TIME OUT FOR SANITY! -- another excerpt

EXCEPTION TO THE RULE: Doing as a

Creative Tool

       James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© February 24, 2015

REFERENCE:

This is another excerpt from Time Out for Sanity!  The previous piece dealt with how passive a society we have (thus the reason for “Exception to the Rule”) become focusing on celebrities, entertainers and professional athletes and athletics to make (for that attention) millionaires and in some cases billionaires, while we pay the freight leaving our creative lives dormant, on hold, to eventually wither away and die.  Not the children in this piece.  Incidentally, one of the fourth graders was my son, Michael.

There are breakthroughs that receive little note. I happen to be given a spirited boost when I had the privilege to observe fourth graders at Anona Elementary in Largo, Florida. So moved was I that I wrote a “letter to the editor” of The Clearwater Sun (March 17, 1972), a community newspaper that has since gone out of business.

Mrs. Kampouris was the teacher of a reading class. Her fourth graders put on a program from beginning to end without her assistance. They wrote, directed and acted in the presentation. I can’t remember seeing creativity expressed more delightfully. It was impressive being a kids’ show, but even more so because everyone was having so much fun.

The key of course was the teacher. Her subtle guidance and patient concern enhanced their individual worth. Each of us has an immense reservoir of untapped creative energy. The need to perform, to use that precious store is part of our frustration as our society is not designed as much for participation as it is for watching others perform.

How many more painters, writers, and scientists, indeed, how many more creative artisans in publishing and business might be imaginatively and happily employed should the efforts of this fine teacher segue into their adult lives?

The fourth grade program rose naturally out of a word play with tongue twisting silly phrases. It continued with several students explaining their respective projects: one was making a facsimile of a rocket, another a pencil holder, and so on.

Each demonstration stood out for its personal touch as thoughts and ideas were expressed in a comfortable vocabulary.  It was apparent they were at ease with language, and used words as a natural tool in that context.

Poetry reading followed, and all the poems were original works. The handling of words here caught my fancy. Somehow, as expressed by a child, love of people, places, animals and life resonates with the mind. It comes across with sincerity in direct and simple language devoid of false urbanity or artificial complexity.

Mrs. Kampouris revealed her genius in the next phase. Asked to imagine themselves as a simple inanimate everyday object, these budding artists expressed their thoughts on paper. She had helped this suggestion along by placing an object in front of them—pencil, spool, paper clip, etc.—and asked them to create a story about the object. As a writer myself, I know you have to make like a child to energize wondering, which is the chemistry of creativity.

And then we were treated to the play. While it was entertaining, the banter and giddiness that went on over botched lines, cue or prop failures (one boy lost his beard) only added to its delight.  The fact that this was a reading class is relevant to today. So many children and adults are such poor readers that they take the word of others before checking out information on their own.

This often happens in industry when workers don’t or can’t read the instructions of their work, and go on working on the basis of what a colleague says about the procedure. Since this is often incomplete or erroneous, the quality of the work suffers.

The point is that reading can and should be a pleasant experience.  It can and just might push the bar up to higher expectations and wider horizons. These fourth graders are learning that reading is not a chore but a delight and part of the creative process.

Reading for them has been made an integral part of doing. Mrs. K has not partitioned reading from life or brandished a book list of “must” books to be read. She has not made reading an escape from life but an integral part of its discovery. She has brought language and books and ideas to life for these youngsters. Mrs. K may never know the true import of her teaching model on her students, but the twinkle in her eyes belies this and suggests she already does.

Like many things, the move from spontaneity or “letting go” and doing, to being up tight and following rules passively is a gradual one; so gradual that it is not perceived as happening. We continue to think we are “doing our own thing,” when it is precisely the same thing that everyone else is doing as if responding to a metronome on cue.

Once regions of the country looked quite different from each other; now they all look the same. Once cities had a distinctive individualism to them; now they all have similar glass and steel high rises with almost identical silhouettes.

Should we be able to reconnect with the sparkle of Mrs. K’s model, gone would be the necessity to collect art, for everyone would be an artist. Gone would be millionaire entertainers and celebrities, for the need for their services would have evaporated, as we would have created our own. Even the games scientists’ play would be open to us.

Education with a natural connection to learning fulfills its Greek meaning, which is “to discover.” Gone, then, is the necessity to collect a briefcase of degrees, or to develop a copious curriculum vitae, as the quality of contribution would take precedence to credentials. And gone would be the necessity to pay homage to another man’s mind for we would be too busy using our own.

Some forty years later, 2011 to be exact, I was asked to evaluate essays of eight and nine-year-olds on what the local library meant to them. More than forty young people submitted their work. The library was located in an upscale neighborhood close to the university. So, not surprisingly, many of the essays were quite literate, showing embellishments that suggested parental influence. This included state-of-the-arts Microsoft Word printing and vocabularies of the precocious.

My interest was content, not context, and how the theme of the exercise was conveyed. Of all the essays, one stood head and shoulders above all the others. It was handwritten, and carefully so, but it was the content that was stunning. The author claimed that the library was a magic kingdom to him, where worlds he did not know existed could be explored as if they were in his dreams.

The essay literally jumped off the page with its excitement, wonder, and zest for the privilege to have this “magical place” so close to home. In my comments, I envisioned a writing career for this person, as the magic went beyond its author to make connection with me, the reader. 

When first place was announced, a small African American boy with a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear, jumped up and raced forward to collect his prize. Obviously, the other three evaluators of this contest agreed with me, a contest sponsored by Director Armand Ternak and his staff at the Temple Terrace Library, Temple Terrace, Florida.