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Let kids do what they want to do
Picasso once said that all children are born artists, the difficulty is to remain one into adulthood.
- By Robert Fielding
- Published: 23:00 May 14, 2009
Picasso once said that all children are born artists, the difficulty is to remain one into adulthood.
British educator Sir Ken Robinson believes that instead of growing into creativity, we are educated out of it.
In his talk, 'Do schools kill creativity?', Robinson says he believes most of us were benignly steered away from things we liked or were good at, because our parents said they would not get us a job.
"Don't do music at school, you're not going to be a musician."
"Don't do art, you're not going to be an artist!"
The world is going through a revolution, in information technology or culture, and almost everything is changing.
Social patterns of interaction are changing through chat rooms and Facebook; entertainment is affected by YouTube and file sharing. Yet, most formal educational systems remain the same.
Our view of intelligence is shaped by these systems or tests, which claim to quantify our intellect.
American psychologist Howard Gardner, and now many others, say that there are multiple intelligences ways of thinking and doing, ways of being.
It boils down to this because we are using educational systems based on 19th century models, we are not getting the best out of ourselves.
Many very talented people think they aren't, and many children never find or develop their true selves because what they are good at isn't valued, or is actually stigmatised.
There should be a book in which gifted people relate how their own gifts were ruthlessly squandered, by misguided parents and teachers.
For those lucky people with children, there is much to be done.
Youngsters should be encouraged to move, sing, draw, express and still be good at mathematics and language.
To parents I would say: You should not commit the follies your parents committed.
Watch your children, listen to them, and let them follow their heads and their hearts in and out of school.
Gillian Lynne told Robinson she was considered slow at school; a psychologist talked to her mother about her problems at school. As they left the room to talk privately about the little girl, he turned on the radio.
Watching Gillian move as soon as she heard the music, the doctor said, "Your daughter isn't sick, she's a dancer." Her mother took her to a dancing school, and she never looked back.
She became a ballerina, choreographer, met Andrew Lloyd Webber and produced some of the most famous shows in history, and became very rich in the process.
Someone else might have prescribed medication and told her to calm down.
The writer is an Al Ain-based educator and Gulf News reader
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