Why Does Human Error Create Value? | How Craftsmanship Creates Better Teachers | Artes Mechanicae, Ep. 20
Can teaching ever be guaranteed to succeed? Is there something more valuable in an artifact made by hand, as opposed to one made by machine?
In this episode of Artes Mechanicae, we explore the work of furniture maker and writer David Pye, author of The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Pye distinguished between two kinds of workmanship: the workmanship of certainty, where outcomes are predetermined and repeatable, and the workmanship of risk, where success depends upon the judgment, dexterity, care, and wisdom of the maker.
What does this have to do with education?
Modern educators are often tempted by systems, analytics, scripted curricula, assessments, and technologies that promise predictable results. Yet teaching remains a profoundly human endeavor. Like a craftsman at the workbench, the teacher must observe, adapt, discern, and respond to the unique students before him.
Drawing connections between craftsmanship, wisdom, Proverbs, and classical Christian education, this episode argues that teaching is not a workmanship of certainty but a workmanship of risk—one that requires virtue, prudence, and the daily practice of loving God and neighbor well.