Tips on teaching kids to research
While sitting listening to an artist speak about his work and his process, he shared that he’s very intuitive in his process… college students ears perked, as they felt that this might be the ticket that they were waiting for… thinking that this might be the permission to ignore the professions….. the slip that told them that they didn’t need to do research… that they didn’t need to plan… didn’t need to look at other artwork.
The artist skirted the issue….well maybe he didn’t skirt it, he attempted to advise the students to follow the advice of their professors, that one day they would look back, they would hear the voice of that professor in their head and it would make sense.
I wanted to jump out of my seat , grab the mic and answer this kids question… but that seemed like it would be frowned upon, so I gripped the edges of my chair, stayed put, and kept my mouth shut.
The word research has gotten a bad rap, thanks to the education system. Research , means that you are to spend hours reading books, about something that you have no interest in.. and the more books that you read… the more lines that you need to add to the biblography that will surely be the death of you, unless you’ve discovered easybib.com… if this is the first time that you’re hearing of it, you can thank me later.
Research makes us think of term papers, thesis statements…. and being lost in the dusty, dark, hole of the library… not having any luck finding the book that you need.
What you need to understand is that you can’t be intuitive unless you have information… lots of information stored in your head. I don’t “ research” , sketch, or plan, but you better believe I”m straight up pouring information and inspiration into my brain everyday… and that gets poured into my work, as some surprising genius moment, when suddenly everything makes sense.
It’s hard for students to create great work and be intuitive, because most of them haven’t poured enough “good stuff” into their brain. It doesn’t count to spend countless hours on social media, texting, or playing games…… while that stuff is part of it, you also need to read great books that ask deep questions, tell great stories, and take you into other worlds.
You need to look at great work, be it, fashion, art, poetry, architecture… look at it every day. Then the only reason that you aren’t doing research for each individual project, and it feels intuitive is because you did research everyday of your life, and that storehouse of information is informing you work.