THE NÄÄS METHOD

THE NÄÄS METHOD

Otto Salomon believed that every elementary school teacher should cover both the theoretical as well as the practical side of a subject. He developed a method that was taught at Nääs, in which students followed series of drawings to make working models. No test examples were allowed, and all the objects they produced had to be fully operational and useful.

A number of articles, called models, were made in a defined order. The models were grouped in a series, the model series, where small, simple objects were followed by larger and more complicated designs. During production a number of exercises were carried out using different tools. The exercises were graded according to difficulty. While making each model the student would repeat the tasks covered earlier and learn some new ones. Otto talked constantly of the importance of advancing from easy to difficult tasks and from the concrete to the abstract. It was the development of the young person by completing these tasks that was important, not the end product. The ground rules in the system were set in stone. The methodology and the models themselves, however, were adapted to be relevant to the part of the country or the world the teacher worked in. The teachers were encouraged to develop their own models as they were working on the exercises. When they had reached a certain technical ability they were allowed free reign to construct models as they chose.