Preserving Creativity

Evaluating the education our two older children, now 18 and 20, who both went through what I consider a rather typical experience of the prescribed public school system, I have become concerned about how we can preserve and nurture the creative impulses that seem to be inherent in all children. We are now raising our second pair, 6 and 8 year old boys that are just starting their journey through the education system, and I want to find out how we as parents can nourish this quality and prevent it from being damaged somewhere along the way.

I do not confine the term “creativity” to impulses that we could call “artistic.” I use the term to describe a quality of thinking that leaves your mind open to unexplored, unorthodox ways of approaching problems and challenges in life. To not merely adopt accepted ways of doing things but to have the ability and courage to invent new ways of tackling the world.

When our son Kári was a child he liked to draw and paint like most children. He had no interest however in figurative motifs, instead exploring abstractions of color and shapes, but in very enthusiastic and focused ways. It was peculiar and rewarding to witness the different ways in which he and his older sister explored painting and drawing, and one of countless examples for us young parents to observe how children are born with strong tendencies or talents, despite Skinner.

In Kári´s first years of elementary school he had a teacher who, despite her unquestionable good intentions and many positive pedagogical qualities, did not appreciate his artistic tendencies and repeatedly returned his pictures with a comment stating that they were unfinished or did not resemble his described motif. We have countless assignments from these years, images that bear witness to true enthusiasm for the visual medium, returned with a single comment; “you did not fill in all the assigned area.” Through Kári´s first two years of school he gradually abandoned his visual experiments and largely lost interest in drawing.

As far back as I can remember I have been interested in music. As a child I wanted to learn how to play an instrument and at the age of 8 my parents sent me to music school where, over the period of four years, my interest was promptly thwarted. Not that I lost interest in music, I kept on begging my parents to buy me records by Elvis and Abba, I dragged my grandfather to the movies to see Grease and my cousin to see Rocky, expecting a film about rock music and therefore leaving the theatre genuinely disappointed. But I did not find music school a fruitful environment to learn an instrument.

To my parent´s credit, recognizing my interest in drums they called up Guðmundur Steingrímsson, a master jazz drummer they knew through a friend of a friend, who agreed to come to our garage for an hour and show me some tricks. But after an hour of explaining to me the importance of separating hands and legs – right and left – I was still lost, feeling confused and disappointed. Instead of leaving me and my learning in that state, Guðmundur stayed on until – all of a sudden – I got it, my body just clicked into drum-mode and I felt it. It was a complete revelation but it was achieved by a selfless effort of an endlessly patient and empathetic teacher who ended up staying close to four hours with this teenager, aware of the effort needed for the learning to take place. Needless to say I learned far more during those four hours in the garage than in the previous four years of music school. Guðmundur taught me all I needed to know in order to continue on my own and – more importantly – filled me with courage and fueled my interest in exploring other musical instruments.

Aiming to learn from these experiences I have watched our two younger sons (6 and 8) gravitate towards their interest, cautious of not interfering with their learning with any well-intended modes of “teaching” that might unintentionally hinder their progress. From birth – and possibly before - Þorri (6) was drawn to music. Whenever he was exposed to it, whether at home or out on walks lying in his baby carriage, his reaction to it was evident. Not only his eyes but his whole body responded in obvious ways, gravitating towards the source of the sound. This interest has kept growing, from the moment he could make himself verbally understood he started requesting songs and insisting on this or that record to be played at home, quickly picking up the melody and humming along. Last year, when living in Toronto, he asked to be allowed to study the piano, doubtless frustrated with not knowing his way around the old upright piano that came with our apartment and his father who was too absent and busy with graduate school to have time, or energy, to assist him. We signed him up for weekly lessons with a woman in the neighborhood and for a few months he was very happy, enjoying his rather quick progress. However, early in the second semester we noticed his interest dwindling, he was increasingly restless and impatient during practice at home and, to our grave disappointment, finally voiced his desire to quit. Being concerned we asked him about this, why the rather sudden lack of motivation and interest? He answered with a question; “why does the teacher always get to decide everything?” Despite being only 6 years old he felt insulted by the “childish” songs he had to learn and frustrated with the fact that he had no say in what kind of music was being practiced. Recognizing his frustration I suggested that we just forget about the prescribed assignment and offered him to choose some song that he wanted to learn and we would try to pick it up together. Immediately he asked if we could learn “Fiesta” by The Pogues, doubtless remembering his amazement at seeing footage of the band performing the song in concert in the late 80s. We played the song on the stereo while picking it up on the piano, Þorri a bit quicker than me, and for the next few weeks he enthusiastically practiced it on his own, again and again, then asking for another one to learn (the Star Wars theme) etc.

Similarly, Flóki has shown great interest in drawing and painting since he could hold a pencil and – at the risk of bragging – seems to have quite a talent for it, resourcefully experimenting with different material and showing an uncanny sense of three dimensionality in his drawings. His pictures progressed fast so two years ago – again, wanting to support our child´s interest and talent – we asked an artist friend of ours, who also has experience in working with children, to recommend an art program where he could develop his interest. Her recommendation was that we not sign him up for any lessons while he was still happy exploring on his own, leaving him alone to find his own way through the medium. To not subject him to any form of “teaching” unless he asked for it himself or we felt that he had reached some sort of a dead-end where exposure to technical instruction might help. We took her advice, hence our contribution has consisted of having readily available materials to work with and, so far so good.

When I reflect upon my own experience of classroom learning I think that one of the reasons for me not finding inspiration in that process is that it takes the initiative away from the student, the self-discovery and the resulting sense of wonder. Likewise, my curiosity – a prerequisite for any real learning – quickly withered in a system where the learning process had no room for any self-driven exploration of my interests. With a handful of exceptions, the teaching I have been exposed to has been one of conformity and memorizing of other people´s discoveries.

I don´t want to subject my children to a similar experience, an “education” that disregards independent exploration, has been drained of wonder and individual discovery. A process that discourages experiment and instills a fear of failure by emphasizing importance of grades through exams, one through which you can become highly educated without knowing anything. From my own experience the critical thinking of people in academia often seems to become narrower and narrower the further up the academic ladder they climb, a thought that eventually terrified me out of graduate school. For many university professors “higher” education seems to consist of mastering one way of critically analyzing everything by promptly disregarding other ways of approaching the world.

Like most parents I have frequent moments of discouragement and frustration towards my parenting failures and as I grow older I increasingly find myself concluding that my job should be to get out of my children´s way. To always be there for them and while they´re very young try to protect them from serious harm but otherwise let them figure things out themselves. Likewise I think the job of good teachers should be to help students learn on their own and to nurture creative inquiry, to encourage them not take anything as given and to challenge accepted ideas.

A couple of weeks ago I was upstairs in our bedroom working on editing and sequencing a draft for a new photobook when Flóki came in and asked if he and Þorri could use the computer for listening to music. While I continued to arrange and rearrange a stack of small prints on our bed, I heard the two boys downstairs singing along to Public Enemy´s “Fight the Power” and “Don´t Believe the Hype” and I wondered if I had anything more important to teach them.