Adora Svitak, only twelve years old, has already lectured to children and adults across the United States and the United Kingdom promoting literacy and sharing her love of writing. Most recently she was invited to be the youngest speaker ever at the February TED Conference, a week-long conference with top intellects from around the world who lecture on “ideas worth spreading.” After becoming recognized as a “child” prodigy from her essays, poems, and blogs at the age of 6, she was first denied a publishing deal with one major children’s publisher who said they “don’t work well with kids.” Frankly, this kind of behavior is more childish than her.
Often when children are called childish, it’s because of some kind of irrational demands or irresponsible behavior that does not line up with the rules and expectations set out by adults. But it is important to remember that things like temper tantrums are just as irrational as 7-year-old Charlie Simpson thinking he could raise £500 for Haiti earthquake relief by cycling 5 miles around South Park, London. And indeed £500 was irrational, considering he ended up raising over £200,000, or over $300,000. The difference between this and a temper tantrum however, is the potential value of the irrational behavior – a temper tantrum is very egocentric, with aims at obtaining immediate personal benefits (i.e. ice cream or an extra hour of television). But the potential value of the seemingly absurd dream to raise money by riding your bike is obviously beneficial to a large population of people. Childish should not be associated with creativity that boarders irrationality, but with the egocentrism in Jean Piaget’s 2nd of 4 stages of child development that is outgrown by age 7.
Although sometimes it seems this stage 2 egocentrism is never outgrown – imperialism or world wars could be called just as irrational and selfish as a nation-scale temper tantrum. But we can already look back at some events like this throughout history as childish because we have progressed. And as many of us have read on inspirational posters in school classrooms, the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow. The whole reason we’ve progressed beyond cavemen or the dark ages is because each generation improves upon the one before it. That is because kids still dream big, and as Adora says, “in order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first.”
A simple example she uses, is the Museum of Glass in her home of Tacoma, Washington. Here, glass blowers invite children to draw and design some pieces they will make, which are often much more imaginative and creative because they aren’t limited by the knowledge of what’s easy or hard to shape. In a larger sense, children aren’t burdened with as much knowledge of past failures, limitations, or road blocks in order to make their dreams a reality – their imagination often pushes the boundaries of possibility. They are fortunate to come into the world a blank slate of personal experience but with the knowledge of past failures to guide their thinking.
When children are called childish, or discouraged from dreams adults consider irrational, we are lowering our expectations for them to the level of our own past accomplishments. We should not be trying to turn kids into our kind of adult, we should provide them with opportunities to lead and succeed so they can be better adults than their parents. Age discrimination is self-defeating to our future. We cannot call Adora or Charlie childish for dreaming big because the brilliant ideas that will benefit our world in the future lie in the dreams of children today. We need more child-involved programs like GreenMyParents to continue to foster children’s imaginations and confidence so that their dreams can become a reality.
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I agree with 100% of what you've written here. It's unfortunate that so many adults have forgotten the beauty and magic of childhood. We were all born creative. All children are creative. It is through socialization that we slowly lose our creativity. Thoes adults who manage to hold on to it are often looked upon favorably, as if they possess a special gift. Adult creativity is certainly admirable, but not because the person is innately gifted. It is admirable because these creative adults have managed to hold on to their creativity throughout the social domestication process. The boy I babysit refers to his dog's nose as his "beak" and pizza sauce as "pizza juice." If an adult were to use such phrases, he would be hailed as creative and great with language. But for this boy, this is just how he sees the world. You squish an apple and juice comes out. So when you squish a pizza, juice also comes out. It is interesting that as we learn the "right" way to see the world, we often forget "our" way to see the world. Some may argue that for proper socialization, it is necessary that "our" way be replaced with the "right" way. Regardless of if this is true, it is important to ensourage children to explore their minds and to create their own vision of the world. Thoes whose creativity is properly nutrured in childhood will likely have more access to that side of their brain during adulthood.
ReplyDeleteIn theory you are right. Age discrimination is absolutely wrong. However, in the case of Adora Svitak and the book publisher, I would not necessarily call their unwillingness to work with her "age discrimination." They are not refusing to give her a publishing deal based on her age itself, but rather the lack of certain abilities and traits that is essential to a good author-publisher relationship that a six year old cannot possess.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they are looking out for their business. After all, the role of the publisher is to publish work that can make them a buck, not to give opportunities to writers who have interesting backgrounds.
It's like any other business. Would you hire a 90 year old man to be a secretary? The answer is no, because chances are he is frail and slow, lacking the ability to perform the job, just the way that a six year old girl is most likely to lack the ability to work with a publisher in order to get the most marketable work on bookshelves.
I definitely agree with the argument of this piece. Parents and those older should be positive inspirations and motivation sources for children to learn from. However, when you think about it in terms of reaching adulthood, there could be some serious repercussions. Ultimately, we see people of our generation growing up with this limitless attitude and almost a skewed sense of entitlement. Young children are socialized that they can achieve and be the best, but that is not always the case. While there should be a positive influence in terms of encouragement and instilling creativity, but not so freely that children grow up with false hope and end up misguided
ReplyDeleteI think the real issue at hand is one of linguistics. The fact that the word "childish" has such negative connotations speaks poorly about the society we live in. Children cannot help that they lack the experience and knowledge of adults. A child should not get turned into a generalization for these faults that are somewhat out of their control due to their lessoned time on this Earth.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked up "childish" in a thesaurus, the words babyish, infantile, juvenile all came up. This definitely makes sense given that babies and the youth are considered children. But other words like "foolish" "irresponsible" and "silly" do not seem fair assessments. What is it that makes a child these things? The fact they have an imagination? Their optimism? I feel these latter two words to do a better job at describing children and do so without passing unfair judgement just because of someone's age.
I agree with all of these comments. I think that children have extreme amounts of creativity. Maybe it is just because as children we are more in tune with the right side of our brain. I remember as a child I used to draw, sing, dance, act, etc. and I used to do it well. I used to be completely into writing and making up stories, something that I am not too fond of today.
ReplyDeleteHowever, though there might be age discrimination, I do not think that most children are being limited. In the case of Adora Svitak, I don't think she was denied publishing because she was young. There have been a few children who have had writings publihed because they have had some good ideas that are "sell-able." Svitak's was probably just not in line with that criterion.
Just for clarification to everybody, I was using an early experience of Adora's as an example, I was not saying that she was the unfortunate victim of age discrimination. She did eventually get her short stories published, has another book deal in the works, and I only even know about her because of her literary success.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I disagree that someone her age may have been denied publishing because a kid may not have what it takes to be a published author. She had already written enough to fill a book and had very supportive parents helping her get it published when she was first denied. Yes a 6-year-old won't develop a professional relationship with a publisher, but neither will a child actor or high school basketball prodigy with an agent - that's what their parents are for, and that's why you need to be 18 to sign deals on your own. Because the parental support was there, I still think her denial was unfair and because her book was received well critically when published, the original denial was nobody's mistake but the publisher.