It's been more than a year since I've seen this video of Sir Ken Robinson, a true eminence when it comes to creativity and innovation, in which it talks about how schools and education we offer children today (and what we receive at the time) kill children's creativity and talent.
According to Robinson, all children have talent or the less they want to innovate. However, we are adults, those who with our educational system and our way of raising them, move them away from their abilities and make them grow apart from them.
It is now when I talk about this video because I wanted to wait a bit, now that my first child goes to school, to see if I found any hint of techniques, phrases or methods that would help undermine children's creativity. I have not taken too long to realize that there are already things, now that my son is only 4 years old, that they are beginning to undermine his desire to innovate and be creative.
Children are not afraid to take risks
One of the things that make children magical is that they are not afraid to take risks. They are learning, they are playing and they are using logic and imagination at all times. They invent verbs, words, games and learn with it.
They do everything without fear of being wrong, without fear of doing it wrong, because they do not know how to do things well or badly, they simply do them because they want to do them, because they want to investigate, explore and manipulate and because they like it all, they have fun and It makes them grow and learn.
However, as they grow and adults begin to control their games and activities, both in school and in extracurricular or even at home, when we do not let them play freely but try to explain how the rules of their games are , they begin to realize that making mistakes or doing things differently than adults expect is to do things wrong, and what is wrong is not accepted.
If you are not prepared to make a mistake, you will never do anything original
One of the key ideas of the conference of Sir Ken Robinson is this: If you are not prepared to make a mistake, you will never do anything original.
Schools teach children standardized procedures. Everyone has to do the same at the same time and everyone must get the same result.
The one who goes out by the tangent and pretends to do something different will be doing things wrong, he will be wrong (“you have left the line, you have been wrong”, “you have painted where you did not play, you have been wrong”) and with the Time will try to do things "well", without making mistakes, just as they tell you that you have to do it.
Thus the children grow (we grew up), doing what others expect of them, doubting if what they can think of is right or wrong and looking to repeat lessons that were labeled as correct to receive the same approval (personally I felt this way many sometimes when I created something - a drawing, a song, a text - doubting, not if I liked it, but if others would like it).
In other words, children end up doing just what they are told is well done and deny many of their concerns, talents or innovations, because either they were alibis at the time or because they now fear they are.
In the video, creativity is defined as “Have original ideas that have value”. To be original you have to do different things, doing different things is not doing the same as others and at school, if you don't do what others do, you are doing things wrong or you are wrong.
Jon and his fear of being wrong
For a month, Jon, my son, often says: “Uhh, no! I'm wrong! ”, When something costs him. It may seem like a simple phrase from a child who has a hard time doing something right and expresses that it is going wrong, however there is much more meaning in it, because he says it even when he does something he had never done before.
A child who is discovering something new should be able to do it with an open mind, absorbing everything that happens, enjoying the moment, however, Jon says that he is wrong when the result is not as expected (sometimes he even throws himself on the ground like “ I get angry, I give up ”).
The job now we have, his father and mother, to explain that he is not wrong, that he is simply doing things his way and in the way he knows best and that, even if he was wrong, there is nothing wrong.
Every mistake is an opportunity
Every time someone does something wrong (unintentionally, of course), every time someone misses, a new opportunity is born to do it well or the less he learns how not to do it the next time so as not to err.
It is very common to hear mothers say: "Look I told him not to do it, that it was going to go wrong, because despite that, he did it" and although I understand the position of the mothers, I understand even more the position of the sons. We all want to do what we believe we have to do. It is very boring to do only what others want us to do, so many of us end up hitting us where they told us we would give it to them.
However, and this is the wonderful thing about the matter, many of the rebellious, stubborn, persistent and persistent people who ignore the advice end up triumphing where others failed (those who keep their creativity intact, for not having let it steal, I suppose).
If children in their childhood, when they have more capacity to invent, we begin to teach them that we must try not to be mistaken, we are laying the first stone towards the annulment of their creative freedom.
Sad faces, happy faces
Christmas day arrived and Jon brought home a dossier with all the activities carried out in class. Drawings of "paint the big one, but not the little one", "don't get out of the line", "free drawing" and a long etcetera, said dossier.
While looking at it, Miriam, my wife, pointed out the scribbles in the lower right corner of each drawing: happy faces in most and sad faces in those in which he had left the lines or when he had painted drawings that did not have to be painted.
I was stunned. Three years. 3-year-old children generate happiness or sadness (happy faces, sad faces), depending on how they have done their homework.
It is very good that emotions are worked from an early age, but it is not right that sadness is used as a negative element: "as you have not done well, I am sad."
The first reason is that sadness is a feeling as acceptable as happiness. Just as good has to be laughing as crying, if the person feels that way. Starting from so young to stigmatize sadness is to start repeating the same mistakes we have been making for decades, to make the afflicted person something to reject, something to put aside, to accept only happy people, those that give us joy.
This means that when a child suffers, cries or feels sad, he has an image of himself as someone who will be rejected if he shows these feelings.
But this is not the issue we are dealing with today, but that of the creativity, so I explain the second reason against the use of these systems. The fear of causing sadness and the fear of making mistakes make children do not want, on many occasions, to try.
I have seen my son ask me to draw him a sun and a house, because he feels he does not know how to do it, I have seen him start painting something and ask us to help him finish it because he considers that he is not doing well and I have seen him asking us a happy face after every drawing or painting he makes.
Creativity dies the day a child prefers others to do what should be fun. A pity, he is only 4 years old.
Video | Google
Photos | Flickr - Steve & Jemma Copley, D Sharon Pruitt, surlygirl
In Babies and more | Child creativity in danger, Boredom develops the creativity and autonomy of children, Maggie Simpson and her manifesto for creative freedom, "Educate to make citizens", a documentary by Eduardo Punset
