Club Corner: Woodworking

There is great satisfaction that comes from building something with your own two hands. Just imagine the sense of self-reliance you might experience while rushing down whitewater rapids in a dugout canoe you carved from a tree trunk! Or the exhilaration you’d feel if you won a ping-pong match played on a table you crafted yourself! Such scenarios have become infrequent due to our busy urban lives. Where once people had to roll up their sleeves to get everything done—chop their wood, build their homes, sew their clothes—nowadays, few people ever learn how to make much of anything. 

For a while now, craftsmanship has occupied a very small role in formal education. Though there has been increasing pressure to incorporate more "hands-on" learning in classrooms, a large portion of K-12 teaching is still lecture-based, and academic subjects are primarily theoretical. The industrial roots of modern education have dictated what we learn and how we learn it, and there is little space left for practical subjects such as woodworking. 

This divide between handiwork and learning, however, is much less pronounced in Scandinavia. Those northern countries often touted as bastions of progressive education have incorporated the practice of woodworking into their school curricula. In Finland, for instance, children are taught how to handle tools, including hand saws and knives, as early as elementary school. 

This Scandinavian scholarly craftsmanship is called sloyd. Its influence has slowly spread to other countries, though its popularity abroad has always been hindered by two crucial questions: How safe is it? And How much does it contribute to a child’s education?

Woodworking at Graded is offered as an extracurricular activity to students in grades 2-8. Mr. Thiago Endrigo leads the club and believes that, in Brazil, sloyd faces an additional obstacle to acceptance: a widespread conviction that manual labor is not a particularly worthwhile pursuit. Mr. Endrigo claims that, contrary to popular opinion, practices like woodworking are beneficial to developing brains. “When children are building things,” he explains, “they are problem-solving constantly.” 

Problem-solving skills are exercised when students face setbacks, which often happens in woodworking. In these moments, the young apprentices have to improvise solutions to their problems. If two pieces do not fit together as they should, the student might choose to use trial-and-error to carefully adjust each piece until they both rest seamlessly against each other. Eunjae “Emma” S., a grade 4 club member, agrees that taking the class is a great way to exercise cognition. “It makes your head think a lot,” she says.

In fact, students in Graded’s woodworking classes are exercising much more than just problem-solving skills, as they are involved in the entire construction process, from idea generation to product usage. And what do they choose to build? A bit of everything: furniture, toys, boxes, dollhouses, birdhouses, bird mansions, musical instruments… Jorge G., a grade 3 student and first-time woodworker, is eager to build a shark. Chase N., also in grade 3, is designing an Among Us character, similar to the one he made last year. And Jiyou K., in grade 2, plans to make cooking chopsticks to give to her mother. 

Working with wood is extremely enjoyable, which is why grade 4 student Nina M. joined the club: “It’s really, really fun because my friends are here, and I love creating things.” Another grade 4 student, Fabio T., signed up for woodworking because he is fascinated by wood. “I really like the smell and the texture of it,” he explains. Edward M., in grade 5, is similarly enchanted by the material, explaining that he “grew up in Washington state, where there are a lot of trees.” 

As for the inherent risks of woodworking, though they will always exist, they can be substantially minimized. At Graded, class sizes are kept small, and students are constantly supervised by hawk-eyed instructors. 

Nothing in life is risk-free, and the advantages offered by woodworking seem to far outweigh the risks. Those advantages include, in addition to developing problem-solving and creativity skills, learning about mathematical concepts (students, themselves, do all the project planning and measuring), acquiring dexterity, improving prolonged focus, and maybe even discovering a lifelong passion for craftsmanship along the way. 

Second-grader Mila H. is aware of the benefits of woodworking and wants to make the best of them. “I want to be in this club because I love being creative,” she says. “And when I grow up, I want to build things so I can sell them and make money.”