Cob: Re: RE: oh, no, & what an eight year old knows

[Chrys Mollett]

Thankyou Michael-
for your thoughtful & tasty commentary.
Chrys M.
Murphys, CA
sierra foothills.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Fitzgerald" <puppetman at ix.netcom.com>
To: "coblist" <coblist at deatech.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 10:34 PM
Subject: Cob: RE: oh, no, & what an eight year old knows


> Donna sweetie;
>
> Your picture is wonderful. You obviously know this too or you wouldn't
have
> posted it to an international list. If there is one medium that is
difficult
> to work in its Crayola crayon. You are quite talented and from what I can
> see in your writing for the past few weeks you are a passionate and
> enlivened human being. Welcome to the list. I have been so busy building
> that I have not had the time to reply to any of your questions and
comments.
> As for being flamed, please don't take it too hard. That's just Darrel, he
> does that sometimes. He really is quite knowledgeable and committed to
earth
> building. He can and will help you with many aspects of learning to build
> with earth. I can only guess, but you might have accidentally hit a nerve
> when you said that an eight year old with a cookbook could put up an
earthen
> structure. Darrel is real serious about this stuff and is living in Japan
> where teaching and pedagogy are very different from western practice.
Eight
> year olds have much to learn from a master mason, and forty five year olds
> working on their first wall haven't learned much. Spend some time in the
> archives and you will see that you are not the first to be Darrel-flamed
and
> you will also see how much he has contributed. We all wish he wouldn't do
> that.
>
> As for reading vs. practica. There is a very nice classic study by Walter
> Ong entitled, "Orality vs. Literacy". In this study  Ong illustrates the
> power of literate societies and their ability to pass on information with
a
> high degree of fidelity. It is a long book and I won't say much else about
> it here except that he mentions one of the key works of our modern era
which
> was Diderot's Encyclopaedia. Published in the middle of the eighteenth
> century it was one of the largest works to attempt to describe trade
> practices such as how to make a barrel, or build a mud house, or curry a
> beaver pelt to make a felt hat. At first Diderot was persecuted for having
> published trade secrets. With time the trade guilds found that it really
> didn't make a difference. Reading was not the same as doing. Knowledge was
> not the same as ability. 250 years later in our post modern era, I know
> plumbers who love when Do-it-yourself plumbing shows come on the TV. In
ten
> minutes they show six hours of work. These plumbers know that soon some
guy
> who didn't understand the difference between knowledge and ability will be
> calling them in for an emergency repair. In this book Ong makes some
general
> statements about the storage of knowledge and the superiority of literate
> societies that I take issue with.
>
> I have studied many societies and I have found that non-literate societies
> store their knowledge in many places. Their religion, their songs, dances,
> etc. ad nauseum, are all places in which information is encoded, stored
and
> decoded by other individuals. This is especially true in two aspects of
all
> cultures. These are how we work and how and where we live. Craft industry
> and process as well as architecture are human expressions that are
> culturally specific. In their normal expression they are contained within
> the parameters of a culture and are governed by the aesthetics proscribed
by
> cultural tradition. For instance: In Adjarra, a small village in Benin,
West
> Africa, an eight year old girl will go to the river and carry back water.
> She will carry 5 gallons of water on her head (about 50 pounds!) and she
may
> do it well without spilling. However she cannot compare with her thirty
> year-old mother who can carry the water and a baby, and tell a story while
> chastising her son for something he did that she couldn't possibly have
> seen. That woman can carry water with a grace and ability rarely seen in
our
> American society. There is much we can learn by training our bodies and
> using our hands that we cannot know through reading. I recently read an
> article about teaching heart surgeons their craft. It was entitled "By our
> hands we will know." The medical fields are learning what cobbers are
> learning, that to master a craft, one must grasp it. And so one day I
asked
> the girls to teach me how to carry water. They giggled and felt
> uncomfortable but thought that it might be fun. We spent an hour at it
> before I could take many steps without spilling. But they would not let me
> carry water into the village. They where embarrassed for me that I would
do
> something that is for women only. Later I taught my daughter to carry
things
> on her head. She thinks it is great. However her cousin saw here carrying
a
> bowl on her head and told her to, "Stop it! that's not the way we do
things
> here."
>
> These are some of the reasons we have workshops. So that people can see,
> hear, touch, taste, feel, and know that there are really people out there
> who build with mud. We do workshops so that people feel supported and can
> move out against the aesthetics and traditions that say that "We don't
build
> with mud around here." Finally we do workshops to begin to train the body,
> the hands and the mind to work together. In a singularly God-like act we
> take mud and breathe life into it. We express our humanity. The more we do
> it, the better we get at it. Reading is only the beginning.
>
> Hope to have some pictures of my new dog house in a couple of weeks.
>
> Michael Fitzgerald
> Anthropologist/Woodcarver/Puppetmaker
>
>
>
>
>


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