Handwork means any work that is done by hand and not by machine or any other means.
The hands are unique and beautiful part of human being, they bring us important and far reaching experiences. Thus, hands need to be skillful, sensitive and strong so that they can accomplish many wonderful deeds. We need to learn how blind people see the whole world through their hands and how handshakes tell us about another person. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the knowledge that can be gained when the hands are used in useful and sensitive ways.
The handwork lays a good foundation in nurturing our talents. Being active with our hands, can often help our mind to coordinate, concentrate and self correct. This is because when we make use of our hands to do something, we often tend to silent our mind leading to a natural way of releasing stress and helping ourselves with the emotional processes. Hand work can be an intensively effective relaxation tool by directing our mind tourism meet with the rhythm of our hands.
Some kind of work with one’s hands would be beneficial on every course, at every level of education and training, whether or not what is related to the rest of the course. This applies even to universities, perhaps especially to universities where it is absolutely essential, though seldom acknowledged, that students need to balance their predominantly left brain work with some right brain activity.
Of course, there are some subjects that do not seem to be suitable for practical activities. However, such subjects can still create some educational experiences that may help students to learn to judge their own progress. For example, students who submit essays are frequently mystified about what is expected of them. We can teach them to judge the value of the essay they produce. For this reshuffle the notebooks of all the students and then ask each of them to allocate marks to the essay in front of them, without consulting anybody. Then ask each student to tell the reason behind the number of marks he allotted to the essay before him. This exercise makes students aware of relative importance of different ideas of which they might have not even thought of, but heard about from other students.
Similarly, in subjects like mathematics or accounting, where calculations are to be practiced, help students to learn to judge for themselves whether they can do the work or not without the help of answers and solutions. With this they can master the skill of solving a question in a quick manner in their mind itself. In fact, when the brain is not able to remember something quickly and for a long period, writing that down helps the brain to learn and remember seventy percent of the content written without even making any special effort to learn it.
Handwork, thus, works as a photograph that a brain captures and brain tends to remember photogenic things more than something that is in writing. Today, it has even become clear that the mind develops from creativity and knowledge and the skill develops with the practice. The potential for creativity expands as a child develops his ability to observe, as he learns effective and efficient ways to use tools, as he refines his hands, as he has an opportunity to witness and experience examples of great art in all the various media, and as he gains a greater understanding of the elements of design.
Thus, we should make our children well trained in handwork. The time for perfecting movement is in the first six years of life. And so, whatever we do with the children, whether it is working with the sensorial and practical life materials, handling a book, or using a pencil, we always would show a child the most efficient and effective way to use a tool. And we would give him simple things to do until his hands were more skilled at using any particular tool.
