I was thinking about America this morning, prompted by the discovery of a new country song on Apple Music. AirPods in, walking to where I needed to be, I was thinking that it would be fun to visit one of the southern states next. Texas, perhaps. Thoughts fast-forwarded to whether the one of the states would make for a good home in the not-too-distant future. My mind immediately hit back with “Fuck no, it’s crazy there.” I was referring primarily to the political culture, where ideology is intense, loud, aggressive, and frequently violent. This was before I’d checked the day’s headlines and read that another political figure, Charlie Kirk, had been assassinated.
I’d never heard of this person. I actively try to avoid anything to do with the hyperreality that is domestic American politics, actually. But assaults on democracy and freedom of speech anywhere require attention. This privileged existence that we in the West live is not something that can be taken for granted. Authoritarian oppression seldom begins and ends with violent revolution. Rather, the frog is slowly brought to the boil.
It’s easy to dismiss such an event as an isolated act of extremism that will send a nation into a state of shock and mourning, as had been the case in the past. The assassination of JFK fostered a brief period of national unity. Similarly in Britain political figures emphasised unity after the murder of Jo Cox, an event which caused widespread sorrow across the country although there were approximately 50,000 tweets posted in celebration. 50,000 is nothing compared to what’s going on on social media now. If posts are not celebratory, they’re a passive “Yeah well, he had odious opinions. I won’t mourn him.”
It is not about mourning Charlie Kirk. It is about the fact that a democracy cannot function when the threat of being murdered for espousing your beliefs exists. Or the threat of any unnatural consequences, for that matter.
My MA cohort was a mixed bag, with people hailing from India, Japan, China, Iran, etc. I will never forget my conversations with the Chinese and Iranian students when we were thinking up project ideas, where they expressed having to exercise caution and self-censorship over what they wanted to say with their art “because we might get arrested when we go home”. I certainly felt pressure to keep to a narrow scope of topics and I’ll speak more on that at another time, but I have never worried that anything I made would be cause for arrest (and if I were arrested for it, it would be a boon to my reputation). I don’t think many Westerners are fully cognisant of how free we are in relation to most of the word, and how valuable and precious that freedom is. Our freedom to speak, debate, disagree, protest, fly flags, make art, create content to share with the entire internet-connected world – it’s special and it’s rare and it’s not a given.
So, once again, Je suis Charlie. We are all Charlie. Even those posting stupid celebratory dances on the clock app. You’re free to choose to be a jerk, and I’m glad you and I have that same freedom, even if I find you odious.
My father was visiting this past week and we caught a screening of the recently-released neo-Western from director Ari Aster, Eddington. Boy, has it been a long time since I’ve seen a damn good film. Set in the fictional small town of Eddington in New Mexico during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the darkly comedic thriller gives a rundown of pretty much every social and political tension that intensified during that period with biting acuity.
I found it refreshing to watch a film without having to endure any heavy moralising. I suspect it’s due to this that The Guardian called it “tedious”. The sanctimonious seldom take kindly to the same light being shone on both them and their political opponents alike, and shine a caustic light it did. Personally I revelled in Aster’s act of doing so, and it is precisely his brand of humour that is so effective at stripping self-righteous political zealots naked. But that, alongside the beautiful cinematography, was just a bonus. The most valuable aspect was the reminder that you are not immune to propaganda.
Here I am, back in my favourite spot in my favourite coffee shop (an industrial-looking place with the best coffee and freshly made sourdough and Ukrainian rye on sale daily) after the first school drop-off of the new academic year. And I don’t feel good about it.
I don’t feel good about waking my 6 year old from REM sleep to get up and dressed and out the door with something for breakfast in hand. His natural rise time is around 9 AM, no matter what time he goes to bed. But we have to be at school by then, so sleep is secondary. He’s not a kid who’ll be up at 6. Never has been. Leisurely mornings eating breakfast and watching cartoons before school aren’t a thing for us. I let my son sleep until the last possible minute.
But we had a pretty good start today. Not much whining. It all went quite smoothly, except we forgot his backpack. And then the bus terminated just a few stops down from where we got on. Meaning we had to walk. In the rain. Because roadworks meant several bus stop closures. Sigh. The intention was to arrive nice and early so that he could mingle with the other kids before class, and despite having left the house with plenty of time we were ten minutes late. Great start.
