Kids losing their imagination?

[fireheart17]

I looked at Khan's caterpillar, which apparently had been hatched near a nuclear plant (3 eyes, antenna coming out of its feet, head apparently in the middle) and thought, "Pablo! You can't paint people like that! People don't look like that!"

A lot of parents try to make their kids do the projects the 'right' way (so they look like the librarian's example). I don't care.

I had to bite my tongue down to prevent myself from laughing at the description you gave...and the mental image that conjured (bad fireheart for looking at this during a workshop!)

Also in regards to Rees post, the cookie-cutter method you are describing has actually been heavily discouraged by the university I am doing my teaching degree at. Although that said, with the Waldorf school (which ironically encourages creativity) I did my placement at, the kids were allowed to be free with a particular medium for example mosaics, but when it came to wet on wet painting, the whole thing was cookie cutter. I will go into further detail when I get off my iPad....

ETA: Ok, off the iPad and ready to go into further detail.

Without going into the anthroposophical stuff, the artistic mediums I encountered at the school during my 5 week visit were:

-Wet-on-wet painting (wet watercolours on wet paper)
-Beeswax sculpture (as it sounds, it was done with beeswax that had been naturally dyed and then you softened it in your hands...)
-Knitting
-Felting
-Crochet
-Cross-stitch
-Clay Sculpture
-Mosaics (my idea for my class, since their yearly "Theme" is Ancient Rome)

Now I will elaborate on how creative the kids were allowed to be with them:

-Wet-on-wet painting: this was entirely cookie-cutter from the get go. The kids had to follow certain steps and do them in order, otherwise the colours would run and the picture would be muddy (as mine turned out ).
-Beeswax sculpture: this one the kids were restricted to their theme, but they could make whatever they wanted (For example, if the theme was "farming", the kids would make beeswax sculptures of farm animals or plants)
-KNitting: Again, this one was very restrictive. In the lower classes, the kids all had to make the same thing, with the same colours. (chickens)
-Felting: not so sure about this one.
-Crochet: bit more freedom in colours.
-Cross-stitch: there was a restriction in the "blocks" of colour, but as long as the kids did mirror images of their pattern, they could do whatever pattern they liked.
-Clay sculpture: as long as it fit with the theme and what the teacher was trying to get htem to do, she didn't care so much.
-Mosaics: I let the kids go nuts with the lesson for this one. As long as they understood the process, that was all that mattered.

Funnily enough, the suggestion has been made that I should look into becoming a specialist art/craft teacher...this is despite the fact I can't draw to save my life!

[Nekojin]

I think that where Anime's concerned, or comic art in general, there's a lot of people like you out there- they just start out copying and develop their own style eventually. I knew one girl who did that, with western style comic art. Unfortunately you get some who become snobs- who turn their nose up at anything that isn't "Anime" or whatever their style is. In miniature painting, this also happens- you get the ones who are devoted to the Games workshop style to an unhealthy degree, dissing anything not painted that way.

There's snobbery in every direction in every hobby. Anime fans who turn up their nose at Avatar: The Last Airbender because it's "imitating anime," and isn't actually made in Japan (while being clueless that the word, anime, simply means animation, and that Disney and Warner Bros are also called anime there). Western animation fans who declare that anime is inferior in some way (unoriginal, poorly-animated, etc. - despite the fact that there's just as much of that in Western animation). Warhammer 40k fans who insist on the miniatures being 1) genuine Citadel miniatures, 2.) fully painted, 3.) in Codex-approved paint schemes for Codex-official Chapters, and 4.) perfectly and completely representing the exact weaponry that the character in question is carrying (don't have a Bolt Pistol on the Marine's hip? Then he doesn't have it, even if Codex says that he should). Comics fans who rah-rah one company, while sneering at fans of "that other company." And so on.

There's an apocryphal story that's been going around for decades about how Warhammer tournaments' official rules came to be. Originally, the rule was simply that the miniatures had to be painted. So one enterprising dude came in with the Primer Patrol. The next year, the rules specified that the miniatures had to be fully painted, with at least three colors. So the same guy came back with miniatures that were painted in three colors - by dipping the miniatures in paint jars. One color for the legs, another for the torso and arms, a third color for the heads. So they tightened up the rules further, and he exploited their lack of precision to again play with something that met the technical word of the rules, but outside of the intent. Personally, if it ever happened, I think he was doing it not out of laziness, but out of a desire to troll the authoritarians.

[Dreamstalker]

I looked at Khan's caterpillar, which apparently had been hatched near a nuclear plant (3 eyes, antenna coming out of its feet, head apparently in the middle)

This made me

I like to say my Waldorf education (brief as it was) spoiled me for the public education system and society in general I think I still have a couple of my Waldorf crafts someplace...I do go back to the school every year for their holiday fair, and a lot of the teachers I had are still there (and they remember me as well, which is always a nice surprise).

[HYHYBT]

As far as art classes go... I only had them through fifth grade. As I remember it, it was when we were first learning a new concept such as perspective that we all had to do exactly the same thing (in that case, the view looking down a road with telephone poles along one side). Otherwise it was freer.

Well, that and this one time we were given pieces of paper cut from a poster, a couple inches on a side each, and told to draw as near as possible the same thing on a regular-sized sheet of paper. Assembled, the result was a picture of the Muppet Show cast, which then spent at least the next six years on the school library's wall. Since it was the only one there, I wonder what the other classes in that grade did.

[DGoddess]

Somebody else alluded to it. Take a remote controlled car vs a hot wheels. The hot wheels you have to imagine (and hand make) the movement, the remote controlled .. not so much. Toys have become more .. automated..less imaginative. Now of course everybody is different, but I can remember a time that two sticks could provide thousands of different things...I show two sticks to my nieces and nephews..and they see two sticks.

Cute.

Back in the 70's when I was growing up, video games and computers were just being realized. I had Barbie dolls, a toy chest and quite an imagination even back then. Lost count of how many dolls got beheaded with the toy chest lid . . . .

I also had books and read as much as I could find time for. That IMO helped open up my imagination. By the time the mid 80's came and I was in high school, I had a typewriter and not long after, a computer. Which really made it easier to write stories faster by typing rather than longhand (which has a tendency to cramp my hands)

But as far back as I can recall, I always could think of something and could see it playing out as if it were on a movie screen. I don't recall my mom or grandmother ever stifling me for it . . . Dad and stepmom OTOH, tried to say I was unstable but I secretly think it had to do with Dad's mom having the writing bug and they never had a good relationship.

I also think this lack of imagination comes in part due to external influences, such as teachers (sometimes parents as well are guilty of it) by trying to steer the child toward other activities that don't require a lot of thinking of brainstorming. Totally wrong in my book, especially when you start censoring everything your child is exposed to. Which limits their brain to what is "okay vs not okay" to think or contemplate.

I didn't care much for art classes (can't even draw a straight line) but I did try music (can't sing so glee club didn't last long. I was more like Barney Fife trying to fit in with the men's singing group)

Band lasted not quite a year and a half . . . I liked the clarinet but just didn't have the talent (even though my mom comes from a family who were musically talented, she didn't inherit that and neither did I.)

Drama I tried for one school year and liked that, but kinda hard to have to shuffle between two schools two mornings a week for an hour and a half each class.

By the time I hit the 9th grade, I started writing and that was what occupied my time better than anything. Still does to an extent (just harder to find the time to actually type up anything.) So that's at least one thing I have a knack for.

But I do feel for today's kids . . . too much structure from after school stuff and not enough time to just have free time to think and daydream.