Creative Boys

01/12/2009 by James.

I was in Kingston yesterday for 5×5x5=creativity, talking with a group of heads, teachers, and early years practitioners about creative learning and the inclusion of boys.

Its a tricky path to follow, providing for the needs of boys, without putting them into a box, and reinforcing any stereotypical ways of seeing and working with them. I know I didn’t enjoy my time at a traditional boys school and didn’t respond to the emphasis on outdoor sports and the controlling  almost dictatorial approach followed by some of the teachers. But there is research to suggest that a lot of boys do learn best through a more active full-bodied approach, and greater access to the outdoors.

My take on things is that if statistically more boys are seen to be ‘failing’ or not achieving what’s expected of them, then we’re doing something wrong, and that we’re probably doing something wrong for all children, not just the boys, but maybe (statistically speaking) the girls are more able to cope with a tradition of top-down, crowd-control, teaching methods.

Are we planning experiences for boys that build on their interests and value their strengths as active learners and problem solvers, or are we simply expecting them to be compliant, passive recipients of new skills and knowledge?

Confident, capable and creative: supporting boys achievements - DCSF

Now to me you could swap the ‘boys’ to ‘children’ and it would be even more pertinent - the reason children ‘fail’ is because our education system fails them.

I’m not a teacher, I am an artist and a creative learning consultant. I have loads of respect for teachers and learn from them each time I work with them. I am excited by the way in which I can work in partnership with educators and children, we can learn from each other, and by allowing the child to take the lead, they can show us how to work with them, where to work with them, and what they need to succeed.

But the difficulty is how to support teachers to put into practice this kind of creative, child-initiated approach when they are given so many hoops to jump through and class sizes that seriously inhibit opportunities for 1 to 1 contact with and observation of, individual children.

If each and every child was given the opportunity to learn in a way which is relevant to their needs and interests, through valuing and working with their own innate creativity, and if every child was encouraged to explore their local environment through their bodies and imaginations, then how can anyone fail - and why would we even need to teach or learn in specific ways according to gender?

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