To evaluate or not to evaluate...

A few months ago, I worked with kids in my daughter’s classroom teaching them to make haikus. It was sheer delight to work with kids aged approximately six, seven and eight; to watch their creativity explode, to witness a few giggles in the making; to notice their faces gleam with pride at the morsels of literature they had just created.

Thoughts were profound; sentiments were simple; expressions were honest; confidence was high. “Looks like I’m going to be a great poet,” quipped a six-year-old boy confidently. My favorite was a collaborative effort between a seven year old boy, a six year old girl and myself. It went something like this:

Scribbles scribbles everywhere
on the bottom of my chair
My classroom

You see now, how it was literature in the making. They wrote about nature, winter, autumn that had ended, the snake and the bird in their classroom, annoying siblings, sports, pets and even technology. Some walked out to the outdoor classroom to draw inspiration from the winterscape (ahem… the writer in me encouraged it; the person-in-charge in me wondered if I had lost them). But thankfully, they did return and went on to pen some soulful lines.

Interestingly the younger kids seemed more fearless than the older ones. They asked for help with spellings, they were confident about what they wanted to say, they didn’t want to take any suggestions, there was no judgment - their haikus came straight from the heart sometimes via concocted spellings and words. They looked at them with satisfaction. They looked perfect to them. They looked perfect to me.

The older ones seemed more concerned about form and meter, how they looked, how their haikus compared to the ones I had shared or made for them; what their peers were working on… Their haikus were just as beautiful, but at times shrouded in self-judgment and evaluation. One nine-year-old boy fiercely guarded his work. After all, how terrible would it be for his friend’s mom to find out that he struggled with spellings. Their haikus were every bit as soulful, but at times more guarded, more judged, more erased, more polished, more perfected and some got tossed away before they even got a second chance. 

The difference struck me as I looked at the different aged kids at the table. And it happened each time I went in. And each time I wondered at what age self judgment and critical analysis creeps in. Was it is the inevitable burden of growing up? Of setting expectations? Of living up to expectations set by teachers, parents, society or the self?

Agreed great art is born out of much revision. I remember studying excerpts of works by Gustave Flaubert, who would sound out each line he wrote to pass it through a scrutiny of rhythm, fluidity and perfection. The idea even captured my imagination and I remember trying it. (As you may have guessed… I didn’t get too far.)

This blog is as far from Flaubert’s technique as possible. It is far from any journalistic piece I ever wrote. For each of those was edited and evaluated for strength of reason and argument and flow and relevance.

Yes, these blog pieces are as messy as they come – grammar and syntax be damned seems to be the general motto – and I love it! I simply want to pour out the thought running through my head. And it is wonderful to do just that. Well for most part at least. There are times when I gasp and think, “did I just post that on a public forum?!!” And there are times when I remove chunks of a piece or not post certain pieces at all. But for most part they seem more like the first grader’s haikus than the third grader’s.

And yet, I still wonder what it would be like to have the courage and lack of criticism of the six-year-olds who get excited by their own imaginations and sparkling creativity and fearlessly pour out their hearts and candid emotion on paper.