Teaching Opportunities of Repair:

Repair:

  • Includes all the ways of thinking about noted below about how we relate to and care for the material world

  • Offers teaching opportunities that far exceed those of other ways noted

Circular Economy

A context for teaching all of the activities addressed below is the circular economy. There are other meaningful ways of thinking about repair. [See Note 1]

To survive we have to function in a way that’s sustainable, which means not using more natural resources than we have. [See Note 2.] The greatest impact we can have on resource stewardship is to keep things at their highest and best use, in a way that creates the most benefit with the least amount of additional input. Generally that means putting something broken back into its prior use, but there are exceptions.

This is how we understand the elements of circular economy thinking — not everyone would agree 100%, but it’s how we sort out behaviors and teaching opportunities:

Maintenance means keeping something in service with little but important attention.  Choice and then initiative are involved, but they aren’t burdensome because only minor input of time, effort and materials are involved.

Reuse means finding another equivalent application for something that’s no longer being used, with no modification to the thing.  A button from an unusable garment, or that’s found on the floor, might be put into the button drawer. Or a good cookie sheet someone’s put on the street might replace the flimsy rusting one in my cabinet. Reuse calls for seeing inherent value in what’s there, an intention to capture / respect the value, and choosing to take action. There’s agency, a sense of stewardship and the beginnings of creative thinking.

Repair means putting something broken, that doesn’t do what it’s meant to do, back in service doing what it’s meant to do.  Repair calls for attention, recognition of value, intention, choice, and a significant level of intervention that involves thinking skills, fine motor skills, knowledge, creativity. 

The teaching opportunities inherent in repair exceed those of all the others in this list: Repair requires approaching the object and getting very close to it, understanding its materials and how it functions, brainstorming on how to return it to use, often without parts or commensurate materials, and executing the fix. It often requires collaboration and research that doesn’t come into play with maintenance, reuse or recycling. Choice must be fueled by significant energy that’s grounded in and fueled by a sense of responsibility and care, for self, family, community and/or Earth.

Recycling means gathering together things, taking them to a processing location, breaking down and purifying the components, re-manufacturing into something often of lower value (plastic degrades, glass and aluminum to not), and reshipping them to wherever they are used. Tons of extra resources required, and most things put into this stream end up in the landfill. Almost zero effort is involved and it lets us off the hook for understanding and truly stewarding the material things in our lives.

Upcycling is complicated.  Sometimes it means dismantling a thing for a part, or salvaging a part, that might make a more important object work. As I reflect on the tote bag example, it works this way. T-shirts salvaged from a bin will likely never be used for more than rags, so a tote back that might be used is a better redeployment of its embedded resources. I commented as I did because I often see things repurposed into art that disappears into landfill quickly.

Teaching Repair

The teaching opportunities inherent in repair exceed those of all the others addressed in this note:

  • Repair requires approaching the object and getting very close to it, understanding its materials and how it functions, brainstorming on how to return it to use, often without parts or commensurate materials, and executing the fix.

  • It often requires collaboration and research that doesn’t come into play with maintenance, reuse or recycling.

  • Choice must be fueled by significant energy that’s grounded in and fueled by a sense of responsibility and care, for self, family, community and/or Earth.

Another approach:

Repair must be included in the R’s.
There’s a huge jump from Reuse to Recycling if Repair isn’t emphasized as an available and viable choice.


Repair involves a sharper and more energized choice than either Reuse or Recycling, and offers opportunities for personal, technical and cognitive development in its execution that don’t exist in Reuse or Recycling.


Repair involves a sharper and more energized choice than either Reuse or Recycling. In its execution Repair offers opportunities for personal, technical and cognitive development far beyond those available through Reuse and Recycling.


Recycling is just short of passive — there’s a bare choice to do something better than landfill, and it lets us off the hook for really thinking about care and making an effort commensurate with the value of the object’s embedded resources and possibilities

Reuse requires seeing possibility and taking initiative, but involves none of the thinking and fine motor skills of Repair

Repair involves:

  • Choosing to explore an alternative to tossing

  • Approaching and drawing close to the object

  • Examining and understanding materials and functionality

  • Seeing embedded value within: resources, another’s time / effort / thinking, cultural legacy

  • Thinking skills — problem solving, creativity

  • Applying knowledge and skills from various disciplines: physics, math, chemistry, CTE

  • Collaborating — research and consultation are often required, including cross-generational

  • Learning technical skills

  • Developing fine motor skills

  • Developing a relationship with the object

  • Taking the object into oneself

  • Putting oneself into the object

  • Holding an ongoing relationship with the object

  • Developing a different way of looking at material objects which extends to the larger material world

Relevance for all subjects — a critical point is to normalize repair

Physics — electromagnetism (motors), complete circuites (lamp repair)

Chemimstry — the chemical properties of connectors and objects to be connected — adhesives, staples, string ; wood, metal, paper, plastic, textile

Economics — circular economy,

Design —

Ecology —

Social Sciences — human rights, toxic dumps, equity; see the design — who is it designed for?

Political Science — right to repair legislation

Note 1: There are other contexts equally or more meaningful and invite reflection on the meaning of the words “value”, “resource” and “stewardship”. But in our western / rational / capitalist / growth-oriented world, the circular economy is something that can be safely taught to most students in developed economies, which is currently the primary target audience for this Project. Our choice of focus is based on an evaluation of the impact our work can have using the limited resources (time and energy) on hand, not on our estimation of the highest and best ultimate outcome.

Note 2: Consideration of “human resources” is beyond the scope of our work, for the same reasons referenced in Note 1. Non-consideration is not a reflection of our estimation of its importance.