My daughter Ella lives and teaches in Madrid and while visiting her a week or so ago, she persuaded me to do a day’s teaching in her school. I delivered five basic abstract painting classes to children aged between 6 and 10. It was hard work, working with a range of inadequate brushes, some large sheets of paper and bright poster paint. At first the children were pretty mystified as to what this was all about and it was obvious that they had done very little painting and certainly nothing of this sort. But after being guided away from the shackles of representation they soon relaxed into a spirit of free expression. Interestingly, the younger the children were, the easier it was for them to let go and experiment. All the classes eventually discovered the joys of flicking paint and the adventurousness was a joy to behold. When asked why they had enjoyed it, one child said ‘because we have never painted before in school’ .
Whatever we may feel about the limitations of the English Education system, my foreign travels have taught me recently that the opportunities on offer in English schools include great richness of opportunity. Perhaps we don’t spend enough time celebrating just how much progress has been achieved during the last ten years. In that Spanish school, creative teaching and learning seemed a world away. I’ll be posting some photos soon, if I can work out the mechanism.
Chris May