Steiner, Knitting and thinking
‘‘Why did Rudolf Steiner insist that each child should learn to knit, both boys and girls? This was quite a revolutionary idea at the time. He said if we do knitting with the children, we are working on their minds. Capacities are built up for logical thinking, forming judgements and solving problems. In knitting we are following a thread. One stitch in a row affects the one before and after, just as each step in a logical argument. We can discover faults in our knitting and thinking by unravelling these steps or stitches. When we are knitting we are making patterns, which corresponds with making patterns in our brain. When we repeat the movements, the connections become stronger, we become skilful. Our thinking is in our fingertips.’ P2
‘When prepared by physical action - by an activity of the will, mental operations bring about real thought.’ P 4
‘Coming from Kindergarten, the children in class one learn to knit a toy, a farmer, an animal, or a ball, usually knitted in one piece whilst the child is still in a dreamlike consciousness, at one with the world. They will also felt a ball and start a weaving project. The knitting and weaving movements awaken their consciousness whilst the senses are educated through different textures and colour. In class two we raise the level of competence in knitting by practice and the introduction of purl stitches. Knitting has to be sewn up, and stuffed to form a doll or a gnome.’ P 4
McCartney, M. (no date) Will-developed Intelligence: Knitting begets Thinking! Available at: https://pyrites.org/publications_files/Knitting%20begets%20thinking.pdf (Accessed 12 December 2019)
‘Neuroscience is fast corroborating what many teachers have known for years: that there is an intimate correlation between the activity of the human hand and the development of creative thinking. Creative abilities are developed through creative experiences’.p 1
Frank Wilson, a neurologist based in California, explores this in depth in his book The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture. Originally a music teacher, he later met his former woodwind and string instrument pupils as adults and marvelled at their creative thinking and ability to think outside the box. Continuing his research, he began a process of mapping brain size against the different manual skills and faculties being developed in the human being. He discovered that as new tools were developed in the individual, brain capacity increased. A correlation was revealed between learning new skills and brain development; manual learning and dexterity had a direct impact. He said: “If the hand and brain learn to speak to each other intimately and harmoniously, something that humans seem to prize greatly, which we call autonomy, begins to take shape.” P 1
Mahtani, P. (No date) Creative thinking Available at: https://pyrites.org/files/2014/7651/9421/Handwork__Creative_Thinking_-_Priya_Mahtani.pdf (Accessed: 12 December 2019)
‘relation between the capacities for creative thinking and language abilities and “the interaction of the body with the world.”’
the pivotal role of hand movements in particular in the development of thinking and language capacities, (Editorial introduction p1.)
‘it was the biomechanics of the modern hand that set the stage for the creation of neurologic machinery needed to support a host of behaviors centered on skilled use of the hand. If the hand did not quite literally build the brain, it almost certainly provided the structural template around which an ancient brain built both a new system for hand control and a new bodily domain of experience, cognition, and imaginative life p 6
the hand is also a central focal point of individual human motor and cognitive development. P 6
a lifetime of work developing the hands as the primary tool of self expression invests the hands themselves with unusual meaning, or with the power to give rise to intense feelings about particular activities or about others who are engaged in them. P 7
‘People are changed, significantly and irreversibly it seems, when movement, thought, and feeling fuse during the active, long term pursuit of personal goals. Let me put that a slightly different way: if the hand and brain learn to speak to each other intimately and harmoniously, something that humans seem to prize greatly, which we call autonomy, begins to take shape. P 8
the curious, exploratory, improvisational interaction of the hand with objects in the real world gives rise to what we call “ideas.” This process begins quite early in the child, and is usually described in somewhat mechanical terms, usually as an essential stage in sensorimotor development or in hand-eye coordination. Not many people think of the pre-verbal child as having ideas as such, but that is because most people think of ideas as being constrained by the operations of formal language. Ideas, in fact, are more intimately related in development with the interaction of the body with the world, and for humans, beginning at around the age of one, the possibilities for such interaction begin to explode. Control over movement of individual digits begins, and as the baby’s bottom removes itself from the floor, the range of objects that can be encountered and tested rises just as dramatically. This, of course, is the age at which rudimentary language begins.p 8-9
Wilson, F. (1999) The real meaning of hands-on education Available at: https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/RB5101.pdf (Accessed: 13 December 2019)
