Art an essential part of every child's emotional development

By Monty P. Satiadarma

JAKARTA (JP): Most parents are unlikely to care too much if their kids do not earn high grades in art class, but it would be a different story if mathematics was the subject in question.

When one talks of the basics in learning, what comes to mind is reading, writing and arithmetic. However, unless reading, writing and arithmetic are made important and useful to a child, they are but meaningless symbols to be manipulated and remain within the confines of the classroom. Reading for example, needs to be assimilated and should be related directly to the experience of the child so the meaning can be evaluated in terms of his or her own experiences. Reading is much more than a recognition game; merely translating the observed symbol into sound is not a sign of literacy.

Writing can sometimes become a meaningless activity for children. The physical problems of trying to copy or trace the written word are tremendous. The basic important parts of educational writing skills are actually the ability to communicate with others, to confront oneself with one's won thoughts and to organize and put these on paper in a logical manner.

A child may write well, in terms of putting letters neatly on paper, but it does not mean he or she has mastered the skill of writing. The same is true of mathematical drilling -- how many of us can remember long division and the division of fraction so many years after we left the classroom?

In the early developmental process, a child learns to become familiar with images. They learn to recognize the image of the mother, the father and the objects surrounding them. Image recognition is the primary step for a child to learn concepts. By recognizing images, children learn to categorize and organize the objects to become symbols that are important to them.

The images and symbols are categorized and organized in forms and shapes in the child's cognitive system. When a child encounters a word, a sentence or a concept later on, he or she is basically activating the cognitive functioning by retrieving images and symbols, reorganizing and restructuring them into a new concepts that are meaningful to him or her.

Artistic activity, such as drawing, facilitates the child in developing images that are obtained through experiences, and allows the child to elaborate their symbolic meaning into tangible objects. In other words, drawing is basically a form of the learning process where children learn to be aware of their surroundings, to portray their relationships with the environment, to observe things in detail and methodically, to understand the relationships between one object and another, and thus to develop analytical thinking.

Drawing not only stimulates the intellectual learning process but also physical and emotional learning as well. When children learn to draw, they learn to coordinate and control their body movements. Through drawing, children will develop their fine motor skills. Scribbling allows children to develop their gross motor skills in eye-hand coordination. When children grow, their gross-motor eye-hand coordination will become finer. They learn to draw a fine line, a form and a shape. When they are in adolescence, their fine motor coordination has been developed so well that they can describe their life experiences more accurately by presenting tangible images.

Drawing provides opportunities for children to develop their emotional growth. A drawing provides the opportunity for the creator to relate and identify himself or herself with the work. The self-identification level ranges from low level to a high intensity of emotional involvement. When children express their feelings freely in drawing processes, they will portray the meaningful experiences they have had along with the emotional intensity. When children portray meaningful experiences in their drawings, they appear in their pictures themselves. This is the best opportunity for emotional release.

Stereotype

Unfortunately, many teachers tend to teach stereotyped drawings to children. Stereotyped drawings tend to reduce flexibility in imagination; at the same time they increase rigid patterns in the thinking process. Teachers who teach stereotyped drawings to children are basically inhibiting children's creativity.

Research into schoolchildren's drawings in Jakarta in the middle of 2000 reported amazing results about the facts of stereotype drawings. Of approximately 200 randomly selected subjects, aged from 10 years to 12 years, who were asked to draw landscapes, 49 percent drew mountains, and 75 percent of the mountain drawings consisted of two mountains.

Of the two-mountain drawings, 44 percent consisted of drawings of the sun between the two mountains.

A drawing of two mountains with the sun in between the mountains tends to be a stereotypical drawing for school children in Jakarta. It is rather odd that only 7 percent of the children drew seascapes, whereas Jakarta is located close to the ocean.

The positive impact of art on child development can also be seen in music. Research has found that classical music, such as pieces composed by Mozart, tends to brighten up children's thinking and increase their creativity. Research also found that music strongly influences the lives of people. Learning to play music means learning to activate the brain and motor activities, as well as learning to emotionally identify the self with the environment.

Learning an art means learning to communicate. A drawing or a musical composition is a form of self-extension into the world of reality. The feeling of social consciousness of a child can be seen in his or her drawings. The portrayal of parts of the society, the inclusion of people in the drawing and the emotion of the child identifying with the figures in the drawing are the reflection of the child's relatedness to the environment and the society. Viktor Lowenfeld and W. Lambert Brittain from the Department of Human and Family Studies at Cornell University stated that art bridged the internal and external world of a person.

Most people know that art is closely linked with the concept of the aesthetic. Psychologist Abraham Maslow explained aesthetic development as part of the self-actualization process. When children express themselves in art they learn to actualize themselves in the environment.

When parents and teachers prohibit children from acting creatively, such as making doodles, molding playdough, cutting and pasting, finger-painting and such, they prohibit the children from self-actualizing themselves in the environment. When parents and teachers tell children to draw stereotypical scenes, they shut off the children's creative power, repress the children's emotional development and, indirectly, abuse the children's right to grow.

The writer is a family counselor and therapist. He can be reached at features@thejakartapost.com.