A subject we touched on in class is process versus product. We all read an article called "identical ladybugs by Christine Mclean" and it delved into the nature of children's crafts, you know the ones with "the eyes go here, the tail goes here" and "oh no Sue you cannot paint that cow blue!!!".
This article really spoke to me, as I had just a mere week before switched the art shelf in my room over to a more open ended art shelf. let me paint a picture for you of how it used to look, a three layered shelf, with rows and rows of closed Tupperware containers each labelled according to what fun material was inside, and several little bins of crayons and some safety scissors. This shelf was not allowed to be touched by the children and the teacher would bring out one preplanned craft a day.
When my centre decided to make the switch to emergent curriculum, I knew that was the first thing that had to go! I put all of those Tupperware containers in our cot closet, and I filled containers and baskets with many of the materials as well as some new ones. I gave the children markers and crayons and glue all of which they could take off the shelf and use. at first there was a learning curve, and of course many of the children just delved right into this new found freedom of expression! layers of pom poms and stacks of foam stickers piled on top of each other, some of us were worried that the children were being "wasteful" and worried that they were not making anything. Then I reminded myself it is the process that counts, not what it looks like. and to remind myself to stop asking them, "oh what did you make?" because it doesn't have to *be* anything.
What really struck me was the reasoning in the article behind choosing process versus product. Christine was talking about how children who are forced into making all identical ladybugs, are not learning how to do art, or even about ladybugs, what they are learning is that its not OK to be different, its not OK to have your own unique ideas, and worst of all, many of them then think they are not good at art because their lady bug does not look the same as the teachers lady bug.
When you look at what they could learn through the process of art, the possibilities are endless. In the last week alone, I had children learn about colour mixing with the paints, some of my younger students learned how a sticker works, and my older students started a week long project with glue and other polymers! The children in my class this week also learned that its OK to explore and make mistakes, its OK to find new ideas and to problem solve how they will fix any thing that comes their way.
Now, people really need to think about what kind of children we want to be adults in the world in a few short years. The world is different then it was 20 years ago, in the past you finished school, you went to college, you got a job. There was no room for creativity, or self expression. Many of those jobs are gone now, for many different reasons, and the Jobs available today are increasingly looking for people who are free thinkers, creative and non-conformers. Many of the jobs today are computer and technology based, my fiancée is a programmer, and he tells me all of the time about the creativity and problem solving he needs to make these applications. Now if we create a generation of people who need to be told what to do, how to do it, and not to change anything, how will they find well paying meaningful jobs, in a world that relies on the creative. The last paragraph of the article really summed it up quite nicely "So, the next time you are confronted with a horde of identical ladybugs, ask yourself... what was gained by this activity....and what was lost"
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