CIRCA 89 Art Education Supplement
WHERE DOES IT ALL GO?
If you give a group of six-year-olds some crayons, paint and paper, they will work for hours spontaneously and unselfconsciously. They might produce a fuzzy mess or they might make visual observations that are razor-sharp. Their work might get pinned up on the wall or it might end up on the bin, but none of that will deter them from getting totally involved in the process.
What happens, then, when the same group have entered their teens and all but a few of them opt out of the exercise with the declaration that they are "no good at art" or that they "can't draw"?
It is considered something of a social disgrace to leave school not being able to read, write or process numbers, but no contempt accrues to those who end their schooldays physically unfit or unable to draw or play music. There is an irony in the fact that the narrow focus of the National Curriculum in the U.K. is starting to take hold in education just as we are beginning to uncover and appreciate other forms of intelligence. Visual, emotional, musical and physical intelligence are marginalised in education, partly because they are undervalued in wider society, and partly because they are difficult to measure with the clumsy procedures we have developed to calibrate achievement.
A new children's hospital was opened recently in Belfast, with a very ambitious art programme built into the design process. Now a new adult hospital is under construction, also with a built-in art programme; but this time the budget for artworks is roughly one sixth of that allocated for the children.
Do we as a society perceive art as some sort of candy to be given out to young children but taken away as they grow up? I think the crucial time in Art education is where the transition takes place. The arts are special subjects because they involve the student in calling up something from within; whereas conventional schooling concentrates on filling up children with information as if they were blank computer disks. There is a balance of course, and there are points at which a natural wellspring of creativity can be channelled to great effect, but it is more often lost or buried when pragmatic career-related decisions start to come up in early teens.
We must remember, however, what the school system is there for. It does not exist to encourage individual creativity. Mainstream education at all levels is designed to supply industry and commerce with a competent workforce. It is a system that favours drones; queen bees generally do very badly at school.
If I had children or if I was more directly involved in art education, it would be to the more unconventional educationalists like Rudolf Steiner that I would look for an enlightened approach to the central challenge. To put it into a few words, that challenge is how to nourish the natural creativity we are all born with through the difficult years of transition into adulthood, so that we don't have to go on a mining expedition to find our creative selves in middle age.
John Kindness is an artist.
