going back to the school’s founding are attached to the walls around the first floor where every visitor can see them. There is a satisfaction in the manual creative act, even as a complete amateur which was, for me at least, unequaled, and one in which I still indulge.
Most interesting discussion, and in terms of the One Child program, as horrifying in its own way as the Holocaust. Indeed, I was pretty well aware of much of what was happening during the Great Cultural Revolution at the time it was happening due to parts of my army experience in the late sixties and early seventies.
I most appreciated the idea of a return to the idea of valuing and teaching manual skills among American kids. Admittedly I speak as one of just over 80 years whose youth was full of hobbies of all sorts, but I also spent the last 19 years of my professional life as a teacher in an elite NYC elementary school which required what we used to call ‘shop’ in addition to all the rest of the curriculum, which paralleled that in my own education. Indeed one of the graduation requirements was the creation of a carved wooden plaque about eight inches square, all of which, going back to the school’s founding are attached to the walls around the first floor where every visitor can see them. There is a satisfaction in the manual creative act, even as a complete amateur which was, for me at least, unequaled, and one in which I still indulge.