Artistic Footprint

What is the most special, adored, and amazing thing about children? Their creativity. Their perma-stoke of simple, everyday things. They don’t care if they get dirty, they are constantly asking questions and literally forming their world with their hands, mouths, toes, and noses.

Which leads me to a very sobing question…: What the hell happened? Why does this curiosity stop? why has life become so predictable and dull for us adults, when compared to that of a child’s?

I believe we educate the creativity out of ourselves. We take these inquisitive, energetic, young minds and we lock them in a primitive, disciplined cage for 8 hours every day for the majority of their development.

Fundamentally, school is awesome. The fact that it is free and unavailable to half the world says that yes, school should be cherished and we should be grateful to have it. It provides us with a unified means of communication, an understanding of the natural world, and a social network of like-minded individuals. It provides opportunity and motivation.

However. And this is a BIG however. School can so easily be destructive, exploited, abused, corrupt, and even dangerous. For starters, the classroom hasn’t evolved since it was invented. An adult standing at the front lecturing and writing in big letters, with bored and unnattentive younglings writing down every word verbatim. Little feet aren’t pitter-pattering, nor are hands folding and glueing. they’re copying and pasting data into their brains. We all have different brains with different methods of learning, but there is no dynamic in instruction. Some people learn by listening. Some by grabbing it with their hands and physically doing it. Others have to talk and discuss the ways around a problem. And yet from kindergarten to PhD, there’s always someone just lecturing. monotonous, waste-my-time transfer of language from mouth to ear. Am I the only one who knows that this is not how the brain works? Couldn’t you master a problem faster if you actually experienced it?

If you learned something, and then forgot it, what was the point of learning it? and if you forgot the majority of what you learned in school (which is a TV show theme now) then wasn’t all that just a big waste of time?

Do you remember the teachers that you liked? The teachers that gave a shit and didn’t use a lesson plan? I had a chemistry teacher that would ask and answer really awesome questions from start to finish. He’d tell us what molecules were in flu medications and why they worked, or the pros vs. cons of using a mulching lawnmower because of the removal of nitrates. – very interesting by the way. I had another teacher that would teach us how to speak mandarin during the last 20 minutes of history class. And another teacher that would take his shoe off and slap it on a map of the earth to explain how the scale works. “The scale means that there are 20,000 shoes where my shoe is on this map, just like there would be 20,000 icecream cones in the space that this icecream cone sits” These teachers wouldn’t let me leave without having explained how something works a million different ways until it finally clicked in my head. They welcomed my questions and saw my lack of understanding as an opporunity to help me. These are all teachers that literally go above and beyond the call of duty because they enjoy their work and understand what they are doing.

I also remember the shitty teachers. The ones who work for the school board because they like their summers off. They use lesson plans that they wrote up 15 years ago. They throw slides up on the projector and watch porn on the internet while you copy it down – Sometimes they even leave the room! The teachers that mark you based on your attire and how much ass you kiss rather than your actual efforts. Yes, I remember you. If you don’t give two shits about working in education, then you should just get the fuck out, because you’re causing far too much damage.

Teachers are in constant direct contact with their future taxpayers, scientists, diplomats, and soldiers. They literally have control of the worlds future. Those that work their asses off to help a kid understand why things work are fucking Legends. The washed out, dull, blood-sucking teachers that don’t give a fuck are responsible for people like George Bush and Sarah Palin.

And if you’re one of those parents that doesn’t answer your kids’ questions…. then just… fuck you. I loathe you. The kid that you personally gave birth to and are raising from the ground up is asking you for help. They look at a bug on the ground and say “what does he do?” and if your answer doesn’t begin with the word “because” then you might as well just drown your kid in the bathtub. It’s like you’re penalizing your kid for wondering something, and eventually, they will stop asking questions. Or you’ll just end up buying them an X-box. But the biggest difference between kids and adults is that kids WANT to learn!

Not only should you answer their questions like it’s your responsibility as an adult, you should encourage them! ask them questions! Treat them like they just landed on a foreign planet and want to know what everything is!  And if you’re a kid and reading this, try to ignore my swearing. Its ugly and distasteful. But PLEASE I beg you. Ask as many questions as you can! stay away from drugs, and stay away from Televisions! they plant weeds in your brains!

I think the greatest thing about a kid is that they don’t care what anyone thinks. They aren’t even aware that someone is judging their work or thinking they’re stupid. They draw a picture of a giraffe that looks nothing like a giraffe to you, but to them, that’s what a fucking giraffe looks like. And the determination in that belief is unbreakable.

It’s time we stop doctoring the “disease” of creativity. People aren’t remembered for the car they drove or their trophy wife, or the money. The people that are remembered are the mozarts, piccassos, armstrongs, shakespears, tarantinos, and mandelas. These are people whose creativity blasted through the gate of education and landed on the moon, wrote a legendary play, or ended apartheid. You know, things that humans can say they are proud to have acheived. Something you’d like to show your alien neighbours.

When I used to teach kids, I’d break down the door of awkwardness, and immediately it’d be a battle of the weirdest. I’d try to be stranger and weirder than the kids, and you’d be amazed by how excited they get and how hard they try to impress you right back with their many expressions, voices, and quirky observations. They can help you see things that you didn’t know were there.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

This one’s a bit of a bore, but a very interesting point of view: kids teach themselves English and the use of open-source information without the aid of an instructor:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html