The Importance of Handwork

Thoughts & Reflections

No matter how advanced our society gets, as long as we put on earrings, tie knots, explore tiny objects, respect the work of artist and artisans, Handwork will still matter.

Montessori is full of things to touch and do. Math is not memorized, but explored, counting tiny beads. We first write using the Moveable Alphabet, composing words while the hand is getting ready for penmanship using materials like the Metal Insets, Cylinder Blocks, Geometry Cabinet.

We type and drag and swipe, but these are all possible due to the high levels of control we have over our most incredible instrument, the Hand.

It’s been said that “if your finger was the size of the Earth, you could feel the difference between houses from cars.” This is absolutely incredible. Children don’t have the same calluses, are more sensitive to heat and cold, and are still appropriately uncoordinated.

The Montessori classroom capitalizes on this sensitivity. We trace lines and angles of hexagons. We pour carefully from small pitchers through tiny funnels into narrow vases. We refine movements, provide opportunities for mistakes, give time to practice, to hone, to master.

Stringing beads becomes lacing, sewing, embroidery.

Scrubbing becomes polishing, buffing to a high shine.

We use big muscles to scrub tables, floors, boots. We sit still and refine movement pouring grains and water. We use tiny, incremental movements to fasten hooks and eyes, to crochet, to sew a pillow.

Maria Montessori said, “the child’s intelligence can develop without the help of his hand. But if it develops with his hand, then the level it reaches is higher, and the child’s character is stronger.”

“We need something to Do to process something we Know.”

We need Handwork. We need something to Do to process something we Know. We internalize large mathematical, scientific concepts when we touch and move and explore. How much bigger is China than India than Japan? Why are you asking me for the SQUARE Root of 64? What’s the difference between an acute angled isosceles triangle and an obtuse angled isosceles triangle?

These are questions answered before they could be asked in a Montessori classroom, a pedagogy without arbitrary answers, where we start with why and how, where a perfect process leads to the right answer.

Handwork is important. We have this capacity enriched by generations of evolution and we give this gift to our children — to truly reach out and grasp the world.