FLOWERS ARE RED

As an educator for several decades now, I speak from experience when I say that there’s indeed a problem with the way art is typically taught in school. Let me start by telling you about a song from the 1970s called “Flowers Are Red.”

The lyrics tell a story about a little boy who goes to school happily and paints beautiful pictures of flowers, using many colors. His teacher tries to “correct” his error. She explains: “Flowers are red, young man / And green leaves are green / There’s no need to see flowers any other way / Than the way they always have been seen.”

The little boy fights valiantly to keep his creativity alive by saying, “There are so many colors in the rainbow / So many colors in the morning sun / So many colors in the flower and I see every one.” The teacher uses her authority to get the boy “in line” and he ends up painting flowers the way everyone else does.

After some time, the little boy moves to another town. At his new school, the friendly teacher tells him, “There are so many colors in a flower / So let’s use every one.” The song concludes with a sad ending: “But that little boy painted flowers / In neat rows of green and red / And when the teacher asked him why / This is what he said / Flowers are red and green leaves are green….”

Most teachers, thankfully, aren’t as terrible as the one in this song. But many educators today — out of pure ignorance — may be teaching art in a way that restricts, or even crushes, the blossoming creativity of young children.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, creativity is “the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.” With this definition in mind, I ask you: Is a ladder for parshas Vayeitzei a project that opens up a child’s imagination? Is it an original idea?

“COPYCAT” CRAFTS

Avraham’s tent, autumn squirrels, Chanukah dreidels — these all fall into the category of “copycat” crafts, as they’re commonly known. These projects, ubiquitous in most yeshivos and public schools, are:

1) conceived of by grown-ups, and are thus

2) copies of a grown-up’s model, resulting in

3) projects that all look exactly alike, which therefore makes them “copycat” crafts (also known as “cookie-cutter” crafts).

An important note: Copycat crafts are not when children copy each other; it’s when the children copy adults.

Over the span of my career, I’ve seen firsthand the pervasive use of copycat crafts in school. As a preschool teacher, a preschool director, an art teacher, and a workshop instructor for early childhood educators, I’ve encountered teachers of all ages who were so trained in copycat crafts that they couldn’t think beyond that traditional format.

You may be thinking, Okay, fine, so copycat crafts aren’t ideal. But is it worth making such a fuss over them? It is. Art is not just a fun school activity — its primary goal is to teach foundational skills. Here are just a few of them:

• Problem-solving. Once children have a physical grasp of a subject via the use of concrete materials, they can often transfer the knowledge to more abstract ideas later on. (By way of example, I myself never understood adding and subtracting fractions until I was sitting in a “math for teachers” class playing with fractions of shapes and a light went off in my head.)
• Decision making & initiative taking  these naturally develop when a child is given a range of art materials (colored tissue, string, tape, etc.) and has to decide which items to use, and in what order.
• Creativity. By cultivating creativity through art, children learn how to think creatively across a span of other subjects.
• Self-esteem. Taking a project from start to finish, creating something beautiful, learning a new way of using a craft material — all of these things help a child develop self-esteem.