“What
on earth is this?! There is no such thing as a pink mountain! And look here! Orange grass?! What on earth did you
draw?!”, the middle-aged woman shouted at the young 5-year-old, who was shivering and sobbing under her harsh words
and mocking from her peers. “And what is this?”, the woman pointed at a chain
of triangles on the pink mountain.
“It’s…a…train…”,
she mumbled, sobbing in every single word she spoke out, she couldn’t handle
the shock nor the humiliation she was having.
“That’s
not a train! Triangle trains do not exist! And what is this for heaven’s
sake?!...”
The
lesson went on later with mocking, teasing towards the unfortunate kid who was
being mocked by the same person that was supposed to be doing her job, teaching
and helping children, instead of mocking a pure innocent kid who was just
flying was her imagination, which was the right to every single child that was
born in this world. What happened next to the horrible instructor was unknown,
but for the poor child: she quit that class, not just that class, every single
art class that her family applied for her later as the memory was such a
frightened one. Something changed in her, obviously, she started to be afraid
of showing her own ideas, her thoughts nor feelings as she was always timid to
do so, the fear of being razzed haunted her mind constantly… It took her exact
14 years to recover from that wound that the irresponsible, feckless instructor
had made to her. Although she starts drawing again, talking more open again,
expresses herself fully once more after 14 years, but deep inside her somewhere
still lives the 5-year-old soul who was taken away her right to be creative, to
be imaginative, to be herself.
That girl was me, and I am here to tell you: It’s time to give back creativity to our
children.
Children’s
creativity_ time to let it fly.
Creativity is what we were all gifted ever since we were born. As someone who grew up the same
way all of you did (once a little toddler then becoming a rebellious teenager
and starting to be more mature, not some sort of alien that was brought to
earth for some experiment that only they, the aliens, can explain), I am sure
that everyone of us here has his or her own memory about that once upon a time
when we held a piece of wood in our little hand as we were holding a mighty,
powerful sword, imagining the small garden on the small balcony was the giant
forest with dark magic surrounding caused by an evil witch (who was actually
that next-door lady that always yelled at us for touching her rose bushes), the
puddle on the street as the ocean and the leave on it as the ship of Captain
Hook who was seeking his way to Neverland after a mighty hurricane and more wonderful
things like what Andy did with his toys in the Toy Story movies of Walt Disney.
As childlike, dreamy and a bit silly as they sound, those little imaginations,
our young memory are still, undeniably, our most wonderful childhood treasures.
We imagined, we created and we lived with our hearts and souls without caring
on bit about the realistic world. We were artists, creators and imagineers of
our own perfectly perfect world; eventually, no one could ever come up with
anything greater than we did, correct?
“It took me four years to paint like
Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”_ Pablo Picasso.
Children have absolutely no limitation in anything
they imagine, they just reach out for good ideas, never care about the drawback
or difficulty in doing something. This is the optimistic side of them, being
non-pessimistic in order to have an open thinking about the surrounding world
and coming up with new, extraordinary ideas. If you think this is a bit too
Phineas-and-Ferb-alike then you are right. Kids are extremely imaginative and
creative, their ideas are extraordinary. Even if you give the same task for
hundreds of kids, there will be no two ideas that are relevant to one another.
As I helped my mother, who was a primary teacher, taking care of her class
which had around 25 kids while she went out for a meeting, I noticed their wild
imagination and remembered about my own. I was just playing with them when a
kid drew hundreds of X on a blank paper and started to formed shapes and images
that contained those Xes: A teddy bear face which nose is an X, an airplane, 3
Xes together that formed a fence or shoe laces, a classic pirate flag and more.
The little game became non-stop as more kids got interested in the activity and
started coming up with their own ideas, and every single idea is different from
one another. I started my own research by doing the same thing with
kindergarten kids (age 4-5) in 2011 with the same method (asking them to draw
images that contained the given detail on the paper, draw as many as possible)
and I had astounding result: children’s
creativity has no limitation. Ideas just flew out of them hundreds at a time;
you ask for more, they’ll give you more. But if you gave the same test for
adults, the result will be…something we should not discuss as the result is not
very positive, true story, sadly, we_ adults were defeated by young kids.
