Tea at Trianon: Why Children Should be Encouraged to Build Things

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Why Children Should be Encouraged to Build Things

From Intellectual Takeout:

Fortunately for this young boy, his parents continued to encourage his creativity and ingenuity even when the fair did not, and today he is in college about to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering. But what about all the other little boys (and girls) in the U.S. who don’t receive encouragement to use their imaginations and invent or create something? Are we hindering something which could be of great help to our children and nation?

William Stout thought so. In 1916, Stout penned The Boy’s Book of Mechanical Models, a set of illustrated instructions for children to create everything from model cars to water wheels. But while Stout’s book undoubtedly brought much joy to young boys, his true purpose in helping them create their own toys was to foster thinking and new ideas in young minds. Stout wrote:

“It’s easy to make things if you just will think and take pains. There is hardly any kind of a toy that you cannot make out of odds and ends you pick up around the house, if you will just use some ingenuity in putting the parts together. Ideas are what the world pays for. Learn to get up ideas, and those of you young fellows, and smaller boys too, who start now to make things and to learn how to put parts together to get the result you want, are building the basis of business success." (Read more.)