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Part 47: Child Welfare:
Creative Expression:
April 21, 2003:
In my last essay I said what happens in our schools now is not
really education. It is operant conditioning. Instead of that,
I believe we need to begin encouraging creative expression. What
we are doing now is the diabolical opposite of creative expression.
Instead of teaching our kids to open up and reach out, we teach
them to hunker down and follow rules. instead of encouraging them
to be individuals, we try to make them part of the herd. We teach
them to pass tests and conform.
What this does is create performing parrots, company men, and head-down bureaucrats such as we currently have in government and industry. We have adults who tend to act like cowardly herd animals. Too many so called philosophers and shrinks put the blame for this on the individual rather than the system saying, in effect, we are a herd. That is just the way we are. I completely disagree. That is not the way we are. It is the way we have been conditioned to be. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the notion that we are inherently conformers or herd animals.
I believe we conform and force others to conform from a misguided sense of community responsibility. We seem to believe that community support means stability at all costs. Don't rock the boat. That is nonsense. True community support means being involved, not following rules. It means being the best we can be and giving the best we have. It means striving for excellence, not the status quo. It is the excellent people who make a community great, not the hunkered down conforming rabble.
Currently, this conforming herd mentality is first instilled in our kids in the "normal" home. From there it is carried vigorously forward by our educational system. As I said, problems can occur when a properly nurtured kid gets into this environment, begins to ask questions, and tries to learn. He may get beat up. There is a good chance of that. Until we change this in the schools, we cannot make very much change anywhere else. If we continue to pump out hunker-down conformists our civilization will just continue to degenerate.
Well, what can we do? To become useful citizens, we must be free to adapt. We must encourage our children to be creative in their responses. Our behavior should never be mindless. It should be dynamic. Creative expression is the only way our kids can grow into what humans ought to be. This must begin in the home as I have pointed out. Then it must continue in the schools. The whole thrust of our educational system should be toward creative expression as opposed to operant conditioning, rote, and memory drills. It is time we stopped teaching our kids to perform like trained seals and encourage them to challenge life.
How can we do that? I believe all of education should begin with creative expression. The child's first exposure in school should be an invitation to be creative. That must be the beginning and the ongoing basis of all education. Currently we already make some attempt at this in the earlier grads. We call it Show and Tell. It does not matter what we call it, but education must begin with creative expression.
At first we cannot depend on the home to provide the children with the tools of self expression. We can be happy if they deliver us kids who have not been abused. So most of our kids will not know how to read. Neither will they be able to express themselves through writing. Therefore, our first creative expression must begin with speaking. Although we will not have the tools for writing at first, we can do simple research. We can observe something and report what we learn. We can also show something and talk about it.
This beginning should concentrate on two things. First is to make sure the child feels that speaking in front of and to others is a natural activity. It is safe, not intimidating. This is the place to interrupt some of the in-home abuse and put downs that will be part of some of the children's baggage. If we don't contradict that early, it will haunt and damage the child for a lifetime. It will make them introverts. We should not confuse introversion with thoughtfulness. Introversion is not a natural human condition. It is a result of external conditioning. Thoughtfulness, on the other hand, is a result of personal discipline or self conditioning.
Second, we must encourage the children to be original. We do not want the kids to parrot the teacher or the other kids. We want them to feel safe in saying how they see the world. This is about creative expression, not pleasing authority. It is imperative for the teacher to avoid telling the kids how things are. This is difficult for most adults, but it is essential for success in real teaching.
We must remember that we project approval and disapproval in many ways. Our posture and our expressions will say much more than our mouths and the kids will already know how to pick up on those silent cues. These are things they learn in the home, early on. They will watch for them in all adults, but especially those who seem to be in positions of authority.
Now lest we get off the track about what I am taking about, let's pin it down. This creative expression I want to give the kids is the opening stage of a broad field of learning we can call communication. It begins with speaking and listening. It will eventually include all of the things we now call English. That is literature, reading, and writing. It will also eventually involve research methods.
Now, I must point out that communication must include listening. Listening is an important part of this first step. To that extent, we must have a controlled environment. In this the kids are allowed to speak and express themselves, but they must also learn to listen to others. In that way, we learn that communication is a shared thing. This becomes the first lesson in deferred gratification. We give and we get attention.
Later in this educational process communication will become just one branch of creative expression. Of course, any creative expression is a form of communication, but we can become more specific as to field. Other fields will be music, painting, dance, sculpture, poetry, etcetera. We just begin with speaking and listening and branch out from there, but our emphasis is always on the creative aspects of learning.
Next time I can get into more of the detail of what I think
is necessary in education.
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