How can they be capable of such limitless power of
imagination and creativity while adults have to struggle to come up with one
single idea? The answer is their undeniably optimistic mind. In a TEDtalk in
2010, Adora Svitak, a child prodigy talked about the bold ideas, wild imagination
and optimism of children, expressing her opinion about “What adults can learn
from kids”. With the example that was happening during the time: the “Kid
design glass” program of the Museum of glass (Tacoma, Washington); Svitak had
pointed out the most significant characteristic that every single child
possesses, optimism and unstoppable
creativity: “For better or worse, we
kids aren’t hampered as much when it comes to thinking about reasons why not to
do things. Kids can be full of inspiring aspirations and hopeful thinking.”
She pointed out that unlike us, grownups; children do not think about the
impossibilities or difficulties, all they think about is good ideas which give
them the optimism they need to create their own picture about certain things. “Our audacity to imagine helps push the boundaries
of possibility”, Svitak continued.
Sĩ Hoàng, a famous Vietnamese fashion designer has
been investing in organizing designing competitions for kids in order to create
an environment where children can show their wild imagination and creativity. One
of his most well-known competitions is the “Kids design Áo dài” (áo dài is a
Vietnamese traditional clothes), from this competitions, he had gained many
extraordinary designing ideas for the is-always-thought-to-be-formal
traditional clothes of Vietnamese people. Under the hands of creative kids, áo
dài has become closer to Vietnamese people and people around the world thanks
to vibrant and lively designs that the kids contributed to this “Kids design Áo
dài” collection, making it unique, special.
Ken Robison, an English author, speaker, and
international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits,
education, and arts bodies, who appeared at TEDtalk in 2006, talking about
“Schools kill creativity”, gave his point of view about children’s creativity: “They are not frightened of being wrong”.
Through his dedicating works, we can see how supportive he is towards
children’s creativity, giving us credence to believe how wonderful those young
minds can be. “If you’re not prepared to
be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”, Robinson added.
Our world is built base on creativity, which
children’s creativity is the base for all. In his TEDtalk in 2008 about “Tales
of creativity and play”, Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, showed us a
vibrant example about how somewhat child-play activity can lead to great
breakthroughs by imagination and creativity. He reminded us about the
“construction play” that many of us took part in when we were toddlers,
expressing his opinion about this activity as “a powerful way to learn…It’s classically learning by doing.” He
gave an example about the creation of the surgical instrument design which was
not designed on traditional blue print but “white
board marker and film canister which is now becoming a very precious
prototyping medium and a clothespin. He taped them all together and ran back
into the room… And all of the sudden, a productive conversation was happening
about designs and tangible object. And in the end, it turned into a real
device.” During the talk, he also applied the 30 circles test (which works
the same way as my experiments) to all the audiences in the auditorium, showing
the power of creativity and imagination. Though this one was applied onto
adults, the result was already on a positive rank, then how would it be if we
applied it onto young children? I am sure the results will blow you away.
Our world is built with creativity and imagination,
which is something undeniable. Unfortunately, that rosy picture is going to an
end, not now but yes, and soon…
“Every
child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
_Pablo Picasso.
According to many researches and surveys, modern
kids’ creativity has become lessen and lessens by years. One of the most
talk-about research that I want to mention here was carried out by Kyung Hee
Kim, a creativity researcher at the College of William and Mary. Back in 2010,
Kim studied over 300,000 creativity test going back to the 1970s and found out
that creativity had dropped among American children in recent years. “Since 1990, children have become less able
to produce unique and unusual ideas. They are also less humorous, less
imaginative and less able to elaborate on ideas”, Kim said. Not just Kim’s research, many other
researches were carried out in order to investigate deeper about this
creativity crisis in order to come up with the best solution.
Ken Robinson also expressed his fear about
children’s future as “by the time they
get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity (not afraid of being
wrong). They have become frightened of
being wrong”.
