Art of Learning~II

The British author, Sir Ken Robinson said, “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” He cites the example of a little girl of six, who people thought had learning disabilities because she couldn’t concentrate and pay attention, but was very keen on drawing. So the teacher walked up to her and asked her, “What are you drawing?” And she answered, “I’m drawing god”, to which the teacher said, “But no one knows how god looks…”, to which the girl replied, “they will… in a minute”. He goes on to say, “Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists.

The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.” I am reminded of a tragic incident of a young girl of thirteen committing suicide a few days back. News has it that she used to remain depressed and all she wrote in her note before jumping off the terrace was “I hate people, I want to die.” It was also reported that she used to love drawing, but all her parents were concerned with was how well she was doing in academics. Is it possible that had she been encouraged with her artistic skills, she may not have taken such a drastic step?

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That drawing and painting could have vented out some of the angst that kept piling up inside her without any outlet? Children may not be driven to taking such extreme steps, but it is likely that stifling the space for creative passions to get nurtured and blossomed can have many ill effects on mental health in children. Sometimes they may need to draw, to think. Sometimes they may need to move, to think. So dancing and drawing may not just be the ends in themselves ~ they may also be the means to better academic performances. When children can happily pursue their creative passions, they are likely to be better performers in acquiring other cognitive skills as well.

Our education system, in its present state, not only stifles all creative endeavor; it, in fact, chokes any kind of original thinking. Stuart Firestein, the chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, in his Ted Talk in February 2013, describes what scientific en – quiry is like: “There is an ancient proverb that says it’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat. I find this a particularly apt description of science and how science works ~ bumbling around in a dark room, bumping into things, trying to figure out what shape this might be, what that might be, there are reports of a cat somewhere around, they may not be reliable, they may be, and so forth and so on.”

But this spirit of fumbling around, making mistakes, stumbling and falling, is something that our education system smothers from the very beginning. Firestein, goes on to say, “We currently have an educational system which is very efficient but is very efficient at a rather bad thing. So in 2nd grade, all the kids are interested in science, the girls and the boys. They like to take stuff apart. They have great curiosity. They like to investigate things. They go to science museums. They like to play around. … But by 11th or 12th grade, fewer than 10 per cent of them have any interest in science whatsoever, let alone a desire to go into science as a career. So we have this remarkably efficient system for beating any interest in science out of everybody’s head. “Is this what we want?

I think this comes from what a teacher colleague of mine calls ‘the bulimic method of education.’ We just jam a whole bunch of facts down their throats over here and then they puke it up on an exam over here and everybody goes home with no added intellectual heft whatsoever.” Firestein explains that “evaluation really amounts to feedback and it amounts to an opportunity for trial and error. It amounts to a chance to work over a longer period of time with this kind of feedback.” Our exam system, on which our entire education system is based, is really nothing like this. So, Firestein goes on to say, “I’d say what we need is a test that says, ‘What is x?’ and the answers are ‘I don’t know, because no one does,’ or ‘What’s the question?’ Even better. Or, ‘You know what, I’ll look it up, I’ll ask someone, I’ll phone someone.

I’ll find out.’ Because that’s what we want people to do, and that’s how you evaluate them.” We need to re-think, reevaluate, and re-create our education system so that schools don’t become gas chambers of creativity and originality but rather a garden where artistic and original talents flower and nurture. Let’s understand that dance is as important as maths, creativity just as important as literacy and numeracy, and originality just as important as rationality. Sir Robinson batted for more individualistic learning within a broad curriculum, instead of a standardised curriculum, standardised testing and standardised evaluation methods.

Such an education system, based on command, control and compliance, only promotes rote learning, churning out stereotypes ~ pretty much like bricks in the wall; every child just like everyone else, crossing hurdles of the same exams and running towards the same end line of competitive exams. I’m sure there is a balance we can strike between the required amount of exams and much broader scope for encouraging creativity. Children need to be engaged in academics, their curiosity needs to be kindled and stoked, but not at the cost of curtailing the breathing space for their artistic creativity. William Butler Yeats said “Education is not about filling buckets; it is lighting fires.” So let’s have our matches out, let’s let them draw gods, and let’s let them dance, let’s let them make mistakes and ask questions, let’s not create bricks in the wall

In the words of Pink Floyd:
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teacher,
leave them kids alone All in all,
it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall…

(The writer is Associate Professor, Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)