A child puts on their first pair of skates, goes out to the ice, pauses and turns to their mother to say "they don't work". That's a true story from one of my friends.
What does it mean? It means we expect the tool to do all the work. I think it's why brand new knitters in all sincerity say things like "what needle size should I use to to get this gauge" or "let me know if this swatch will block out to the correct size?"
I see questions like this on Ravelry everyday. I'm wondering if this is a result of modern technology, which does do all the work for us. Somehow it seems to me that we are forgetting about skill and technique. Perhaps people don't realize manual skills require practice for improvement and individuals vary in technique.
The test for knowing when you could start teaching children to knit, used to be when they could tie their shoelaces, but kids don't have to learn how to that until later now because of Velcro. We used this as a user ability test recognizing the need for manual skills and the capacity for learning in stages.
I don't remember learning to knit so I can't share my own experience, what do you think?
Where I work, we use 8 years old as the age. We've had some younger (6 and 7 year olds) but their attention span was very limited.
ReplyDelete~Marilyn
That's interesting. I'm sure, since I don't remember learning that I was definitely younger than 8 years old. Many of my knitter friends say they were 6 or under. Does this say something about our culture if kids are developing manual and attention skills later?
DeleteI wonder if sometimes the way patterns are written doesn't help. They list "size X needles" as confidently as the yarn weight and yardage.
ReplyDeleteIn the past we put "or size required to achieve gauge" in patterns but I had two tech editors tell me not to. One said that information is "redundant", the other said "it should only be in my pattern if the pattern is listed as beginner".
DeletePeople are lazy today. so they expect that the new technology everything do for them. And when the rezult is equal to zero, they mad on everyone but themselves.
ReplyDelete