I came across an old Ted Talk from 2006 by Sir Ken Robinson – and it got me thinking about creativity and kids. In preschool, they’re encouraged to use their imagination and play, but it seems as soon as they hit school, it’s all about achieving “outcomes”. I know anecdotally from teachers at the coalface that kids are expected to achieve certain “outcomes” which equate to marks when they’re as young as five. In many instances, homework is “de rigeur”. Whatever happened to going out in the yard to play? As anyone who’s ever observed young children at play will attest, they’re learning from each other and role playing in quite a sophisticated way at a young age.
Dr Robinson effectively says that children will inevitably give the creative response when it’s needed.
He told a story about a child drawing.
The teacher says “What are you drawing?”
“A picture of God”
“But nobody knows what God looks like”
Child responds; “Well, they will now!”
And another one about the three wise men in the nativity play.
Wise Man 1 “I bring gold”
Wise Man 2 “I bring Myrrh”
Wise Man 3 (after a slight pause) “Frank sent this…!”
(Here I am quoting, albeit not exactly word for word, from Dr Robinson’s talk)
The system is predicated upon turning out pliable employable people like sausages, all the same, to fit into the modern world of business and production. Maths, Science and Language are at the top and subjects like Dance and Drama are sometimes simply afterthoughts. “You have to have something to fall back on” if you are artistic.
In our evolution, it seems that formal education is a relatively modern phenomenon. Back in the 17th century, for example, William Blake’s seven year old chimney sweeps would simply sweep all day and die of lung diseases at a young age. Poor children weren’t educated at all - they were just little adults, dressed like little adults, worked like adults and were supposed to be “seen and not heard”. Their little lives were often expendable and this was accepted as normal.
We wouldn’t want to turn back the clock, because education is a right our children are entitled to – but with our apparently automated education systems, that sausage factory of lookalike, thinkalike people, are we perhaps not going too far in the other direction? Children are encouraged to work hard, study all night, blitz the competition, ace the exams, to achieve brilliance but within a structured organised system. Nowadays, one wonders if all the after school activities and hot-housing of kids as young as 12 months into early learning programmes has taken education in an entirely new direction. No doubt some of this is fuelled by a sense of competition between parents?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting the three Rs should be neglected – not at all. I believe that if children are given the right garden in which to grow, fertilised with love and knowledge and freedom to express themselves, they will bloom into beautiful specimens, whatever their talents.
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