I suppose it's not as bad as all that. Children are the most creative imaginative forces in consciousness. Adults could be, too if they didn't throw away imagination in middle school in favour of the “I can't” desperation that forces down all pencils. The desperate focus on unattainable results that have no obvious path of approach threatens imagination. But without imagination there is no self improvement, no hope, no God.
My task is to prevent this from happening. I teach a ceramics class to middle school children. It's my first attempt teaching and I made many mistakes including smashing their work (a hand gun), telling them to smash their first pinch pot, telling them that I would smash things. What was I thinking? I wanted them to consider that the object is not precious and that they can rebuild it, make it again, make it better. I lost them at that point, I think.
The following was added 1 year later
By the end of the year I had quadrupled my mistakes and totally there in the towel. I didn't go back this quarter even though they asked me to. I loved it; I hated it. They crack me up daily, sometimes deliberately. And I couldn't get them to show any enthusiasm for art and imagination. But we did what we were there for.
I realized early in the year, the first quarter, that I want’t there to teach art, and the children weren't three to learn art. We were all there together to experience each other, to be together.
Just enjoy each other's company, learn about people other than ourselves. That's it. That's the secret of school. Some people want to take control of school and program patriotism, or gender studies, or how the scientific method is they only oath to truth. (It's the most profitable path to continuing consumerism, which, I must remind us, is not truth).
…
The more benevolent want school to be about education and training. This education of course, rides a very specific political/cultural perspective, consumerist colonialism. Some people want school to be about socialization and sports. These people are the closest to the truth.
Life is about experience. A major part of that experience is socialization, and sports are a great activity to remember this. But band, theatre, and the visual arts are better. Children do not require sports to play physically. Just today I saw a couple kids at the cafe that I frequent. Bored with their parents sitting around they began to play. They were all over, climbing, crawling, rolling on the cement. They were also very discreet and not disruptive. Their idiot dad, however, kept yelling at them for physically experiencing the world with their whole body. Frickin arse wipe! “Get off the ground,” he said, “don't stand on that,” he mashed, “don't take your shoes off…” he bullied. That putz is the reason we are all dissociated from our bodies…well, one reason. Children naturally burn off that physical energy, they don't need structured highly ruled based physically regimentation.
As you can surmise I believe that school has room for improvement. But there I am in the prison ward with the incarcerated children. I speak figuratively, this is not a special prison school.
There were are together. We experience each other. That's why we are all here. That's what I do in school in my art class.