Remember When School Looked Fun?

I guess I haven't finished addressing my concerns about the lack of children's art and original projects being displayed on the walls of some school hallways and classrooms. This noticeable, sterile trend has been bothering me. Not simply because it devalues the very thing that children actually value, but it devalues creativity in education as being at least nominally acknowledged.
It's very uneducated, in my opinion.

A comment by a kindergarten teacher not too long ago is what concerned me. She had mentioned that a supervisor had told kindergarten teachers she didn't want to see artsy type of work on the walls - only "real" work like writing and numbers. But the real work of five-year-olds is cutting and pasting and drawing in preparation for doing writing and numbers!

What would these supervisors who dictate what's going up on classroom walls think of the Texas elementary principal who didn't allow ANY pre-made imagery to be put up in place of teacher or student-made. Teachers didn't run to the teacher supply store when it came time to change the the bulletin boards. Every classroom and hallway display was handmade -- created from scratch to be visually stimulating and appealing.

Sure it was demanding, but the students and teachers were cocooned in an environment that celebrated creativity as an integral part of academic life. They saw the thought-process made evident. I only wish I could have seen the distinct visual impact of this building. I heard about it from a teacher who taught there when I complimented her very cool bulletin board. Of course, she'd saved all the pieces to pull out when needed year after year.

My belief is those children were far more engaged than the kids spending their days gazing at slick posters they could never hope to reproduce, never seeing peer-created art work to learn from, ignoring walls of never-ending word lists, or trying to jumpstart their bored brains to find something new and interesting to contemplate in the steady diet of bland adult-generated worksheets they're given to consume -- color or fill in the blanks. Again, the lowest level of learning and engagement. A definite creative disconnect.

Children learn a great deal from seeing child-produced artwork and projects.