My colleagues and I recently made one small, yet significant, step against the flooding incoming tide of the imposition of grading children’s Art.
Like many teachers, we had become more and more disturbed by the enforced allocation of grades to children’s artwork - grades based on pre-set, rigid criteria laid down in the high school-based curriculum. As long-term teachers with an impressive professional lineage of working with and knowing what truly supports the children in our care, we simply knew that the compression of children’s expression in this way was neither supportive, nor truly nurturing. Art, being a ‘low status’ subject when compared to the rigours of Literacy and Numeracy, had escaped the cycle of ‘establish criteria, grade the level of competence, enter data, rinse and repeat’. However, more recently the trend and the tide had turned to engulf Art into this same cycle. We spoke up and said our piece and were granted a short-term moratorium on grading artwork. One small step…
Why was speaking up important and what were the potential effects of making children’s Art the subject of grades?
To understand the harm, we need to look at the purpose that Art serves for children, and perhaps also for ourselves. We also need to consider the many influences that enter to undermine this true purpose.
From personal observation, I have often seen how, in their Artwork, young children express what is occurring in their inner world. What they are drawn to or are connected with, what they sense, how something feels to them. Many also have a deep relationship with colour and use this awareness to express what they feel within, rather than how something looks in the external world. For example, an orange kangaroo expresses how they feel harmonious with what this animal represents to them. It doesn’t have to be grey or brown in order to be realistic like a photo. When children draw themselves with large hearts, they are clearly feeling open, loving and responsive; dark pictures with lots of aggressive teeth, swords, weapons and blood usually indicate a conversation with the teacher is needed about what is occurring in their life. The situation could be severe or momentary but nonetheless communicates the intrusion of an unsavoury energy and that adult support is required.
I have also seen children communicate what they feel they may take up later in life as a profession. When you have lots of children in your class drawing themselves as teachers, you know for sure you have been doing your job as a role model and they are feeling inspired to do likewise. Children express their affinity with nature by drawing animals and considering as they do so, if becoming a vet or working with animals in some capacity, could be in their future. It’s as though the activity of pouring this sense or consideration out into a picture allows them to feel if this is a true vocation or if it is simply that they love animals and are earthing that love and appreciation through the picture. Either is equally beautiful and equally significant and is absolutely gorgeous to feel.
Why then, do we have the intrusion of grades upon an expression that most children find super supportive as they unfold their awareness of life, their place in it and their potential futures? From a teacher’s perspective, if there is such a richness to observe, and this then brings a foundational platform from which a teacher can truly respond to a child’s life potential and purpose, why has there been a move to eliminate and compress Art into a set of skills that represent reality in line with what the prevailing mindset considers to be Art?
The world today presents us with so many images to the point of daily, moment by moment, visual assault. The majority of these are photographic or on film / TV and these media are known for their capacity to ‘photoshop’ and engineer the visual world to fall into line with a predetermined desired look. That ‘look’ may be to entice, persuade, fill with horror, change a body shape, enforce a new behaviour – any of a vast number of flavours. The common feature of the many flavours is that they are part of a trend or fashion with multiple and ever-expanding numbers of subscribers. How many of us have ever been swept up in these deliberately crafted visual tides of persuasion that can at times reach tsunami proportions? The tsunamis of the highly desirable body shapes, hairstyles, brands of car, houses, ideal jobs, celebrities to emulate, sporting teams to follow; equally so the tsunamis that dictate how not to look, behave, what’s not hot. Could any of us ever say – No – I’ve never done that?
More so, such trends are will o’ the wisps – they come, and they go. We run the risk of exhausting ourselves if we allow such trends to run our lives. Indeed, many of us have.
As so many of us become aware that such visually forceful trends are neither true nor supportive, it then naturally follows that we express our concerns that our children not be subjected to the same harm.
Judging artwork against set criteria brings emphasis back to how something must look in order to be acceptable to the outside world, as well as bringing in comparison and making sure that your artwork is as ‘good’ as your neighbour’s – all the hallmarks of how visual imagery is being used in the adult world where ‘good,’ ‘acceptable’ and ‘desirable’ are all determined by external forces.
Another abuse of visual imagery can be the individual artist pouring out an emotional chaos onto canvas that equally taints the undiscerning viewer with like quality, while seeking a sympathetic reaction of some sort. Many of us would have seen movements in Art that fall into this category. Are such artworks possibly an emotional reaction to fashionable trends(?) – yet in their reactivity, neither do they pull from the rich inner source that many children (and we) can access.
Contrast the above with the simplicity of feeling and sensing your own inner essence and then allowing its impulses to be expressed through line, colour, shape and texture, without needing to influence anyone else, as a process of awareness, and then sharing that with the outside world - as do many children through the medium of Art.
Is the incoming tide of grade allocation in Art from age 6 a brutal rejection of our relationship with our inner essence and its flow of expression through our physical body? No need for any mindsets or externally derived trends; no need for recognition by the outside world, nor for emotionality; just a simple process of feel, express, ponder and communicate from within using only a piece of paper, pencils and colours. Judging artwork against set criteria brings emphasis back to how something must look, as well as to comparison in making sure that your artwork is as good as your neighbour’s.
It is also worth considering that when a considered level of competence is external to the child, from where do they source the ability to demonstrate this desired competence when it is not derived from their own inner source? Not all teachers are artists – I am not – so where is the expected competence coming from?
Having observed children in both instances, it is very clear that when they express from within, their bodies remain composed, open, fluid and uncontracted. When children are asked to strive for a desired pictorial outcome, their bodies contort, they frown, the shoulders are raised and hunched. They look as though they are in the beginning phases of torture. Moreover, the teachers’ bodies often display similar contortions when asked to impose these competence levels!
With regard to the teacher’s role in these situations, once the dense glasses of criteria sheets and grade allocations are removed from our eyes, any one of us can then use our own observation in response to what the child is communicating. We are then in a position to support, confirm and build true conversations with each child about their immediate purpose or needs, or even their long-term purpose. This goes way beyond the exclusive building of skillsets into genuine relationship and certainly represents the true role of a teacher in nurturing the children in their care.
Could this then be the time for us all to begin taking small steps to arrest the incoming tide against true expression, in Art and in all areas of life, for are we all not affected when any one of us, teacher, or child is suppressed in this way? We can all be in the movement of true expression, naturally then extending this movement to others; or we can all subscribe to the visual dictatorship of externally imposed trends. As we call out the abuse of true expression in children, we are also reclaiming our own.