Sĩ Hoàng, the fashion designer I mentioned above
also expressed his disappointment towards the designing competitions he has
been holding in recent years. In an interview with a reporter and a Q&A
(Questions and Answers) with a educationalist about the decrease of children’s
creativity, he expressed his deep concern about the issue as it presented
clearly through his competitions. He was disappointed as the creative ideas
were getting harder and harder to be discovered as the statics then showed: in
every 10 kids competed, there would be only 2 ideas that were a bit different from others; and in
every 50 kids competed, there would be only
1 idea that was truly extraordinary. The same thing happens to art teachers
as they cracked their brains choosing which one is a bit different or slightly
more creative than others in those the-same-as-one-another works that the
students hand in.
What has led to this alerting issue? There would be
many answers: the innovation in technology makes people less creative, less
thinking out of the box as the machines have done all the hard work form them;
the affects of multifunction toys that taken away all children’s ability to
come p with new usage for the toys perhaps. But then again, just like my
prologue, it’s the education that
matters the most.
Also in his TEDtalk, Robinson told us the ugly fact
about education nowadays and creativity: “We grow out of creativity, be educated out
of it.” Through all his travels and knowledge about the world education
system nowadays, plus the experience of an educationalist, Robinson had shown
us the general picture about the world education system: “Every education on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects: at the
top are mathematics and languages, and then humanities and art the bottom are
the arts.” As we can see here, all the subjects on the top are subjects
that can be applied to most jobs while arts are brought to the bottom for some
odd reasons like: you won’t be an artist; you won’t be a dancer etc. As a
“victim” of an ungodly art instructor that took my childhood away, I’ve lived
over 10 years of desperation hearing those sarcasms over and over again. I
remembered the first day at school, the teachers told us to be ourselves, be
creative and be different. They told us to love ourselves they way we were. But
when it comes to teaching, those sentences back then were nothing but empty
shells of indifference. They told us to be creative but at the same time they
forced us to think logical and precise. They told us to be ourselves but when
we acted different from others, they immediately called our parents saying that
we had a kind of study order. How profound that was doing such a thing for
someone who called themselves as educators.
For overly emphasizing, focusing on academic results
instead of the development of mature and creativity of children; we, adults,
are highly responsible for the lost of creativity. As we focus too much on the
academic result, we, in fact, underestimate the artistic, creative ability that
the child has and unfortunately, accidentally hurt their self-esteem by
underestimate their well-done works, something they are truly good at and set
such a high goal for them at something they are not good at. What they like to
do became something distracting to their study and they have no choice but to
spend less and less time for their favorite hobby and eventually, they lose
their ability, their creativity and years after, they become us_ those that
“accidentally” “murdered” the creativity inside of them, creating one vast
generation of not knowing about creativity and imagination.
“The
goal is not to turn kids into your kind of adults, but rather better adults
than you have been”, Svitka continued in her TEDtalk, “New generations and new eras grow and
develop and become better than previous ones… No matter your position or place
in life, it is imperative to create opportunities for children so that they can
grow up and blow you away.”
Many new teaching methods have been applied in order
to stop this decrease. One of the most famous teaching methods for this field
is Montessori. This method mainly focus on the normal development of children
rather than exam results, which allows children to be more open and creative in
thinking, studying and working. Because of its great benefits, this education
method is now applied in many countries around the world and is still developed
to be better and more suitable for the changes in world education.
“Everything
you can imagine is real.”_Pablo Picasso
Creativity is an essential part of children’s development and also the world’s as children are the next generations who hold the key that lead to the future, deciding the fate of our own world. Our world right from the beginning of history was built with creativity, it’s something unchangeable. Children’s creativity, maybe illogical and too optimistic, but they push the boundaries of possibilities; challenge us to aim higher and higher for perfection. Creativity may contain or sound a bit too childlike and dreamy, but people, please remember that all things start by dreaming and wishing and the determination to make it real. And creativity is a crucial part of it. Children are born with this magnificent gift and they are deserved to improve more and more. It’s time to let our children’s creativity fly.
“You
must lend an ear today because we are the leaders of tomorrow.”_ Adora Svitka.
Public Service Announcement can be found here:
Sources:
