What children lose when practical skill, patience and real experience are treated as optional.
By Donovan Gay
As teachers and parents, we all know the skill and confidence with which a child can do things on a phone or iPad. Frankly, it puts most of us to shame. Yet these same children can hesitate or need support to tie a knot, hold a ruler or thread a needle.
For many of us, these were skills we learnt early on. Now they are less necessary. Children have shoes without laces. They copy and paste material on a screen. So much arrives ready-made.
Children are less often exposed to the fine-motor skills that many of us developed when we were young. They may not be asked to cut out a shape accurately, measure something carefully with a ruler or learn to knit or sew.
This is not a case for every child to become “crafty”. It is a deeper question about what children are now bypassing because of the changing world they live in. When they are presented with these tasks, many have little confidence and, in some cases, not yet the fine-motor control to complete them.
But something bigger is at stake. Children are also building a relationship with difficulty and with the process of learning a skill. All too often, the task is abandoned because it is too difficult or boring. There is no accomplishment because there has been no time to work through the difficulty.
The obvious concern is fine-motor development, including handwriting. Many teachers are noticing that children now arrive with less confidence and control in these areas than they once did.
But the bigger picture is the process that is being lost alongside the skill itself. When we measure a line incorrectly, cannot tie a knot, drop a stitch while knitting or find that wood does not behave as we expected when carving, we learn something. We first have to identify what we have done incorrectly. Then we adjust our approach and try again.
This process may have to be repeated many times before a skill is mastered. Alongside the practical skill, the child is learning patience, care, sequence, accuracy and practical judgement.
Together, these develop something more. They develop confidence, which is a very important quality in learning. Confidence is not simply the feeling that a child can perform a task. It is also the confidence that, if something is not working, they can acquire the skill with patience.
Children have become accustomed to a modern world where everything is on demand. Entertainment, information, images and products are ready and waiting at the click of a button. They become comfortable scrolling, watching and consuming.
I am not suggesting that we turn back time to an era without technology. But I do think we need to address this with earnestness. The greatest loss is the loss of experience. Many children are spending more of their lives with screens and engaging less with the material world around them.
They need slower learning and more engagement with the world. They need to develop skills as simple as tying a knot. They need to learn that things can be repaired, not deleted. These experiences may seem small, but they are vital to the healthy development of the human being and to bringing children into a relationship with the world.
This is made worse in many schools, where every child has a tablet. Handwriting, drawing and practical skills can become optional extras in the curriculum. Worksheets, documents and information received through a tablet can begin to take the place of work that asks children to use their hands.
But education is not information.
Education asks the child to go through experiences where they engage and learn from what they do, often repeating the same thing several times until they get it right. It involves much more than information.
We are under the impression that a good education is measured by what a child knows. It is not. It is also about the skills, qualities and information they accumulate and can put to use through action and judgement. It is about what they can preserve in their memory so that this accumulation gives them intentions and possibilities.
Children need their hands in order to learn. They need to be engaged in their will. Learning is not all in the head. It must be practical.
Steiner put this very directly:
“…if we know that someone who moves their fingers in a clumsy way also has a clumsy intellect, has inflexible ideas and thoughts, and those who know how to properly move their fingers also have flexible thoughts and ideas and can enter into the real nature of things, then we will not underestimate the importance of developing external capabilities.”
The Renewal of Education [GA 301], 11 May 1920.
This is why Waldorf education includes handwork, form drawing, singing, music, games, festivals and more. These are not part of the curriculum simply to be different from mainstream education or to offer a lovely alternative. They are part of the curriculum because they are core to the education.
People too easily see the lovely things and do not see the way they are integrated into a coherent plan to help the child develop physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Knitting is not Waldorf. It is knitting. But Waldorf schools use knitting to develop children’s fine-motor skills while they are learning to write their first letters and numbers. It is not a lovely add-on. It is part of the core work.
Each of the “lovely” activities has a place in the curriculum, not because it is a nice thing to do with children, but because it offers capacities and skills that other things cannot. Waldorf has a deep understanding of child development and bringing the right content and activities to best support the evolving child.
Some examples from my own experience may help to clarify this.
In Class 3, children are taught to crochet. The handwork since Class 1 has sought to develop fine-motor control in the hands. Crochet is tricky for children to pick up because there are many elements they need to master. They must hold the yarn, maintain a steady tension, use one hand to hold the work and yarn, while the other hand makes skilful rhythmic movements to form each stitch.
It can take some weeks for some children to get all of this right and simply begin a chain of stitches. Here we are faced with a deeper level of education. We are working with persistence, observation, understanding what is required and knowing why a stitch is wrong or, equally, why it is right.
I have had several children over the years who have truly struggled to make all these things come together. I remember one particular boy, many years ago, who was trying very hard to get the hang of crochet. You could see every cell in his body engaged in trying to get it right.
I had to show him time and time again. He would lose patience and become upset and frustrated. But with gentle encouragement, he got it.
He did not make a big announcement. He just went quiet. I turned and saw him totally absorbed in his work. By the next morning, he brought in several things he had crocheted at home, full of pride and confidence, and showed me first thing in the morning.
This is what practical work can give a child. Not simply a finished piece of crochet, but the experience of staying with something difficult until it begins to make sense.
Steiner spoke about this in relation to real practical work:
“It is a fact that a child who has cut grass with a sickle or mown it with a scythe, a child who has made a furrow with a little plough, will turn into a different person from one who has not done these things. Quite simply, the soul element is changed. Abstract lessons in manual skills are not really a substitute.”
Practical Advice to Teachers [GA 294], 3 September 1919.
I have similar accounts of children working diligently to master form drawing, letters and recorder. Each needs the gentle and firm encouragement of the teacher so that the learning process can take place.
When things fail and children become frustrated or angry, I do not let them off the hook simply because it is difficult. I distract them with a small task and bring them back to the work with constant support. Some hate the work, but they still learn. It is important.
They need to learn these practical skills not because they will need to crochet or do form drawing later in life, but because these practical activities and skills are part of the larger developmental picture of the child. Without them, things are lost.
The hands belong to the world of the child and the hands belong to the world of humanity. Through them we have transformed our world and our lives. But they have to be practical, because the practical develops the finer qualities of thinking and understanding.
Children need these elements in the curriculum. They need to learn not only the things I have mentioned, but also how to mend something, how to repair a wooden toy, a tear in an apron or a hole in a sock.
Yes, in our world we simply replace things. We are a throwaway society. But the task of repairing something with their hands develops and grows children more than any learning app on a tablet can.
Waldorf has kept these things at the heart of the curriculum because they are there to support the development of the human being.
Donovan Gay has worked in Waldorf education for more than thirty years, teaching in the UK, South Africa and now online. He writes Waldorf Ways, where he reflects on child development, classroom practice and the deeper intentions that lie behind Waldorf education. He continues to teach because children remain his greatest teachers.
This article appeared on Waldorf Ways on Substack.