This did mean that I was given a glimpse into the classroom though. All those little kids sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the glowing smart board, teacher standing by it, teaching by PowerPoint presentation. That screen that is perpetually on. I wondered if the kids would be kept indoors again today during break times because of the rain. If so, that means they would be sitting on the carpet in front of the smart board, with PowerPoint presentations replaced with YouTube or Disney+ for the 30 minutes of play time that they’re granted. My son says they can also draw or read books if they like, but most kids just watch. Of course they would. And in doing so they lose the time to engage with each other, to learn from each other, to play (the state in which the most fundamental learning takes place), and to activate the Default Mode Network of their brains – the structures that ‘switch on’ when you have nothing else to think about, allowing your mind to wander. To come up with thoughts and ideas, to reflect, to make connections. Essential, fundamental processes for facilitating creativity.
Every other part of the school day requires that children’s attention is directed towards that which is decided by an adult. When it rains, they don’t even get that precious 30 minutes to choose where their attention goes. They’re pacified in front of the screen. “We put it on to calm them down”, a teaching assistant once told me. You know what else calms kids down? Time outdoors. Time in nature. Time to pursue their own interests. Time connecting with others. You’re not calming kids down by directing their attention towards a screen, you’re delaying the behaviour that you don’t want to deal with. Behaviour that is a result of dysregulation because these kids are not given the time they need to do the things they need.
I’ve seen this “disruptive” behaviour first-hand when I’ve volunteered to assist on school trips or accepted invitations for parent-child morning reading in class. Various kids crying. Teachers exasperated with it. Kids kicking each other and stamping on one another’s feet. Bullying. Outright defiance towards teachers’ reasonable requests. Other kids (like mine) completely glazed over. And then there’s the god-awful behaviour that we, the parents, have to deal with after school. ‘After-school restraint collapse’ is the term. I gather the problem must be sufficiently widespread to warrant there being a term for it.
My son will probably have a good day. That is, he’ll probably greet me happily enough at pick up and say he had a good day. Maybe there won’t be any restraint collapse today. Maybe not even tomorrow. But after a few weeks I expect it to start again. Let’s watch this space. Let’s just see how it goes. Maybe it will be better this year. Maybe.
School: Where Creativity Goes to Die Reflections On My Education
***
I’ve been reflecting a lot on my education of late, realising that I took for granted the quality of my mainstream state primary and secondary schools and the lack thereof of my prestigious and highly ranked university (the second one; my undergraduate alma mater was excellent and is a much underrated institution).
I have a multitude of interests and passions which I pursue for their own sake. I learn for the joy of doing so. I care passionately and deeply about the why of a matter. According to Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn (which I am currently about 100 pages in to), this makes me a survivor of mainstream schooling, not the result of it. Schools, he argues, are set up by design to extinguish the spark of curiosity in children and their desire to learn.
I’ve certainly had my eyes opened to the ways in which my schooling has affected me negatively. I’m far more competitive than collaborative, for instance, which Gray argues is fostered through a system of standardised testing. I’ve looked down on those who haven’t achieved good grades, failing to recognise how narrow of a scope I was looking through to judge intelligence. I was also blind to the fact that I had been conditioned to value a very particular academic form of intelligence by the institution in which I was raised (and the culture upholding it). Other forms had their place, but academic intelligence was at the top of the hierarchy. How did I even develop the belief that there was a hierarchy? Despite these scars, I have held on to the curiosity, playfulness, and motivation to learn that is inherent in all children. It is this, says Gray, that is quashed by a system that prevents the free exploration of interests and steals from children their time for unstructured play – the time in which children learn best.
I probably would have had some sympathy with this argument prior to undertaking my graduate degree. It certainly wouldn’t take much to persuade me of the benefits of free play for children (or for adults for that matter). I am infinitely grateful for the time I was granted after school and over the school holidays to “do nothing”, time which was spent pursuing anything that caught my interest or fancy. All of the things that I have pursued formally in either higher education or work evolved from things that I encountered and developed a joy for in childhood. None of those things were sparked in school, though some were kindled. Before, that is, rapidly moving on to the next thing on the curriculum. (I still recall the excitement and eagerness to delve deeper into a given topic and the crushing frustration of having to move on to something else entirely the following day.)
One such passion is photography, which I have practiced since being old enough to have the dexterity to hold a camera and press the shutter. Lockdown provided a type of long-childhood-summer in adulthood whereby I was once again granted the chance to be bored. My play during this period was with cameras, film, chemicals, and creative software. I happened to develop my skills (alongside a newfound interest in the specific field of documentary photography) enough to be accepted on to a graduate course on the subject. I had hoped that this route would give me the depth and breadth of understanding that I craved in the way that my undergrad had, informing my practice and seeing it develop from strength to strength. The reality is that I have not picked up a camera in the two years since graduating.
