A few weeks ago, prepping for class

Court Poetry and the Culture of Learning in Japan Out now on preorder from Harvard University Press. @harvardpress.bsky.social

This is so cool! 😍 A hands-on "Japanese Functional Objects" course led by Ariel Stilerman, Hideo Mabuchi, and Craig Milroy guiding students to create their own tools & learn about the "blurred boundary between aesthetics and practicality"! #Japan https://youtu.be/pDzX5bDvGFY

Ariel Stilerman - Court Poetry and the Culture of Learning in Japan À paraître en mars aux Harvard UP

Off to the Association for Asian Studies's annual conference tomorrow. Please consider checking out our panel "So You Want to Make a Temple: A Transhistorical Look at Craft and Community in Japan." I'll be presenting on how accessible technologies enabled Buddhism's spread in the 8th-9th centuries.

In the age of AI, should we still teach students to make things? #BeyondAIducation

At a time when elite universities are facing unprecedented public scepticism — accused variously of ideological capture, cultural irrelevance, and institutional arrogance — reform proposals often fixate on governance and admissions. #BeyondAIducation

The pressure is only intensifying with the rapid adoption of generative AI and the perception that it will degrade the value of written work. #BeyondAIducation

Last year, a survey found that nearly 90 per cent of Harvard undergraduates used AI in their coursework; nearly a quarter substituted it for assigned readings. #BeyondAIducation

In this context, the pedagogical temptation is to choose between fighting and accommodating new technology. The resurgence of hand written, in-person exams and oral vivas are part of this trend. But there is another possible response: teach students to make things. #MakingKnowledge

In my courses, students not only handle historical texts and objects — they create them. They turn wooden soup bowls, then lacquer them; they build ceramic tea bowls, then use them to brew tea. They compose seasonal poems and construct scale gardens. #CraftingThought #ThinkingThroughMaking

These experiences do not replace traditional modes of analysis but deepen them. #CraftingThought

The student who shapes a tea bowl is better equipped to interpret a historical source about ritual aesthetics because they’ve felt the constraints of balancing form and function. #MadeToLearn

The act of making becomes a heuristic: a way of asking sharper questions, developing closer attention and forging connections between theory and experience. #ThinkingThroughMaking

The value of such work reaffirms that universities are not only places of abstraction and argument, but sites where knowledge meets skill. #ThinkingThroughMaking

This is not a new proposal. For much of the 20th century, to be an educated person did not mean being purely cerebral. #ThinkingThroughMaking

As the historian Dorothy Hartley documented in her indispensable Made in England, knowledge of craft, repair, and fabrication was not the opposite of intellectual life — it was part of it. #ThinkingThroughMaking

Universities once reflected this ethos. Land-grant institutions in the US were founded to connect the life of the mind with the work of the hands. British polytechnics offered rigorous technical and cultural education side by side. #ThinkingThroughMaking

Bringing making back into universities, including in the humanities, is an invitation to rethink what literacy means in an era of digital automation. #ThinkingThroughMaking

This is not about turning literature departments into fabrication labs but considering an interdisciplinary way of teaching. #ThinkingThroughMaking

Of course, these pedagogies come with challenges. They can be difficult to scale, assess, and fund. But change is already underway. #ThinkingThroughMaking

We do not need to choose between critique and creativity, elite knowledge and public trust. But we do need to reimagine how these values meet in the classroom. #ThinkingThroughMaking

Let students read deeply, argue boldly and build something with their hands. #MindAndHand

on.ft.com/4fNd4nY In the age of AI, we should still teach students to make things

A medieval Japanese saw, reconstructed at the Stanford Product Realization Lab

Universities should bring back crafts on.ft.com/473wX80 | opinion