One of the talks that stuck with me that day was by Sir Kenneth Robinson on Education. Video of Robinson's talk I couldn't recite the entire speech, but some of his key ideas stuck with me. So much so that 4 months later on a phone conversation with a close friend about her children's different learning styles, I found myself recounting his story about Gillian Lynn, the famous choreographer. Later that day, I was on Amazon ordering his book The Element . And since that book arrived, I have found the content to be the topic of conversation with my children and husband on a daily basis. Enough that I felt like sharing…

Six decades prior to Mick Fleetwood's agonizing school experience, another creative genius was plugging his way through a miserable bout with the education system in Spain. Pablo Picasso is quoted on Biography.com as being sent to sit in the "calaboose", a whitewashed bare cell with only a bench to sit on for being a "bad student". He remembers taking a pencil and notepad and drawing during this confinement and remembered later that he "could've stayed in there all day". Luckily for Picasso, his mother had detected his drive and determination early on and told him, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." In an interview he declared, "Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." In short, he became who he was supposed to be. He found the point where his passion met his aptitude and because that was who he innately was destined to be, he spent the rest of his life painting prolifically and challenging the boundaries of art as we know it.
Wow! To be that parent that sees that their child is gifted beyond what we take for granted! To have the nerve to send a 16 year old to London to play the drums or to celebrate the little artist sitting in the calaboose! I am not advocating throwing away the current education system as we know it but I am advocating the celebration of those kids who do not fit in the one tiny little box that society has allowed to be "acceptable". I had a conversation just last week with a friend who told me that she wanted to be an interior designer when she grew up. Her father told her that if she was going to college she needed a real major. She became an accountant and described her 10 years working as an accountant as feeling like "someone was pulling her fingernails out". When she was first married and moved into her first little house, her father came to visit and complimented her on her great decor literally saying, "You should do this for a living!" Wow again!!
I am advocating listening and observing and hopefully celebrating your child's talents and differences. As parents we have daily opportunities to guide our children. One of my greatest fears is that I, in all my well-intentioned parenting, manage to miss that "a-ha" moment.
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