
Sloyd - troydavis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloyd
======
mhomde
Ah yes, many are the cupboards filled with butterknives made in woodshop and
the sofa's with an odd shitty pillow made in sewing class. Still better than
the Lord of the flies -like gymclasses though :)

Fun fact, I don't think I ever had a träslöjdslärare (wood chop teacher) that
had all appendixes intact. I surmised that sacrifing a finger must be part of
some kind of initiation ritual for Sloyd teachers.

~~~
retSava
Oh, the many christmas presents made in slöjd! As the saying goes, "Ärad var
gud i höjden, det här har jag gjort i slöjden". ("Prized be the lord in
heaven, I've made this in slöjden" could be a best-effort translation)

------
blonky
Roy Underhill covered this in an episode of the "Woodwright's Shop." It's a
PBS program in the US.

[http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/home/](http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/home/)

~~~
galeforcewinds
Season 30, Episode 7 (and repeated as Season 37, Episode 1) is "Who wrote the
book of Sloyd?"

Available at [http://www.pbs.org/video/the-woodwrights-shop-who-wrote-
the-...](http://www.pbs.org/video/the-woodwrights-shop-who-wrote-the-book-of-
sloyd/)

Also worth noting Season 30, Episode 10 may be of interest as it covers manual
training in England. "The Tiny Tool Kit" is tied to Christopher Schwarz's
reprint and update of "The Joiner and Cabinet Maker".

------
Turing_Machine
Ha! A long-term mystery has been solved for me. When I was a kid I encountered
a tool called a "sloyd knife", which seemed like a really weird name. Now I
know -- it's not weird, just Swedish. :-)

~~~
Zolomon
We actually just call them "smörkniv", with the litteral meaning of "butter
knife". :)

~~~
iiv
A sloyd knife is not the same as a butter knife. You use a sloyd knife while
making a butter knife. Sloyd knife in Swedish is "slöjdkniv".

------
unhammer
> The word "sloyd" is derived from the Swedish word Slöjd, which translates as
> crafts, handicraft, or handiwork.

but the origin is

> Old Swedish slöghþ, from slögher (“skill, knowledge, handiness”)

(
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sl%C3%B6jd#Etymology_2](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sl%C3%B6jd#Etymology_2)
)

which in Norwegian gave rise to words like "sløg" (smart, sneaky, cunning) and
"slesk" (slimy, obsequious).

~~~
pavel_lishin
Reminds me of a bit from Cryptonomicon:

 _" So anyway, you probably learned in elementary school that Athena wears a
helmet, carries a shield called Aegis, and is the goddess of war and of
wisdom, as well as crafts—such as the aforementioned weaving. Kind of an odd
combination, to say the least! Especially since Ares was supposed to be the
god of war and Hestia the goddess of home economics—why the redundancy? But a
lot’s been screwed up in translation. See, the kind of wisdom that we
associate with old farts like yours truly, and which I’m trying to impart to
you here, Randy Waterhouse, was called dike by the Greeks. That’s not what
Athena was the goddess of! She was the goddess of metis, which means cunning
or craftiness, and which you’ll recall was the name of her mother in one
version of the story. Interestingly Metis (the personage, not the attribute)
provided young Zeus with the potion that caused Cronus to vomit up all of the
baby gods he’d swallowed, setting the stage for the whole Titanomachia. So now
the connection to crafts becomes obvious—crafts are just the practical
application of metis."_

 _" I associate the word ‘crafts’ with making crappy belts and ashtrays in
summer camp," Randy says. "I mean, who wants to be the fucking goddess of
macrame?"_

 _" It’s all bad translation. The word that we use today, to mean the same
thing, is really technology."_

------
hlieberman
I took an extension course at the North Bennet Street School, the historic
home of Sloyd in the United States. If you're in Boston and at all interested
in craft, I highly recommend it; the teachers are wonderful, and it allowed me
to exercise parts of my mind that I rarely do as a software engineer.

~~~
mcphage
I took a number of bookbinding workshops there, and I also would recommend it
highly. Everything about that experience was amazing.

