Those Who Can, Do

John Dewey gets name-dropped in a wandering bit of “sustainability” pabulum. What if a bunch of kids learn to do some things by themselves, but never for themselves?

One thought on “Those Who Can, Do”

  1. What happens is you end up ridiculous and waste more resources than needed. For example, on a slow day at work I once offered to weed the unkempt planting strip in front of the boss’s office, since he was complaining about it. He asked me what tools I needed and I said a shovel and maybe a scuffle hoe if he could find one. So he went down to the hardware store and came back with a snow shovel and a trowel!

    Or what happens is you don’t try new things because you don’t know where to start. Or you just jump in and start and find out you need all kinds of tools and it ends up costing a lot more than expected.

    And you can’t fix something if you don’t know how it works, which means you have to pay someone else to do it for you. There’s a real danger that if they know you’re a fool they’re going to take advantage of you.

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