The cat that loves to crochet and draw

Thứ Tư, 11 tháng 9, 2013

Children’s creativity_ time to let it fly.



“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.

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