When I think back to cultural trends that happened during my kids’ early years, there are a few that stand out as important. Both kids were born after the Web but before the iPhone, and my fellow parents and I have watched as our children’s lives took on explorations and dangers literally not dreamt of in our childhoods.
We’re Makers
But there were other trends running counter to this relentless pull into the digital future. In our lives, the Maker movement was perhaps the most prominent. In a time when you can buy anything you want with the click of a mouse, people started to value making again. And when people started to value making again, they didn’t just value professionally made, “artisanal” goods, though those of course have gained prominence at the same time. People started to value the role of the amateur in our cultural and commercial lives.
Amateur means you do it out of love
As a musician, I see this through the lens of what has happened in music. Before the second half of the 20th century, music was in the hands, and voice, of anyone who wanted it. Americans banged on cans, strung strings over cigar boxes, or just yelled out a tune as best they could. Varying by income, culture of origin, and social status, everyone had a piano, a fiddle, an accordion, a steel drum, or a recorder in their house. We had a shared national treasury of folk music, and regional and ethnic music as well. We had our most important American art form, jazz. We had well-funded symphonies in small towns and music in every school.
Then something happened: People started thinking that music was something that professionals did. Music was something you paid a ticket for, bought a disk of, or listened to on the radio. We became consumers. Fewer children had music lessons; fewer families had instruments in their houses.
Enter technology
I have to admit that I never expected to see this trend turn around. But technology, that thing that is turning our kids into zombies by some accounts, has revived music in an unexpected way. While music instruction is still down, folk music—and by that, I mean music that any folk can pick up with the tools available around them—seems to be busting out of its old confines.
Have you ever watched a kid play with Garage Band? How about a simple music app on their phone? Do your kids seek out amateur Youtube videos the way you used to go to the record store to flip through albums?
It’s not just music
To me, this is all part of the growing Maker ethic in our culture, a return to the belief that the act of making something has intrinsic worth, even if the product isn’t worth anything (monetarily speaking). Take a look at Etsy, at local craft fairs, and at open mics if you want to find passionate amateurs doing something out of love. Read any teaching blog and you’ll find discussion of project-based learning (otherwise known as Making).
Oh, yeah, I could be pessimistic
Not everyone is Making. Some kids have turned into zombies controlled by their little devices. Heck, I’ve had students complain that their parents have turned into zombies while the kids are just fine. Most schools no longer have healthy programs in music, art, home ec, shop—all those places where Making used to happen.
But instead…
I haven’t yet visited a local Mini Maker Faire, but this weekend I plan to. My 15-year-old saw a sign and his eyes lit up. “Can we go?” Nothing like a Maker Faire sign to make a teenager forget to be snarky (at least for a short time)! I’m looking forward to seeing all the stuff that people are getting into these days, along with some presentations by local corporations. From people with graduate degrees down to a kid who made something cool in his garage, we’ll celebrate people getting into it and enjoying Making for the process.
amateur (n.)
1784, “one who has a taste for some art, study, or pursuit, but does not practice it [professionally],” from French amateur “one who loves, lover” (16c., restored from Old French ameour), from Latin amatorem (nominative amator) “lover, friend.”
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