TOOL KIDS
When I was a boy I got to handle a reasonable range of tools at school. In year three or four we had an hour of fretwork on Friday afternoons (we provided our own coping saw and plywood and worked on our school desks). My intermediate school had a metalwork room (Mr Swartz) and a woodwork room (Mr Lamb). In my first year of high school we had a period a week of woodwork in a well-equipped woodworking shop (I made a box for holding Kodachrome slides).
If you have concerns about the lack of exposure to tool use of any youngsters in your life, two recent books may help.
Woodworking is Awesome!
by Chris Peterson
The American author Chris Peterson’s many books are on a variety of topics, but have a bias towards making stuff yourself — often from non-traditional materials such as shipping pallets — and on raising children.
Examples are Black & Decker Readymade Home Furniture: Easy Building Projects (2018) and Dadskills: How to be an Awesome Father & Impress all the Other Parents — From Baby Wrangling to Taming Teenagers (2020). He combines these two threads in (2020), aimed at children and described on the cover as “12 fun DIY projects for ages 8+”.
