There’s a lot of outrage about fidget spinners right now. Some teachers are saying ban them! Other teachers are saying, Let students have them.
It’s a stupid argument.
Remember yo-yo’s? Finger skateboards? gear-powered spinning tops? String powered spinning tops? How about Rubik’s Cubes which made a comeback a couple of years back? Wind-up cars that did tricks?
Fidget Spinners have a place and a time in children’s hands. And as some of you know, one of my mantras or principles is that What the Hands Do, the Mind Knows. But here’s the thing. If you don’t want the latest finger-toy-de-jour in your classroom, then you have to find other ways to put those hands to work, learning actual hand skills:
- teach calligraphy
- teach knitting
- teach drawing
- teach geometry with an actual ruler and compass
- teach the use of a slide rule or abacus
- teach the building of automata (cogs and gears)
- teach carpentry and build yo-yos, finger skateboards, spinning tops, and fidget spinners.
- teach contact juggling
- teach juggling
- teach beading
- teach woodcarving
- teach origami
- teach flint-knapping
- teach ceramics throwing on a wheel
- teach students 3D geometry through the assembly of nets of the Platonic solids.
- teach color theory and coloring at a more advanced level through color pencils.
The fidget spinner is an outward and visible sign of an inward need — a need for the hands to learn something. Kids’ hands fidget because they’re of an age to want to do something, not just sit still.
(And I KNOW that we’re not making them sit still in schools — that they’re doing personal practice as well as listening, reading, writing, reflecting on their work and all that sort of stuff. That’s not what this is about).
Human beings need to use their hands. We learn things through manual dexterity, through touch, through manipulation of objects. Our constant rejection of the toys-de-jour, be they yo-yos or balsa wood flyers or paper airplanes or fidget toys is part of the reason kids don’t learn as much in school as they could.
So if you want to fidget-spinner proof your classroom… figure out WHAT tool or hand-skill you want your students to have, learn HOW to teach it, and then TEACH THAT.
