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| Cary Larson-McKay |
All the Colors of the Rainbow
Besides being a great humanitarian and the composer of the “second most depressing song ever written,” Harry Chapin also was a man of insight and humanity. Among his other depressing or distressing songs, he wrote a song about a flower. A red flower. A flower not of this world, but a flower in the imagination of a child. But the flower of the child’s imagination was not a red flower but a magical flower of all the colors of the rainbow.
When given a coloring assignment to color the prepared drawing of a flower “red like flowers we see outside” the child in the song eagerly grabbed all the different colors he could hold in his small hand and got to work on his wonderful magical flower. This flower stood proudly in the child’s mind. It was a magnificent flower. But the teacher did not see the beauty of the multicolored flower, only that the child had not followed the directions to “color the flower red like the ones found outside.”
Unfortunately this kind of event is more common than we would like to believe, and yes, in the song the little boy quit using all the colors of the rainbow. He stopped drawing altogether. For those of you who think I am blaming the teachers, you are wrong. I am simply saying that many of us are the products of our society’s judgment of our activities.
Our society praises the “go-getter,” “fire-ball,” “self-starter,” “hustler,” “live-wire,” and the “eager-beaver,” and on and on describing those with pep and vigor as those who we look to be active contributors. In contrast, there are few words that give a positive spin to any form of quietness or idleness. Terms such as “peace-maker,” “being at peace,” “blissful,” “thoughtful,” and so on, all suggest a state of being that allows us to fill our lives with serenity. These seem like positive and desirable characteristics, but still, when looking for recommendations for employment, scholarship applications or awards very few of the outstanding recommendations feature the descriptions of “a very blissful person,” or “someone is at peace with himself.” Well, that might be just the recommendation one needs to teach yoga and meditation, but not for most of us most of the time.
I am concerned for the future of our children and their ability to develop their imagination and creativity for their own health and well-being. But I am also concerned for the future of our society. However, to make the needed changes in the lives of children we must not only look to the teachers and parents, but to the very core of our culture. We must overcome the numbing influence of the quick and easy media that pervades our daily lives. See beyond the happy-ever-after stories that deny access to the satisfying struggle with the tough problems of our world. We need to celebrate the deep participation in problem-solving and relationship building that promote the use of creative thinking.
This dilemma comes in three parts.
The first part is a no-brainer. Our society reveres the loner hero who, against great odds, stands up for what the hero believes is right and who wins. We love our winners and anything less than a win is a failure. We do not appreciate failure as the necessary pathway to greater things, or new discoveries that are dependent on nurturing of divergent ideas. It’s what we learn about the founding of the United States, as our forefathers and foremothers ended up following what was determined as the “right” action by those taking the action—mostly without consultation with others. Without looking at a larger and more divergent scope of action on everyone involved. One of our early folk heroes is often quoted as saying “Be always sure you are right—then go ahead” (Davy Crockett).
This has become a rallying cry of those who felt they suffered some form of injustice. They could use that quote to have the “means” whatever they may be, good, bad or indifferent, to justify the personally determined ends. Aptly stated as the “end justified the means.”
This single unified source of determining the right action does not allow for the input from divergent sources and thereby limits the possible points of view that might have stimulated creative ideas and solutions to the dilemmas faced.
The Crockett quote is in itself rather harmless, but recently there seems to be a deep divide between those who have deemed themselves as “right” and everyone else as “wrong.” The damage that ensues is felt all across our society just as it is also the chosen action of our society. By doing this we have limited our options, we have not looked creatively for more palatable solutions—colors.
The second part is a little trickier. Assuming the position of being “right” creates a situation that if one strays from the general judgment of being right that person is not only wrong but judged to be less capable of making other rational decisions and they are judged as lesser humans because they did not see what was “right” in the first place. Or it is just possible that person is engaging in the “wrong” action as an act of defiance, which would be highly unacceptable when there is a “right” way.
It is certainly not perceived as a creative act. Even if it was a multicolored rose instead of a red one. Rather than celebrating a child that uses the whole box of crayons to color the flower demonstrating a creative approach to the activity, they have not followed instructions and need to be corrected. In spite of all the rhetoric to the contrary, many current approaches to teaching and learning do not adequately support creativity for the essential skill it is in the larger society. Creativity stands a very good chance to be perceived as “not right,” as “too challenging” to the intended goal, and as “too hard” to control.
The third part is at the heart of our conundrum.Historically, discussion of creativity in the classroom was couched in distancing rhetoric and obscure research presented in difficult academic language. Lately, however, I have noticed a resurgence of respect for creative activities in the classroom, in the design of children’s environments and the tools children are given with which to work.
There are those who struggle with how to gage what a child is learning, how to assure all children are ready to participate in educational activities and how to establish quality teaching approaches. The trouble, in my opinion, is the same one we encountered earlier, our culture. Too many parents, too many teachers, too many educational leaders believe that “idle” time is lost opportunity, and the only way to accomplish learning has a right and a wrong way.
Idle time is lost time, never to be regained—and it is a waste of money. There is an opinion that there is so much to learn that to slack off is detrimental to a child’s mind and his or her future accomplishments. Idleness is often seen as a threat to moral character development rather than an opportunity to develop one’s imagination.
Stephen Flurry said it in his article The Sin of Idleness that most people associate sin with something you should NOT do, but few people ever stop to consider the sin of not doing what they know is right. How many in our society are condemned by that belief? How many children who color their flower with all the colors of the rainbow are guided to color their flower red as is considered “right and proper?” To allow the child to be wrong would be a sin of not doing what was right and the child would not be learning what is necessary to be ready for life.
In reality nothing could be further from the truth. Child Time Learning Center expressed it very well in their article to parents entitled, The Importance of Imagination, “Often parents today think that if they give their children too much free time they are wasting opportunities for learning and preparing children for their futures. But these types of parental choices, though done with love and the best of intentions, are not a gift to children, according to current child development theory and research.”
Over scheduling and directing a child’s activities achieve the actual opposite of the desired result. It can stifle a child’s creativity and ultimately limit their ability to solve problems and vision new solutions to society’s ability to think outside of our defined box.
So what is the point? Of course, most teachers and parents do not think about their teaching moments in terms of evil, sin, good, bad or morality when pointing out that the flower is supposed to be red. But they do believe that by directing the child toward the “correct” color they are guiding the child to the best knowledge base for them. They believe that working toward the correct answer is well...good. So the thinking really does, indeed, lean toward what is “good” and not “bad.”
The major problem with both Davy Crockett and Stephen Flurry is that they fail to give any guidance as to what is “right.” How does one determine, with any confidence, what is right? How can we be sure we are right? And if we move to the “right way” how is that limiting our ability to see what options actually exist?
Our society has expressed its belief in the value of early education; they give lip service to the belief that teachers are major and needed contributors to our society; we know, without a doubt, that the brain of a young child is developing at an unprecedented pace that sets the foundation for the rest of a child’s life. Are we giving them options and skills to see the possibilities or feeding them what is narrowly defined as the right way?
We must meet this challenge with the fundamental support for those most responsible for the early learning of children. We also must meet this challenge by helping our society learn and appreciate the value of creativity and imagination.
To value and accomplish this, all those who interact with children need to have time to examine expanded ideas, time to think, time to explore, time to decide what is truly best for children’s development without relying on easy acceptance on “right” answers to guide what can be open-ended, creative and imaginative ways to live in this needy world of ours.
We are responsible to build the good foundation for the future without relying on social pressure to be “right.” We must lead the charge by being creative and imaginative ourselves for ourselves, and be the models of creativity for the children. We must use all the colors of the rainbow.