No creative ideas in the art room
Near the end of the school year when my brain wasn’t firing at it’s highest powers, my boss somehow got me agree to go to a 5 day AP art teacher training on my summer vacation.
Two weeks before leaving for this training, I couldn’t seem to imagine how I’d agreed to such a thing. I’ve been practicing saying, no and gotten pretty darn good at, somehow this one slipped through the cracks.
I couldn’t seem to find a way out of it, so I packed my bags, leaving all of the essentials behind, as I usually do, and headed on my way to La Salle University by train, and then had a lovely ( it was not lovely at all) afternoon riding in circles with a not so friendly cab driver. Luckily with him, I remembered how to say no, as I refused to get out of the cab, in a horrible part of town. You know that it’s not safe when my husband ( who will run/walk 9. 10…20 miles instead of paying to park, or paying for gas to drive) tells you to take a cab.
My feet firmly planted on campus, and my suitcase in tow, I headed off to class. Only to have to change rooms 4 times, and each room was kindly located on the fourth floor, and there were no elevators. When getting dressed that morning, I hadn’t planned on taking a campus tour with all of my luggage, therefore I was wearing some super cute wedges that we meant for a little bit of walking, and a lot sitting, and no climbing stairs with a 50 lb bag…….
I was really starting to want to smack myself in the face for signing up for this grand adventure.
A room filled with art teachers, seemed like a place that I would fit in, and somewhere that creativity and creative thought would be embraced, however, as I stared in awe, and tried to keep my jaw from hitting the floor, one teacher proudly proclaimed that she does everything that she can to beat creativity out of her students….
as fast as possible.
I’m sure that this results in her having beautiful finished products ( I”m not being sarcastic here, although it may seem like it. ) But really, if a teacher abandons asking students to be creative, to have their own ideas, to experiment, and to discover, and instead has them follow clear step by step directions they can get wonderful looking results. From the outside, they look like an awesome teacher.
I exclaimed, hmmm, I do everything that I can to have them have a creative thought… that seemed to end the conversation.
And many of my fears were again confirmed…. we aren’t teaching kids to be creative in school… instead we are doing everything that we can to beat it out of them. …. even in the art room.
Just in case I needed confirmation, a discussion arose, where teachers expressed how hard they work to keep students from drawing on lined paper of any sort… once again I was confused… but this isn’t a new feeling for me.
Why do we care what kind of paper they’re drawing on? ( yes perhaps there is a time and place to discuss the surfaces where you create art… it’s called learning about aesthetics)…. however, if a kid decides that they want to draw, and all that they have is lined paper, then go for it kid!
“A mind which says, ‘I have taken a vow to be something and I am going to be that for the rest of my life’ is called consistent; but it is really a most stupid mind, because it has come to a conclusion and it is living according to that conclusion. It is like a man building a wall around himself and letting life go by.”
⎯Jiddu Krishnamurti
Your children’s future depends on them being able to think. To think for themselves, to ask questions, get the answers and then ask some more.
They need to be willing and able to draw within the lines, out of the lines, and all over the crazy lines, that people will put down in front of them.
Your children need to question and create.
