Earth without art is just 'eh'

This post isn't really about art, I was just having trouble coming up with a clever title and I saw that on a meme earlier today, plus it's past my bedtime, so here we are. 

In this week’s reading, Tolstoy’s account of creative writing with the peasant children stood out to me. After engaging with the peasant children Tolstoy concludes, “we must not try to teach children in general and particularly peasant children how to write and compose, how to set about writing.” I was curious why he specified peasant children, but, that aside, his distinction about peasant children made me pause to consider the interaction of class and education in the United States from a different perspective than I have before. After using the example of Tolstoy and the peasant children to demonstrate that the children were, in fact, being taught by Tolstoy (since they were co-operating), Vygotsky goes on to discuss how street children express themselves in woeful song reflecting their realities. When I thought about this in terms of social class and schooling today, I wondered if we have a tendency to reject a lot of the creative expression that children exhibit, based on our ideas of what creativity is and what is valued as creativity by the majority, not to mention what subjects we deem acceptable in the school setting. For example, I have to assume that writing a poem similar to “With my chisel in my pocket/Through the dark and through the snow/I crept up to someone’s cottage/Smashed the window with one blow” (p. 51) might land a child in the principal’s office or mandated counseling sessions. However, as Vygotsky goes on to say, this freedom of expression is crucial.

Vygotsky highlights the importance of creative expression as a way for children to adapt to their environment and for the mastery of language, so there are some significant consequences for stifling creativity. When we hold a narrow view of which experiences are valid and valuable, it isn’t surprising that an achievement gap (i.e., opportunity gap) exists. Although Vygotsky’s second law about creativity deems that we can imagine things we have not personally experienced based upon someone else’s description of it, this also seems to be where everyday concepts and ZPD become really important. If the experiences that are referred to or valued in school curricula are too far from what children have experienced themselves, then they won’t be able to learn. Furthermore, Tolstoy’s example of co-operating to develop a story with the peasant children was illustrative of how we can provide experiences that foster creativity and language use in the child if only we are able to be, well, creative.