Stalkers in the pedagogy zone
“What’s the hardest thing I haven’t tried yet?” is a provocative question I’ve asked myself three times in my life. The first time was when, at the age of 19, she got a job as a janitor following her lover, who cleaned the street after the MSU Faculty of History. Fortunately, I didn’t last long. The second time was when I decided to give birth at the age of 26. And finally, for the third time, when, at the age of 29, years after graduating from the Art and Graphic Arts Faculty of the Moscow Correspondence Pedagogical Institute, she decided to go to school with some maturity. Out of almost a hundred first-year students, only a few turned out to be at the school.
I had wonderful “stalkers” in this “scary” pedagogical world: the unique married couple of my fellow students Vyacheslav and Maria Sukhareva. In addition to fruitful work in the art studio, in addition to methodical discoveries, they create unforgettable “actions”. As in a puff pastry, they combine: a museum, a puppet theater, and an art lesson. In short, magic is being created with the wonderful (doll?) 200-year-old Ksenofon Petrovich, a tireless traveler and the same age as Pushkin. I heard from them: “We don’t teach drawing, we teach you to enjoy the creative process, to live in it.”
The second discovery for me turned out to be the books by writer and teacher Elena Makarova “Childhood was in the Beginning” and “Overcoming Fear, or Art Therapy,” in which she talks about children and classes with them using unique personal techniques, which I considered the bible for those who want to teach fine arts or, more simply, drawing.
Effort or impulse?
Teaching fine art in a regular school is very different from teaching in an art school or studio. By what? The time that the cat cried for. The “artist” is the target audience. But here, someone does not like or does not want to draw, although this rarely happens. Someone is tired or overexcited, someone is hungry… The lesson lasts 40-45 minutes. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare, explain, show, inspire. There are 25-30 minutes left. And also – time to sign, otherwise there will be a “drawing by an unknown artist”. So try to create something worthwhile if you’re not a genius. Okay, elementary school – students can’t stay up for long, they get tired quickly. And with older children, it remains only to postpone the continuation of work for later. But in a week or two (and drawing is only an hour a week!) the child may become cold to work, and the painting risks remaining unfinished or spoiled.
The salvation was double lessons in grades 5-8 (unfortunately, it was only an experiment). We managed to go to the exhibition, make sketches at the zoo and complete a lot of work. Later, in many schools, drawing lessons began to die out, like dinosaurs. With a creak, they were left only in grades 1-4. And most often – at the mercy of elementary school teachers. With all due respect, they are ignorant in this area, and the teaching is limited: they draw something decorative and applied using cliche stencils. The result is crafts just above the kindergarten level. Drawing is often replaced with “more important” subjects with special pleasure.
But I will return to the beginning of my professional career. At first, I was unlucky: I got to a school where they taught drawing in a music class with a piano standing in the corner near the door. And how can a child pass by calmly? No way! I had to be Cerberus, protecting the instrument from greedy children’s hands. This unwittingly imposed role was depressing. The second annoying circumstance was that a teacher worked before me, who preferred pencils and markers from all the variety of art materials. After all, there is no dirt from them and less problems with cleaning. I got children who are not used to paints, not to mention other materials (ink, charcoal, pastels, etc.).
We were lucky with the second school: it was under the tutelage of the Architectural Institute. It was a joint institute–school project on aesthetic education of schoolchildren. Teachers from different fields were welcomed. Experiments were welcome. There was even a teacher who chose the method of “self-withdrawal.” He would give a task, and he would “withdraw into himself.” Later, the bearers of the techniques began to gradually disappear, like 10 black boys, the institute also cooled down to the project. But two or three teachers remained, and I was one of them. The division of the class into two groups has been preserved (as in learning a foreign language). Axiom: the fewer students there are, the better the result. I could work according to my own program, which meant I could follow a free pedagogical style, choosing a topic and material according to my mood.
I would like to note that a lot of things are formalized in both ordinary and art schools. The teacher is often a shadow behind the children’s drawings – you can feel the pressure and the pointer. And this is evident: the works are “combed” or forced. The child is trying, even very hard! And the works are boring for the viewer, who is looking for the same thing in a child’s drawing as in an adult: inspiration and flight. And the presence of a teacher’s handprint as a puppeteer does not add freedom.
Why am I telling you this? The value of free children’s drawings. When the child does not feel the limits. He paints, forgetting everything in the world: dirty clothes, unfinished lessons, resentments, and so on.
Listen to what the child will tell you, because he has lived his own world in the sheet. And where you see an incomprehensible mess of colors, muddled or helpless lines, you will find something unprecedented! And only when a child creates on a whim, in the flow of passion, there is a miracle of spontaneity, genuine creativity. What I conventionally call “informal children’s drawing”.
Is it possible to blind the void?
Draw the impossible? Our imagination, and especially children’s imagination, is inexhaustible.
Atelier. Task: to blind the void. But try it!
Peter (2nd grade) created a void out of plasticine and little things– He chose an empty compact with a mirror inside, piled up various-incomprehensible-beautiful plasticine on top. He came up to me and, slowly opening the fancy lid, said: “Her Majesty the Void has the honor to be empty in front of you…” The empty black plastic recess circle, after the pretentious “filling” of the lid, was really impressively and triumphantly “empty”! The palm–sized creation would belong in a museum, if there were one for children’s work.
At a scientific conference, after showing Peter’s work to professors of the humanities, one learned lady said: “The boy is not easy, with his eyes, wise…” But many people are like that! “if you don’t silence it, you won’t kill it.”
Let’s return to the unprecedented: fantastic creatures, unprecedented animals are innumerable! They appear out of nowhere, conquering the space of the leaf. Dina from the 3rd grade has a patterned, decorative brushstroke written “Half a peacock and a swan” (the spelling is the author’s). Subject: “Impressionism, types of brushstroke”, and at the same time “Animals”. Katya and Natasha from 5th grade came up with a bright yellow Giraffe Horse with orange spots on a picturesque background of green grass and blue sky. And they added an orange frame for beauty.
Fifth–graders Olya and Tanya are invited to a fantastic planet to meet with a kind alien “Four-year-old.” Oh, no, it’s still an alien: green, finger–headed, smiling with all her white teeth against the background of the earth and sky, a pink bow on one of her fingers and an ornament around her neck.
And here is the stormy, expressive work of fifth-grader Misha, a boy with difficult experiences. Background: Disturbing sky with purple flashes. On the ground, which is nervous in color and written in broad strokes, the “Little Buffalo” stands in a confused and aggressive manner (the spelling is the author’s). Children often put personal pain in the name.
Here is a studio drawing of Sasha’s girl. And if in Ryazan there are mushrooms with eyes, then Sasha has a glazed tree. It sees everything, almost like the many-eyed Argus, the giant from Greek mythology.
Sometimes it seems that a teacher should see more than is possible with two eyes.