And they said this would happen. We were told that “You probably won’t want to touch a camera for months after this course.” That this was normal and to be expected should have been a red flag. Creativity can’t burn you out, it’s impossible. It does the opposite. In invigorates the spirit, bringing calm and joy. I can’t count the number of times that we, students at this prestigious arts university, were told to “Be creative!” and “Just play!”. We might have been told this, but I don’t recall any of my cohort seemingly being able to do this, myself included. How is it possible to play when the fruits of that are criticised (“constructively”) and judged (usually positively, but judged nonetheless) for hours on end each week? How is it possible to play when one is being conditioned to anticipate the judgement of others? When the ‘product’ of that play is created for others and with their ideas in mind, imposing onto your own before you’ve even had a chance to conceive them?
There was no discussion of ideas, there was only the description of them. We sat through hours of lectures whereby artists described their projects and practices, followed by polite questions on this or that trivial detail. Never a why. I, and perhaps my fellow students, got the sense that ‘Why?’ was received as a critical question, not the inquisitive one that it was. Yet we were tasked in answering ‘Why?’ – asked not out of curiosity but as a demand for justification – for every creative choice that we made. “Because it’s beautiful” was seen as a cop-out, so we learnt to make up reasons after the fact. “Why can it not just be beautiful?” someone asked, to which the response was a shaming “You’re here to go a bit deeper.” Certainly, but the pursuit of depth requires curiosity and inquisitiveness – an intellectual form of play – characterised by the asking of questions, not by providing justifications. If this were embedded in the culture of this institution then it would have been natural to respond to the question with an inquiry into what place beauty might have in the field of documentary photography? What beauty might communicate, and in what form? Whether beauty is a creative decision.
I always thought that those who say “Art school kills creativity” were just lazy drop-outs. I didn’t drop out. I did quite well, in fact (though in retrospect it’s interesting how my assignment grades dropped from straight As when the course began to those which were more mediocre as my ‘education’ progressed). Despite my expensive qualification, art school killed my creativity. I’m fighting now to revive it.
It is through this experience that I recognise the veracity of Gray’s claims. Somehow – likely thanks to the amount of time I was afforded outside of school hours to play and freely explore my interests – my creativity, inquisitiveness, and motivation to learn survived my schooling. Art school restricted this freedom, gradually reducing my creative scope through criticism, judgement, and nudging towards the field’s current paradigm. I slowly ceased to make images because I was no longer making them for the joy of doing so. It’s hard to create when you’ve been conditioned to anticipate what others will say about it, even if that feedback is positive (research in developmental psychology supports this, finding that outcome-based praise actually dampens children’s intrinsic motivation). I had been lucky up until then. And if I was lucky – if I was a creative, inquisitive, and motivated person not because of my schooling but despite it – then what of all other children who are put through this system? What is our society (and every society with similar compulsory education systems) doing to human beings, and at what civilisational cost?
We’re back from the Loxwood Joust and what an immersive event it was. Tucked away in a glade meadow in Loxwood, the tiltyard was surrounded by pavilions from which traders sold all manner of wares: cloaks, swords, stained glass, quills and ink, books, fabric, food and mead, etc.
Knights displayed valiance in combat both on the tilt and the ground, to roars of delight from the crowd each time lance shattered against shield or the clang of axe on helm rang out. The jester, Devilstick Peat, had us all in fits of laughter – no small feat where I am concerned.
In between the entertainment we embarked on a quest to find the source of a recent spate of ghostly crimes, roaming between tavern and banqueting marquees, knight schools, and witches’ woods, seeking bards, guards, and princes to provide us with new information to carry us on our way. We eventually found the culprit and were rewarded with gold for our efforts.
Our young Turnip took sword and shield to hand for the first time in the training fields to learn the fundamentals of combat, demonstrating strength and joy, while I procured new recipes for the culinary roll. Unfortunately the grain shortage was evident at the banquet this year, but there were meats aplenty.
Friendships were forged at the campground and around the fire. Turnip and the other children waged war upon each other with wooden swords, and I discussed high-fantasy literature in a little impromptu campfire book club. I hope to meet our new friends again on the morrow’s year.
