Give children time to be creative

July 26, 2017

Afternoons in the lower classroom at Peachtown Elementary (pre-K through third grade) are a little more casual than the morning academics. After lunch and an active recess, time is devoted to such things as foreign languages, art, music, stories, writing and visiting the library. Recently, in a work session to discuss the general tone of the afternoons, we spoke of “relaxed, productive, creative,” and, ultimately, a focus on aesthetics.

Finding the beauty in everyday life and learning to create it may be a rapidly disappearing aspect of education. An enemy of aestheticism is the rush of contemporary life. It takes time to use all of our senses to appreciate what is before us and more time to create it ourselves. In the days of worn books, pencils, crayons and paste, children took their time to carefully practice their cursive, erasing not backspacing, drawing with fat crayons and gluing shapes with sticks dipped in pots of thick paste. A good book came with the smell of the ink, the texture of the paper, the heft of its binding and the clarity of its print. I’m pretty sure all e-readers feel and smell pretty much the same. The print can be made bigger or brighter, but the experience is not the same. Responding simultaneously to multiple stimuli creates a visual, a feeling and a memory in ways that singular digital activities cannot. At Peachtown, especially in the lower classroom, we cling to the days of fondly worn books.

We embrace the digital technology that gives us instant access to the world. But to develop an appreciation and deeper understanding of that world, young children need to see, touch, hear and sometimes taste, to fully grasp the artful essence of a book or a beautifully prepared meal. Whether it is cracking the brittle binding of a musty book or watching dinner sizzle in the pan before being plated with side dishes of complementary colors, tastes and textures, the more keenly we can sense something, the better we can appreciate it. The e-book and the Lunchable just don’t measure up.

Teaching children to fully appreciate and reflect on their experiences and creations must be balanced against the expediency of our technical futures. A note written in a finely formed cursive hand expresses more emotion than a typeface ever can, because its aesthetic quality projects care and beauty, just as a poem can in a few words capture a thought, sound, image or feeling. We can make wonderful paintings with quick-drying acrylic paints, which allow for spontaneity and freedom, but we don’t give up the slow process of working in oils, which have qualities that are unlike any other medium.

We love our e-readers, but we keep our special books lined up on the shelf. We can type 50 words per minute, but sometimes we practice calligraphy. We can heat a frozen dinner in the microwave, or we can experiment with fresh ingredients as we work at the stove to create something new and savory.

So any afternoon at Peachtown may be about listening to stories and writing stories; learning to look at works of art, talking about them and creating art; listening to music and performing and dancing to music; listening to and speaking French or Spanish and appreciating the nuance of language; or it can be a trip to the public library to comb the shelves for the biggest or most exciting book on the shelf.

Finding, seeing and appreciating what gives us pleasure takes a little extra time, but without it we lose an essential part of our humanity and our history, and our futures are bleak. Seeking the aesthetic is about opening children’s minds, not just filling them.