Finding Little Cubists the Perfect Gift

I had to visit an elementary school for a story the other day and had to wait a bit for my interview, so I started walking around the halls, looking at what the kids had been up to in class.

There were the requisite scaled models of Native American abodes, teepees and wigwams, complete with little plastic figures and livestock. Behind that, hanging on a giant corkboard, were self portraits of the children, all smiles and scribbly shirts.

In a smaller corner of the corkboard there was a cluster of little watercolor paintings surrounding a hand written construction paper sign that read "Mrs. So and So's 1st Grade Cubism Experiment." And just as it said, all of the paintings were deconstructed objects that the kids painted in parts with bright reds and blues, worthy of any Picasso or Braque (wish I had taken a picture!).

I was pleasantly surprised. Props to this art teacher. She's bringing students into thinking about art movements as early as possible, not just slapping watercolors and bright white copy paper in front of them and letting them slop paint around.

I had a terrible art teacher in elementary school. We didn't learn anything about art; we just made macaroni necklaces and pasta ornaments for mom's tree. Don't get me wrong, all of that has a place in school, and I had a damn good time making it, but it would have been nice to actually learn something about why and not just how.

Too often we assume that kids can't handle "intellectual" things, like when faced with a philosophical quandary, they're little heads would pop.

It's like that guy that I talked to at the school board in Allegany County last year. He affirmed, without any hesitation, that evolution and natural selection is not directly taught in Maryland until high school because of its philosophical implications. So we lie by omission to our children to ease the extreme pressure of contemplating the origins and evolution of life, whatever the depth with which they think about it. Give me a break.

I was a curious kid. It was never enough to just encounter something and give it a good look, I wanted to know all about it. When we visited the mountains when I was little I would bring along all of my old illustrated taxonomy books and try to find animals and plants and rocks that fit the pictures. It hardly ever worked out that way, but it drew me in to read more about the history of the Earth and the evolution of life.

I can remember reading a book about whale evolution that I was given the night before there was a big church group excursion to a Baltimore Orioles game. We piled in the big van and there was chatter along the way. I believe I was asked what I had been reading, and I told them all about whale evolution - how whales had come from a wolf (Ambulocetus?) who climbed back into the sea. Close enough, right?

The car erupted in laughter, and I remember turning a deep shade of red.

Now don't get the wrong impression. This isn't an event that scarred me for life and made me embrace methodological naturalism as a personal philosophy at ten years old or however old I was. But I was definitely confused by their response. It probably just sounded funny to them coming from a little kid. Or maybe it was humorous to my parent's creationist friends that their little boy was talking so freely about evolution. Looking back through a ten-year-old's eyes is hazy at best.

The point is, I didn't have the specifics, but I got the general idea. I could relate an idea that animals have changed over long periods of time and I didn't have a philosophical crisis on my hands. I didn't think about the implications. I liked the idea of monstrous creatures swimming through the sea, more mysterious than anything alive and they were just one little chapter in a much bigger story. It sparked my imagination, drove me to nag my parents to take me to museums and has stuck with me throughout my life.

What a precious gift I was given! My parents gave me the freedom to learn about something that is considered to be too adult, too complicated for my young mind. I certainly didn't learn it in school.

It's the same with this art teacher who wanted her first graders to not only learn about cubism and what it's all about, but also to be cubists themselves, to generate art that follows the movement's philosophy of form.

Kids want to know what we do and what we know, they're not interested "philosophical implications". It's the parents that are concerned about the philosophical implications of evolution and they're willing to rob their kids of an opportunity to learn something about the real world just to avoid awkward questions about the belief set they've imposed on their children.