I Showed the Lion
1. Q: Could you mention an example of a mistake from other’s teaching practice which will clearly show that it is wrong when the teachers provides a model.
A: The other day I was listening to an excellent programme on the radio in which a music teacher talked about her classes. She made the following comments about that experience. “We were listening to the Carnival of the Animals, and the musical description of the lion. I showed them how the lion must have been moving. Next time they will certainly find movements for the music”.
2. Q: What’s the problem with this?
A: If the music teacher shows children the lion, they will not invent a different lion. They will try to imitate the teacher’s lion, to remember how she showed it.
3. Q: Why?
A: Because most of the children would like to fulfil the requirements posed by their beloved adults, their parents and teachers. They want to be loved and do their best to succeed in this. Extraordinarily creative children who abound in creative energies are an exception: their own message is so important that they put the ideas across using all that they know at the time. Children living amidst struggles who are swept away by their emotions, such as those who are in trouble or feel hurt don’t necessarily strive for adult recognition either. But balanced children love praise and they hope to be praised in whatever they do. Some adults control whole groups of children by handing out rewards to them: a golden star, a red spot or a praising note and they believe this is a smart way to handle children.
4. Q: Is this a problem?
A: No, this can be a useful method for the teacher. But we shouldn’t think that this helps creative energies and independent thoughts. If we want to achieve such things, we will have to employ other methods. I have seen many nursery-schools, schools and families where children don’t learn or work for some reward or the appreciation of adults, but for the activity itself, for the interesting things to be learnt. They have come to love learning as they became curious about the things they learnt, and seeing the results of their learning.
5. Q: The lion showed by the teacher can’t help children’s imagination?
A: It can’t, it can only amuse them. It is a funny thing, to see the teacher pretending to be an animal. A child can imagine a lion much better than any adult will, even better than an adult trained in pantomime. I have seen many examples of this, i.e. that children raised to become creative who are rewarded for their independent ideas can play animals wonderfully, animals they have never seen, even animals which exist only in their imaginations.
6. Q: How?
A: Their imagination is so fresh and fertile that it is not at all difficult for them to invent interesting animals. Adults have to struggle for independent ideas: they have to strive, to search and to imitate others. With children it is the other way round: they invent the movements or sounds by themselves if they want to represent something. Surely, they won’t show such things if they experience that they achieve greater success by imitating adults.
7. Q: So we shouldn’t make them imitate anything?
A: Of course, we should, we learn the activities of civilization by imitation, everything that our ancestors have invented or used like the use of the spoon, tools or the books. The creative instinct, however, is gushing forth from other springs, in the lush, warm source of human strength where geysers are born. I have seen geysers in Iceland, and I would have watched them for any length of time had I had the chance to stay by them. My imagination hid in the earth’s womb with the disappearing water, and boiled down there together with the drops of water waiting to burst out again. I was a partner of the waters. I rejoiced in every bursting open because I managed to create something important. I feel the same about children. I hide in them, and wait for the joyful moment when they appear, come forth and come to light.
8. Q: Do all children come up with creative ideas?
A: All of them do. There are of course children with rich imagination who are more likely to unearth and use their creative energies. Genes do count here as in all things. Unfortunately, however, all kinds of creative energies may be suppressed by relatively small efforts or out of mere ignorance. The clever teacher shows the lion, shows the cat, the dog, the blackbird… and it is not worth trying to imagine anymore how the cat can be stealthy, how the lion stalks its prey, and how the blackbird flies about.
9. Q: Are you sure we do the right thing when we support the independent ideas of our children?
A: In life such things are not appreciated, are they? Not even in pedagogical institutions, in nursery-schools and schools. Indeed, this is a question of decision. What kind of children would we like to have? Is it more important that they become personalities who accept everything nodding peacefully? Or should we encourage them to be discoverers and explorers? Can you find interesting jobs in all walks of life? Even a street-sweeper can find out which piece of rubbish he would sweep on his dust-pan, from which side and in what tempo.
10. Q: Somebody who works in a factory, next to a conveyor belt, can’t change his work.
A: That is true. They can only choose activities they rejoice in after work. Would we like them to choose something valuable and interesting? Or is it all the same for us?
11. Q: You are addressing social issues. Have we got anything to do with how adults spend their free time?
A: For me adults, parents and grandparents are the children’s relatives and guardians. How do they participate in child-rearing? Do they take children seriously? All those children who belong to them and need them, or even those who get or have to get close to them: are they taken seriously? Parents and guardians have always participated in our classes.
12. Q: Have they learnt your methods?
A: I don’t know. I could only follow their life, their traces by chance. Sometimes they give feedback. Sometimes they disappear. They become grandparents, new generations come with different needs. The Creator has endowed me with a long life and an open mind. I like discovering new things, I am interested in things in the making. I have seen so many children, and on the basis of their diversity I have become experienced. I keep my fingers crossed for them. It is good to see that they live and are happy and if they choose what and how their lion should be.
13. Q: Have you never shown your pupils what the king of the animals is like?
A: The lion is an important animal; it is not important whether it is considered to be the king. What is important is that it gives birth to cubs and rears them, protects them and loves them and takes care of them. The cubs must be as different as human siblings are. When I set my pupils’ imagination free, they readily identify with the lion. They make a choice of whether they should become lion parents or a lion cub. I learn a lot from their choice, from what member of the lion family they choose to be and what they communicate of this member. When they represent their own lion, they can be personalities. They don’t have to conform to given schemes or identify with other people’s ideas. Those who are happy with this become my students.