I do "maker" education full-time for a living in public schools. Although I love the tools we use, the drills and wires and such, it's never really been about that. It's about letting young people start to solve their own problems and chart their own course.
Every adult is used to having agency, the ability to make choices about their own life, values and interests. The way most lessons and schools are structured doesn't let kids do this. Many lessons have only one right answer so there's no meaningful choices for kids to make. Kids respond passively to prompts from their teachers while sitting still, all by themselves. Students are dissatisfied by this arrangement, and rebel. Even if they are good at enduring it, when they enter college or the workforce, they haven't had much practice at self-management or self-motivation.
Maker education, when done right, gives kids agency. It's radical because it requires teachers to relinquish some control and trust their students a bit. This kind of teaching produces students you would actually want to hire or accept to your college. Students who can anticipate the needs of others and work in a flexible, cooperative way we expect in a real workplace.
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"Hand of Man" is a by Christian Ristow, see http://christianristow.com/project/hand-of-man/
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Knowledge is no longer the domain of a few. The internet has changed that. What's needed now is teachers and spaces that can support the development of creative minds that are confident that they can solve the problems of the future. And fill the jobs of the future; jobs that don't exist yet.
The Maker Movement harkens back to a time of tinkering and "making do" and shop class but has been modernized with new tools and a new focus on equity and accessibility. We need everyone on board, heads AND hands, to solve the world's problems.
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It amazes me when an old idea is given a new name, and everyone jumps on board. Agricultural education has long embraced John Dewey's learning by doing methodology.
Somewhere, people decided home ec, shop, and the like were no longer relevant, missing the skills they taught, such as reading directions (patterns, and recipes), and using those directions to create. As though no one will ever cook, put together furniture, or a child's toy. There is also a practical use to knowing how to use shop tools and sewing machines.
And, there is the hobby factor... Ms. Kaneko is correct about the quest for perfection. People don't do things simply because they enjoy doing them. There is the pressure to for perfection, at least in a public setting. However, I think computers are often part of the problem, and I don't mean video games exactly. Look at the obnoxious messages one receives when one does something wrong, in work programs and in gaming. Also, programs keep tract of failure. Failure is ridiculed.
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