Elementary Classrooms Devoid of Childrens' Presence

As often happens in education, we veer from one extreme to another when forced to follow the pressures of current demands while making honest efforts to increase student learning. Since I first began teaching third grade in 1978, and covered education on local public radio for close to five years, you bet I've seen a lot of pendulum-swinging. With the opportunity to spend time in various classrooms and watch trends develop and then be interpreted over time, I've now seen the next extreme. It has wiped out the presence of the child altogether on the walls and bulletin boards of more and more classrooms in one district.

There simply is no original or student-generated work on display anywhere in some of these rooms! Hallway bulletin boards are sterile. It feels like the child's presence has been obliterated. I think sometimes I might as well be in a community college setting, as these buildings don't feel like elementary schools which should be brimming with lively, vibrant, creative, authentic work that only young children can produce. Instead it's adult computer-produced, adult-directed, and boringly similar. It's "instructional."

When I first began noticing this, at first I thought I was only seeing evidence of lazy or tired or disinterested teachers. Okay, that definitely exists and has for years -- as evidenced on many high school classroom bulletin boards! But not so much in elementary schools. Now it seems to have come down from the top not to display student work that isn't "educational." The interpretation seems to be expressed only as writing and endless word strip banks, and homogeneous look-alike prepacked projects.

Now, I have nothing against word banks. I thought they were a great idea when they first appeared and still do. I used them myself in the art room with art vocabulary or when listing the big variety of art-related jobs, etc. However, it's become the all-consuming and only "decoration" in too many classrooms.

The brain continually needs new visual stimuli to connect all those synapses. It needs interesting imagery to contemplate. But these classroom walls and white boards covered with sterile word strips have become visual deserts, void of intellectual life! It's definitely visual clutter. The words aren't even printed by the children. There's nothing of the child.

I know the intention is to make it look like education is going on. To make it uniform. To ensure teacher compliance. But once it's registered with a child, these word lists are ignored - maybe referred to now and then with the teacher's guidance. But those that don't change them are doing nothing to stimulate the growing brain. The brain's smart - it got it the first time and skips over what it's already learned. And so nothing is being offered on those classroom walls to provide new, exciting stimulus.

I think it's become a crutch for some -- see, I've put up everything in the reading kit and there's no room for anything else. It's easy to staple up the district-purchased materials -- and in a teacher's best interest to do so. As one teacher told me, "I'd never teach this way. But I'm forced to." What can we say of a system where teachers trained in child development are reluctant to put up child-generated projects because their supervisors will criticize them -- or worse, affect their evaluations negatively!

Although I am a trained teacher evaluator, in my capacity as an art consultant I don't advise teachers to go against directives issued by their district supervisors. However, if it was up to me, I'd be cutting out much of this basic knowledge clutter once it was learned. I'd be looking for student-generated projects as direct evidence that the highest levels of instruction was taking place in that classroom. Only then is real learning taking place. The student must take the basic knowledge and use it or transform it in some way. That's what creativity and divergent thinking are all about. Unless teachers take the kids to that point, they're just pursuing a round and round loop at the lowest levels of the learning cycle.

Gaining the facts is only the beginning of the learning process. It's not the be all and end all. But getting beyond that these days seems to be a very fearful proposition. I understand the reasons why. It will take some strong leadership at the top to make the transition and give assurances that it's vital to provide creativity in education if our US economy is to remain on top this century. Other countries are getting that message and spending mucho $$$ to revamp their education systems to embrace the teaching of creativity.