------
pavel_lishin
I wish the link for "The Russian System" didn't just go to an article about
education in Russia. I definitively remember having some sort of woodworking
class in Russia, where I had to use a chisel to build a boat. (I remember
understanding working with vs. against the grain when I split my poor little
attempt in half along the center.) I wonder how it differs.

------
riffraff
In Italy the middle school (age 11-14) included "Technical Applications",
which AFAICT was the same thing, i.e. crafts. Boys and girls would have
different subjects though.

This lasted between 1963 (the year this unified middle school was introduced,
previously there were specific work-oriented schools) and 1979 (they year the
subject became a more theoretical "Technical Education", and unisex).

~~~
ansgri
Russia has the same system, and at least 10 years ago it still wasn't unisex.
Boys' crafts included woodworks and metalworks, while girls learned cooking
and sewing.

~~~
rdtsc
Those were pretty good classes, I enjoyed them. Learned to use a coping saw,
some wood and metal working. We had a lathe there and all. Some of that I had
learned from my dad, but we just didn't have a lathe or those other tools and
materials at home.

Our classes also included doing demolition. The school was being remodeled so
they gave us hammers and pick axes and told us to go wild on a few walls.
Totally unhealthy and risky. But it was an exciting activity for a bunch of 14
year olds.

Another time the teacher told to "go and get these bricks from that
construction site, so and so will let you in". Looking back I am pretty sure,
he was sending us to steal after he cut a deal with the guard.

Oh and also other class was told to cut some trees. Those trees were not on
the school property.

Then teacher came drunk to class a few times.

Good times, good times...

------
bitwize
Back when I was a kid we called this "industrial arts".

~~~
will_brown
I was President of my high school’s Industrial Arts Club circa 2001. Until
this comment I had never seen or heard anyone else use the term.

Since my graduation the school has closed down the wood shop and metal
shop...and when my old teacher retires in the next couple years they will no
longer offer drafting either (of course we lost our T-square desks my junior
year for computers and autocad).

~~~
contingencies
In Australian public high schools (finished 1999) at least in NSW (ie. Sydney)
the drafting part was called _Technical Drawing_ , a design theory (materials,
etc.) part was called _Design and Technology_ , and then there were separate
classes for _Woodwork_ and _Metalwork_. I used to really enjoy all of them,
and aced _Technical Drawing_ and _Woodwork_. Years later, after a 15 year
career spanning various types of software all around the world, I find myself
in China doing a hardware startup, and all of that _Technical Drawing_ theory
and machining experience has really come back to help! I can't thank Australia
enough for a good public secondary education.

------
failrate
This is the principle of just about every commercially successful "casual"
game. The difference is that most games don't teach you anything useful
outside of the context of the game.

------
grabcocque
I mean, it has a different name, but surely every nation in the world has
similar classes with similar content?

In the UK the GCSE Design and Technology syllabus covers all of the bases
mentioned in the article as a standard part of the National Curriculum for
every child.

[http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/design-and-
technology/gcse/de...](http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/design-and-
technology/gcse/design-and-technology-8552)

The article is written as if there’s something special about it unique to
Scandinavia, beyond its name.

~~~
Rumudiez
The US does not have anything like this in its mandatory public school
curriculum that I know of. My experience in a good public system was that if
you had time in your schedule to take a shop class (wood and metal working) it
was because you weren't taking a foreign language or music class. Same problem
with art -- there was no room built in to accommodate those classes in a
typical student's schedule.

~~~
ci5er
Hmmm. Odd. I took all the above. Maybe our classes were shorter (~50min each)?
Or we had longer days (7.30am to 3.30pm and then the extracurriculars
started)?

~~~
Rumudiez
I and the other students from the AP classes at my school effectively had no
electives -- we all took math, science, English, history, a foreign language,
and at least one music class every semester of every year throughout middle
and high school. With 6 classes a day and extra curricular sports, robotics
and music there was no way to take a shop or home-ec class, and that's after
getting arts and gym waived.

~~~
abeyer
> and at least one music class every semester of every year throughout middle
> and high school

Seriously? I'm all for music in schools, did a fair bit myself, and went to a
public school with a strong program... but 14+ semesters of required music
seems like overkill for most people.

