
Nancy Otero, Doug Schachtel
Transformative
Learning
F
or humans, making is as natural as
breathing. There is a history of 3.3 million
years of making, told by the oldest
hominid-made artifact we know. For my
father, making is his way to relate to the world.
So fixing, improving, creating, and exploring was
how he would spend his time at home during
my childhood. Even though I wasn’t invited to as
many projects as my brother was, I participated
in enough of them to see the world as something
that could be made. I could imagine cutting holes
or adding electronics to the stuff around me as a
default nature. I didn’t have to choose making; it
was ...