‘‘Why did Rudolf Steiner insist that each child should learn to knit, both boys and girls? This was quite a revolutionary idea at the time. He said if we do knitting with the children, we are working on their minds. Capacities are built up for logical thinking, forming judgements and solving problems. In knitting we are following a thread. One stitch in a row affects the one before and after, just as each step in a logical argument. We can discover faults in our knitting and thinking by unravelling these steps or stitches. When we are knitting we are making patterns, which corresponds with making patterns in our brain. When we repeat the movements, the connections become stronger, we become skilful. Our thinking is in our fingertips.’ P2
‘When prepared by physical action - by an activity of the will, mental operations bring about real thought.’ P 4
‘Coming from Kindergarten, the children in class one learn to knit a toy, a farmer, an animal, or a ball, usually knitted in one piece whilst the child is still in a dreamlike consciousness, at one with the world. They will also felt a ball and start a weaving project. The knitting and weaving movements awaken their consciousness whilst the senses are educated through different textures and colour. In class two we raise the level of competence in knitting by practice and the introduction of purl stitches. Knitting has to be sewn up, and stuffed to form a doll or a gnome.’ P 4
McCartney, M. (no date) Will-developed Intelligence: Knitting begets Thinking! Available at: https://pyrites.org/publications_files/Knitting%20begets%20thinking.pdf (Accessed 12 December 2019)
‘Neuroscience is fast corroborating what many teachers have known for years: that there is an intimate correlation between the activity of the human hand and the development of creative thinking. Creative abilities are developed through creative experiences’.p 1
Frank Wilson, a neurologist based in California, explores this in depth in his book The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture. Originally a music teacher, he later met his former woodwind and string instrument pupils as adults and marvelled at their creative thinking and ability to think outside the box. Continuing his research, he began a process of mapping brain size against the different manual skills and faculties being developed in the human being. He discovered that as new tools were developed in the individual, brain capacity increased. A correlation was revealed between learning new skills and brain development; manual learning and dexterity had a direct impact. He said: “If the hand and brain learn to speak to each other intimately and harmoniously, something that humans seem to prize greatly, which we call autonomy, begins to take shape.” P 1
Mahtani, P. (No date) Creative thinking Available at: https://pyrites.org/files/2014/7651/9421/Handwork__Creative_Thinking_-_Priya_Mahtani.pdf (Accessed: 12 December 2019)
‘relation between the capacities for creative thinking and language abilities and “the interaction of the body with the world.”’
the pivotal role of hand movements in particular in the development of thinking and language capacities, (Editorial introduction p1.)
‘it was the biomechanics of the modern hand that set the stage for the creation of neurologic machinery needed to support a host of behaviors centered on skilled use of the hand. If the hand did not quite literally build the brain, it almost certainly provided the structural template around which an ancient brain built both a new system for hand control and a new bodily domain of experience, cognition, and imaginative life p 6
the hand is also a central focal point of individual human motor and cognitive development. P 6
a lifetime of work developing the hands as the primary tool of self expression invests the hands themselves with unusual meaning, or with the power to give rise to intense feelings about particular activities or about others who are engaged in them. P 7
‘People are changed, significantly and irreversibly it seems, when movement, thought, and feeling fuse during the active, long term pursuit of personal goals. Let me put that a slightly different way: if the hand and brain learn to speak to each other intimately and harmoniously, something that humans seem to prize greatly, which we call autonomy, begins to take shape. P 8
the curious, exploratory, improvisational interaction of the hand with objects in the real world gives rise to what we call “ideas.” This process begins quite early in the child, and is usually described in somewhat mechanical terms, usually as an essential stage in sensorimotor development or in hand-eye coordination. Not many people think of the pre-verbal child as having ideas as such, but that is because most people think of ideas as being constrained by the operations of formal language. Ideas, in fact, are more intimately related in development with the interaction of the body with the world, and for humans, beginning at around the age of one, the possibilities for such interaction begin to explode. Control over movement of individual digits begins, and as the baby’s bottom removes itself from the floor, the range of objects that can be encountered and tested rises just as dramatically. This, of course, is the age at which rudimentary language begins.p 8-9
Wilson, F. (1999) The real meaning of hands-on education Available at: https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/RB5101.pdf (Accessed: 13 December 2019)