Another impossibly busy, but experience rich day. I returned to Columbia University today where the topic really became a discussion of embodied tacit learning. Weaving is a classic example because young girls in Chiapas, Mexico and Northern Laos (the two examples we learned) sit at their mother's knee or with their mother at the loom and learn from watching her, but also from the kinesthetic experience of her bodily movements. There are so many other things that we learn in an embodied way: sewing, knitting, perhaps even cooking, painting and other craft based skills that involve the physical engagement of the body to accomplish tasks. I also think of music which is a physical experience of learning as much as it is cognitive and emotional. Same with riding a bike, driving, swimming and any other sport really.
What's interesting about the Mayan back strap loom is that it requires a physical posture and stamina to operate that little girls learn from birth by watching and imitating mother. The researcher who studied this said that between 1990 and 2012 the 3rd generation of young girls they studied (the granddaughters of their original subjects ) were no longer as capable or interested in weaving because elementary/high school education has become ubiquitous.
The rhythmic body-based counting and complex pattern making wisdom of the back strap loom (embodied cognition) is being replaced for young women by the abstract cognition so prevalent in school systems. Whether this is a good or bad thing is highly debatable. The loss of body based wisdom is no doubt outweighed by the access to freedom and better living standards afforded by formal education.
The Laotion Textile project is no less fascinating. Young girls learn to weave as young as 5 or 7 years and by twelve they can be masters of a baffling technique of complicated traditional patterns with fine silk threads. These are stored in a "heddle" of threads that can guide the weaver each time to reproduce it representing really the 1-0 binary of a computer. 1= thread under; 0 = thread over.
It's something to think about the natural rhythms of our bodies translated to crafts and embodied learning that through advances in technology, learning and science over millennia have lead to modern connectivity, internet webs etc...
What's interesting about the Mayan back strap loom is that it requires a physical posture and stamina to operate that little girls learn from birth by watching and imitating mother. The researcher who studied this said that between 1990 and 2012 the 3rd generation of young girls they studied (the granddaughters of their original subjects ) were no longer as capable or interested in weaving because elementary/high school education has become ubiquitous.
The rhythmic body-based counting and complex pattern making wisdom of the back strap loom (embodied cognition) is being replaced for young women by the abstract cognition so prevalent in school systems. Whether this is a good or bad thing is highly debatable. The loss of body based wisdom is no doubt outweighed by the access to freedom and better living standards afforded by formal education.
The Laotion Textile project is no less fascinating. Young girls learn to weave as young as 5 or 7 years and by twelve they can be masters of a baffling technique of complicated traditional patterns with fine silk threads. These are stored in a "heddle" of threads that can guide the weaver each time to reproduce it representing really the 1-0 binary of a computer. 1= thread under; 0 = thread over.
It's something to think about the natural rhythms of our bodies translated to crafts and embodied learning that through advances in technology, learning and science over millennia have lead to modern connectivity, internet webs etc...
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