01 November 2018 by Roy Preece
Are these the surgeons of tomorrow?
Crafts are important for everybody!
A professor of surgery is worried that young people today do not have the manual skills and dexterity necessary to be good surgeons.
Of course, surgeons need a lot of scientific knowledge, but success and our safety still depend on how skilful they are with their hands. Professor Kneebone – what a lovely name for a surgeon – thinks this is because children don’t do enough craft work these days, making models, sewing, construction toys and so on; and they spend too much time on computers and phones.
I had a young dentist once who drilled and drilled – I could sense he was not confident in what he was doing. He drilled my two front teeth away so much they had they had to be replaced. And his fillings always fell out! As my doctor said, a doctor sometimes needs to be a ‘good cutter’.
At Snowflake events, we are delighted to find children love to do simple crafts, but they need regular encouragement at home and schools too. Modern education restricts the time for doing these things and downplays their importance because they are not considered to be ‘intellectual’.
Everyone enjoys crafts
