Creativity and Education

You must check out a YouTube video of Sir Ken Robinson - "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" Then think about it in line with our Mathematical/Linguistic approach to education at the expense of the development of the human as an entire being.

Children's Artwork

Necessary for the Library

A few months ago my seven year old son stayed at home from school feeling quite ill. Unfortunately I had a small errand to run and had to drag him along with me. As we headed back to the car we passed by the small public library.

"Mummy," he said although quite sick, "can we go in?"

"Just for a couple of minutes," I responded wanting to get back home quickly.

As I observed my son's eyes light up upon seeing so many new storybooks I decided now is a good a time as any to make him join the library. I mean, we have many storybooks at home for the children but when children really get the reading-bug it is financially daunting to keep up with book purchases. After all isn't that one of the purposes of a public library?

Well, while my son sat peering through the colourful storybooks, eagerly anticipating which one he would want me to read for them that night at bedtime, I approached the librarian. "I would like my three children to join this library," I requested, pulling out my driver's permit. I figured that they might request some form of ID.

"Well," she responded in a monotone, "you need their original, computer-generated birth certificates, your ID and a recent utility bill."

"Wow," I said to her, "don't you think that's a lot to request to join the library?"

She looked at me quizzically.

"I mean," I continued, "some children don't have the computer-generated birth certificates. A number of families are squatters and have no utility bills and some children might want to join but have no parents supporting them and wouldn't have a utility bill. And I mean it's children like these who need the library more since they can't buy any books."

"Well you can always raise the issue with head-office. I can't do anything about it. Those are the necessary requirements," then off she went to tend to more important things.

The disappointment on my son's face was painfully evident when he had to return his selected books back on the shelf.

Needless to say I'm yet to return with the necessary documents.

A Parent's View

Yesterday, while browsing through a bookstore I came across a book written by a parent of a boy who had taken the Secondary Entrance Examination. From what I could tell, based on his and his wife's personal experiences he decided to share advice to other parents of students who have to face this 'daunting' exam.

I certainly agree that the facts show that generally speaking it is the children whose parents are actively involved in their learning who tend to flourish academically. Therefore, whilst I applaud such interest in helping his fellow parents I do have a few concerns about the content presented in this book.

Granted, I just gave the book only a cursory glance but I came across a statement that disturbed me more than little. It was under the chapter "Lessons, Lessons, Lessons". The author told the reading parent that as parents that we should not expect teachers to find our children's weak areas but it is up to the parent to do so and then remedy it.

- What? Uh? Really?!!! -

Someone better inform our universities, UWI and UTT so that they can stop pressuring university students of education. Let them relax. It's the parent's responsibility anyway.

I wish that I had been told about this when I was in Teachers' College. Life would have been so much easier!!!

Colour By Numbers

In life there's lots of little things in life that when we think about them reveal quite a lot.

That was the case of my children using a simple, little thing called "Colour By Numbers". Over the past few years I have gotten my children a great many colouring books. Many themes, different styles of drawings and some even contained a couple of colour-by-number activities. However, this book was purely colour-by-numbers... page after page after page.

Telling my children exactly what colours to use where.

My children dutifully colour according to instructions. Morning, noon and night. Day after day after day. My children have become avid colourers. As soon as they wake up they're colouring. As soon as they arrive home from school they're colouring. When it's bedtime you literally have to beg them to stop colouring even for their favorite story time.

Yes, they have always loved colouring but I have NEVER seen my children quite so absorbed in colouring. It's even reached a point where they have graduated from displaying their pieces just in their bedroom to now all over my fridge and if you know me I don't ever have anything stuck on my fridge!

However, what's the point of such a simple thing as this?

Well as I said it's the small things in life that actually reveal quite a lot. My theory regarding colour-by-numbers is this...

• It's simple. The child is guided as to what colours to use.
• The results are positive. The pictures that are produced look more realistic than the ones produced when the child has to choose the colours themselves. It's exciting to the child that their pieces can look so GREAT!

Can a teacher learn from this? I believe so. I don't advocate spoon-feeding the child. Brain-power must be employed by the child for development to occur. However, what's the harm in making the progress as painless as possible? It might be that we want the child to jump a tall wall that is currently beyond his physical abilities when we will get more progress by providing steps for the child to climb gradually.

Make learning simple.

And as the child climbs each step that positive result would make him want to climb more and more and more until he finally gets over the wall.

Do you think that I'm reading too much into a simple colour-by-numbers book? But don't under-estimate the fact that it really is through the little things in life that we make sense of the big picture. Let me know your thoughts on the matter.