With much chagrin and a sense of the absurd I read an article in the NY Times about test preparation programs for entry to kindergarten. Kindergarten. There are waiting lists for these programs in NYC. I dashed off an email to my daughter warning her to, quick, get my two year old granddaughter on the waiting list NOW, lest she miss her window for Harvard! Her response? She’s already having trouble finding her a pre-school for next year, should have started looking before Julia was born. No kidding. Not long ago I had a three year old in my office with her own laptop- great, right? Except she was doing homework. Seriously, what are we thinking? Makes me long for another Maria Montessori...
We’d all like to hearken back to the “good old days” when “children had a childhood.” But the reality is, that’s never been the case. Parents have put pressure on their kids to perform for as long as there have been parents and kids. The good news is that whatever we do, however hard we press, our kids will grow up with their own way of thinking, and that is fortunate. It’s the engine that drives our creativity, that makes for Cooper Hewitt award winners and inspires the rest of us to keep trying.
But the question is, are we fostering that creativity when we’re so focused on quantifying a three year old’s “success”? How far do we push and how young is too young to put them on the treadmill? What happened to play? Are flashcards and math drills really more effective than Play Dough for preschool? And if they are, so what? What’s the cost?
If you have lots of money and a kid who can’t seem to walk that narrow line, you can send them to a private school that fosters a more creative approach to learning (what a subversive concept- learning should be fun!) Some look at these “alternative” schools dismissively, concerned that their unconventional approach is more circuitous and less quantifiable. True, but, oh how I envied their approach as a child, when trying to make my left brain meet my right.
I grew up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood of brownstones and artists. I was lucky for that unique experience, although I had no idea at the time. My parents- educated, loving and positive- sent me off to a very good Catholic school, blue jumper and all, giving me the best of tools to set me on my path. Alas, I wandered afar- right down the street from our house to a brownstone that housed the Woodward School. In its massive windows hung clotheslines; attached to those clotheslines were enormous sheets of newsprint with an ever changing display of bold, messy paintings hanging like flags of freedom. I walked by those windows every day, yearning, as I struggled to stay inside crisp looseleaf lines. It took many frustrating years until I finally found my voice and figured out how to use it. Those paintings in the window inspired my search- that and the crazy artists roaming that neighborhood, canvases like kites.
Recently I was a panel member for an architectural jury at which two students ended up in tears, partly because of my critique. I felt terrible, and wondered what I said or did to create that much stress. What I perceived as great dialogue, and questions intended to be encouraging, left them feeling overwhelmed and pressured. In truth, their presentations were two of the most intriguing solutions to a challenging project, and two that most engaged the entire group. Afterwards I spoke with them, explaining that they did a great job- they grabbed our attention and made us think twice, much better than the “perfect” solution. And I thought back to my own student days, the power that critical commentary can have in our lives; how withering it can be, or how empowering. Are we teaching our children to think for themselves, or to just give us back the “right” answers?
Positive dialogue about ideas starts when a two year old first picks up a crayon, and teaching a child to find her own voice is critical to learning, to confidence in challenging perceptions, and to creative pursuit in our lives, wherever that may take us. What we stand to miss is that power of "art" is not in the product, but in taking the risk to put forth something different, though-provoking and perhaps unresolved. The most eloquent projects are often the incomplete or imperfect. They're the balls we can bounce around, mull over, fill in, respond to... imagine.
We live in a society that measures everything. We wear monitors when we exercise, carefully quantify our learning, our fitness, our height and weight and breadth and depth. All those Weights and Measures are of value, necessary systems that give structure to our lives. If we didn’t measure, we’d have no means to build a building, know a healthy heart rate, check cholesterol levels, and evaluate who should get into Harvard. But even in science, there’s art in interpretation, and without creative thinking, without critical analysis, without interaction, intuition and instinct we often misdiagnose.
For years we’ve bemoaned the effects of technology and pressure on our children. Some will take to it, others won’t. Some types of creativity are fostered within the lines, others are not. And we can worry about what they learn and what they don’t, but growth and learning happen in their own pace and time, and aren’t limited to the years before the age of 21. Thank God, or I’d still be SOL.
