Well-known author Mitch Albom (“Tuesdays With Morrie”) wrote in Parade magazine article titled ‘The Lost Art of Building With Your Hands,’ “It’s mostly done for us now. We download. We boot up. We plug in and play. We call tech support. And it starts younger and younger. The world of Wii and PlayStation have rendered building blocks laughable.”
In our opinion, this is not only a sad commentary on today’s society, it is completely unacceptable if we’re to produce the future generations of creative problem solvers that the world so sorely needs. Is this the direction of American Innovation? What can be done to change the course of direction? We here at Stevenson Projects want to be part of the solution...
When Stevenson Projects first entered the world of hands on project design over 40 years ago, our focus was strictly on the projects. We assumed that the reason we were selling thousands of plans each year was because we had our finger on the pulse of our customers—that we were giving them exactly what they wanted. And to a great extent, that was true. But over the years, as the letters and phone calls from enthusiastic builders kept pouring in, we began to realize that while the projects were important, for most people it was the process of making something with their own two hands that was the most valuable part of the equation.
Now, in this challenging 21st century, we know with absolute certainty that the power of the hands on experience is incredible, and the process of project building is more important than ever. Taking a pile of raw materials and turning that pile into something you can sail or drive or spend endless hours playing with can be truly life transforming.want to be part of the solution...
A hands-on project can also teach us intangible concepts such as logic, patience and self-confidence. When a young person has the task of turning a pile of raw material into something that has to perform in the real world, the lessons he or she learns from that experience are practical and powerful:
Once they’ve mastered those rudimentary lessons, they begin to see alternate possibilities: what if this corner was rounded instead of square? What if the whole thing were one size bigger? What if I took all the best parts of this one and all the best parts from that one, and then built something completely new? At that point, the young person has learned the best lesson of all: how to use his or her own imagination. How to visualize alternatives and possibilities. How to envision something that has never existed before. The magic of hands-on project building is that it produces a result that is tangible and real. And perhaps most important of all, a hands-on project can be just plain fun—the kind of fun that is hard to come by in our modern high tech world.
And if hands-on project building is important for kids, we believe it is just as important and rewarding for adults. No matter whether you’re a perfectionist who takes five years to build a sailboat or a pedal car, or an eager beaver who gets that same project finished in a few weeks, the joy of building something yourself and the accompanying sense of pride will be just the same. The lessons you learn will be just as important, and the fun you have will be just as meaningful.
