skills are nice, but give them time to develop creativity
Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 10:50AM Most adults, with our increasingly hectic schedules, assume that at least creativity is alive in our children when we send them off to drawing class or bassoon lessons. Yet most children’s time in the arts is spent either appreciating someone else’s art or learning the skill required to make the art, so that perhaps in the future one could be creative. This training sometimes leads to amazing technical skill. I have met more than a few children who can perfectly recreate a Dragonball-Z character or still-life bowl of fruit, but who struggle to create an original character, story, technique, or idea.
So what is creativity? Many will argue about semantics and definitions. I will not enter that fray. Whatever it is, creativity revolves around unique, independent, and original thinking. It sometimes leads to an activity, such as playing the violin or implementing a new program to end homelessness. But without creative thought, the activity simply cannot be creative. In the end, only you can say whether you have been creative — only you can know whether your thoughts are unique, independent, original. So when was the last time you were creative? The answer for many Americans’ children is “never.” — Michael Bitz, Creativity in Crisis: The “Brain Drain” in American Schools
Reader Comments (12)
My first boy is seven. He loves to draw, and draw and DRAW, particularly manga style, and elaborate dragons and inventing his own Super Mario Bros characters. A while ago he attended a couple of art classes run by a funky local artist, which I thought (mistakenly) that he would love. I'm the kind of person who LOVES attending classes and workshops and learning skills. Not him though; he felt that the class was okay, but actually boring because he was just having to do what he was told and didn't get to make up his own drawings.
Hmm... so in an effort to find my own middle ground (as Amy said), I bought a book called Drawing Manga and left it around for him to pick up if he wanted to...which he did... for about 5 minutes...
Maybe some of us are keen for instruction and some of us will do better if left to our own devices, and the key is to discover when each of those is appropriate for each of us.
Really interesting topic!
Now that I have kids, I see how each develops creatively in their own way, but I have to leave them alone!!! All I do is make sure I supply them with their personal fix. For one it is yarn, pencils and sketchpads. Another prefers colored pencils, pipe cleaners and Model Magic. The youngest eats up any craft and art supplies I offer her. Letting them explore the type of art they want to do is a better way to stir creativity.
I should say that I don't mind copying. All the great artists learned by copying the works of artists they admired. I think the difference is more in the passion. Hopefully, the child who enjoys drawing Dragonball-Z characters will eventually want to add his own creations to the Dragonball-Z world. I used to do that with my favorite comic book superheroes.
Agreeing with you: This post reminded me of another post you did recently about reading (In Defense of Reading . . . ) in the sense that kids need to have free time to do lots of things - time to play the video games and time to read and time to be bored . . . which in our house is where the creativity often comes in. I usually see the creative happen when we have been outdoors for a really long time, and the kids are tired of all the typical things or when we've been stuck indoors for way too long and they just want something different to do. The exception to that rule is novelties - when there's four boxes and their packing materials that they inherit or when they get to try out a new art supply - that kind of thing.
Thanks again for the reminder to let them be bored!
i think most young children are explosively creative. but usually, instead of channeling that creativity and helping them turn it into something more, in the classroom they are often stifled completely. there's too much direction and focus on what the teacher wants rather than helping the child express himself and develop his own ideas.
allie, absolutely. there is a kind of relentless forward momentum. when do kids get to learn to use those skills and apply those strategies and really make them their own?
nic, that doesn't surprise me. i have a son who is an artist also, and he enjoys art classes but thinks of them as being separate from his own work. he also draws comics and he is completely uninterested in "how-to" books. he would much rather pore over a comic artist's book and examine how they draw.
i think the key in supporting your young artist is to ask him what he needs. sometimes their answers are surprising — and sometimes their needs are so simple. asking starts a dialogue and lets him know you want to support his work.
cristina, i agree completely about copying. all artists start by copying! writers start by copying the styles of the writers they most admire. it takes them years and an immense amount of effort to develop their own style; why would it be any different for children?
my son started out copying comics, then he wrote his own captions and storylines for the characters, and eventually he was writing his own stories for his own characters. it was a clear transition and allowed him to bridge his way to 100% creativity. and the entire time he was learning, including when he was copying. copying is a way to really focus on how a piece of work was made and how you can do similar work yourself.
jen, i am a long-time champion of boredom! :^)
luisa, so true. i find a lot of parents are anxious about doing open-ended art activities with their children so they end up using craft-y kits and follow-directions projects as a crutch, saying their child can use their creativity to "personalize" it. maybe they feel that way because they didn't have the chance to become fluent at making art when they were children .. or they lost the skill as they got older and were trained to focus on final outcomes.
stephanie, i think skills are absolutely necessary, but i think they should be for the child to express his own ideas. i know how difficult it is in schools today, with extremely limited time for art instruction, to give children time to explore materials and practice skills so they can be fluent enough to work purposefully on their own projects.
catherine, how depressing that they have to reach back so far! i believe it, too.
Lori, any chance you could add a feedburner link that would allow me to receive your new posts via email?
The longer school day/week/year quote on the other post makes me want to run for the hills!
re: following-directions projects .. YES. that is not authentic art. when *art* teachers don’t know that, i think we’re in trouble.
lisa, l o l re: the “wall of creativity” — truly, they do not see the problem!
i have gone to several school “art” shows that were groups of dozens of pieces of “artwork” that were all more or less exactly the same. truly depressing. the less art education we have in schools, the fewer people are going to be able to spot this for the problem it is. the emperor has no clothes!