Reverse Engineering

That's what we called it in girl Scouts when we let the girls use screwdrivers and other tools to take apart common household appliances. The girls STILL remember that day and it was only like 2 hours of their life, y'know. I think it's important to fix things rather than throw them away so we always tend to have a repair manual somewhere around the house because there's always SOMETHING that's in need of repair. It's not a "boy thing" or an activity for "certain kinds" of kids... everyone can learn how to read a schematic diagram in order to save a few bucks by fixing, rather than replacing things. it really bothers me that kids these days are trained to just throw broken things away instead of repairing them. It reminds me of a quote from John Holt;

Education now seems the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and 'fans,' driven in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves. ~John Holt

Today is the anniversary of his death and I think it's important that we keep his words and his vision alive, especially as homeschoolers. There was a time when repairing things was simply part of life and now debt and high interest rates are part of life. I think I'd rather fix stuff. What do you think?