Μy introduction to craft as a form of knowledge, which differs
from the usual modes of classroom teaching, came from reading the Book
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's educational treatise Emi/e (1762) at an
early age. Emi/e is a strong polemic, cast ίπ the form of a story about
a boy and his tutor, against learning by rote and social conditioning
and ίπ favour of the development of the individual child - what would
today more prosaically be called, after Jean Piaget, 'the psychogenetic
educational principle" ...is concerned with the learning of
a craft, in Emile's case carpentry: 'If, instead of making a child stick to
his books, , employ him ίπ a workshop, his hands work to the advantage
of his intellect, he becomes a philosopher while he thinks he is simply
becoming an artisan.'

Christopher Frayling