My 5-year-old daughter has just been given her first school report. It was nice to see that she is courteous and reliable at school if not always at home, and I had a good laugh over the delightfully diplomatic bits, for example, "at times can be found working on her social contacts instead of the task at hand".
First-year mums should get a report too: "Settled in well, did not cry too much on the first day. Turned up to all sports events and yelled loudly. Needs to work on remembering which days she is on parent-help."
Starting school has been a big adjustment for both of us and we are mighty glad to see the holidays but all in all it was a good year.
The new-entrant teacher was a warm, unflappable sort with decades of experience; and I was impressed by how the principal took his turn on pedestrian-crossing duty and seemed to know every child by name.
My daughter has made good friends, has no problems academically and was generally happy and enthusiastic about setting off for school each day.
So why do I have this niggling concern? Concern is perhaps too strong a word; it is more the feeling of being vaguely bothered by something.
And it was not until I read an article in the Herald the other day that I realised it was not just the crazed musing of an overtired mother.
The first line read: "Young children's creativity is being stifled by the emphasis on literacy and numeracy, says a British academic."
It went on to talk about Professor Angela Anning, from the University of Leeds, and how she studied children's drawings over three years - artwork produced at home, kindergarten and then school.
She found that as children moved through the education system, their "personalities and individual voices were lost as their drawings became shaped by the expectations of adults".
Children needed more encouragement to be creative, she said. Numeracy and literacy were vital, "but if we don't allow children to explore what matters to them in an emotional and aesthetic way, we are cutting off an aspect of their growing and learning".
All of which might have sounded like new-age mumbo-jumbo, were it not that I had been observing exactly what she was talking about.
When my daughter was about 2 1/2 we started going to the local playcentre on Wednesday mornings where she painted and glued and hammered and nailed to her heart's content. There was no structure, no mat-time, just play.
OVER a year she painted picture after picture. It was always so invitingly set up, with the paints carefully arranged in a set order and good-quality paper on sturdy easels, just waiting for a splosh of red or sweeping circles of yellow.
She would become completely absorbed in what she was doing and take great care with it, with wildly creative results.
Then, at 3 1/2 she left playcentre and started preschool four mornings a week because I figured she needed more structured learning. The devoted staff did an excellent job of teaching phonetics and preparing the children for school.
Yet when I looked at the art wall I felt disappointed. There, in neat lines, would be 25 flowers, all the same colour, all the same shape, virtually identical except for the names at the bottom. Or 25 collage clowns, all the same size and colour, with the facial features in exactly the right place.
I would rather my daughter drew her own flower, even if it were less than symmetrical and barely recognisable.
I would rather see her version of what a clown looks like, than a pretty one which shows no individuality or creativity.
Somehow, as time went on, she lost interest in art. And when she did draw, she would plead for me to help her - "Mummy, please draw me a train" - convinced that she did not have the ability to try for herself and unwilling to live with anything less than perfect.
I remember in my playcentre days reading a book called Magic Places, by Pennie Brownlee, a creativity guru who spent 17 years lecturing in early childhood education at the Waikato Institute of Technology.
She wrote that the vast majority of people, from the age of 5 onwards, reach nowhere near their potential in art. Ask an adult to draw a cat, for example, and most of us will draw a primitive, stylised version which in no way draws on our extensive knowledge of what a cat really looks like.
In most schools and early childhood centres, and even sometimes at home, we rob children of the creative process. We tell them what to draw and how to do it and then we help them to get it "right".
Reading and writing and maths are all vitally important - and my daughter now has a good grounding in all three. But I have seen the spark of something equally important flicker, and all but disappear, since she entered the education system.
I do not suppose anyone ever suffered for lack of being able to draw a decent cat. But that doesn't stop me wondering about it.
* Sandra Paterson, of Mt Maunganui, is a freelance journalist.
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