Hands On

At the end of my colleague James’ 60^th birthday party, we all went to a nearby hall for square dancing. Haven’t done that in a while and it was great fun. One of the moments when you can’t imagine why there’s so much conflict in the world, from nasty gossip to all-out wars, when we could all be dancing together instead. Come on, humans, let’s make better choices!

 

One thing that really struck me, circling around doing the grand-right-and left where you join hands briefly with a great variety of people, was how different everyone’s hand is. Size, warmth, grip, texture, each one a world unto itself. Like our fingerprints, each one wholly unique, yet another affirmation that we are meant to be one-of-a-kind people who wholly embrace our particular character and genius while joining hands with all our fellow unique characters and geniuses. The universal and the particular always dancing together, whether it be to fiddle, drums or bagpipes. 

 

This got me thinking about one of the favorite chapters in my Teach Like It’s Music book—the 4H Club. Here I make a plea for each lesson to be a dance between the head (intellectual knowledge), the heart (emotional connection), the hand (physical mastery) and the hearing (sensory awareness, in music’s case, the ability to hear profoundly and respond accordingly). In the section about the hand, I invoke the thinking behind the casual term “hands-on” learning and note how our language embraces the hands’ role, but our actually teaching in school often does not. Here’s a few paragraphs from that chapter. 

 

“Listen to all the expressions that equate the hand with knowledge: 

I know it like the back of my hand. First-hand information. Second-hand knowledge. Hands-on learning. Handbook. Manual. Get a handle on. Grasp the meaning of. Reach for an idea. Be in touch with. 

 

The hand also has a hand in social relationships. Hand-in-hand. Take my hand. Shake hands. Talk to the hand. Upper hand. High-handed. Close at hand. Show me your hand (cards). Eating out of my hand. Helping hand. Right- hand man. I've got to hand it to you. Grab attention. Reach out and touch someone.

 

Work? Handy. Handiwork. Ranch hand. All hands on deck. Have a hand in.

 

Emotion? That was a gripping scene. That was touching. That was striking. 

 

Our daily conversation is peppered with offhand remarks that speak a deeper wisdom than what we try to say— the right hand often doesn't know what the left is doing. No need to drive this point home with a heavy hand— our idioms speak for themselves. On the other hand, our understanding of the role of the hand in our development may be handicapped if we don't gather these expressions, hold them up to the light, even poke and prod them a bit to get them to speak more clearly. It tickles my fancy to think that hands down, the hand and its associated verbs are everywhere in our talk describing intelligence, character, work and social relations. Whether we're living hand to mouth or rising in the world hand over fist, the hand and mind are walking side-by-side holding hands.”

 

The rest of the chapter is well-worth reading, if I do say so myself. Put your hands on your keyboard and order it now!