Against hand turkeys: Let kids color outside the lines

Is there a hand turkey -- your child's fingers traced and colored to represent the nation's Thanksgiving symbol -- on your refrigerator? You're part of the problem with arts education, writes Julia deBettencourt, who explains why she hates hand turkeys on the Hechinger Report.

Children churn out "Stepford birds" and we call it art, she writes. The end product is valued. The process is not.

The National Core Arts Standards, released in 2014, calls for "students to move through the full artistic process: generate and develop an idea; create and present that idea in some manner; analyze and receive feedback on their creation; and draw connections between themselves and the choices they have made."

"Creating, performing, responding, connecting . . . can be repeated from kindergarten through high school, with increasing sophistication, collaboration and independence, always keeping the student’s unique artistic point of view at the center," she writes. Instead, we ask students to copy someone else's outline without coloring outside the lines.

Arts education was never meant simply to teach students to draw, sing or dance. I believe it exists to teach students that their perspective is unique, powerful and worth defending.

"Narrow, Eurocentric ideas" define "what counts as art, theater, literature or success," writes deBellencourt. "Students are at risk of being taught that replicating the work of people and traditions far removed from their own lived experience is good." Many grow into adults who don't see themselves as artistic.  

Students need more access to arts instruction that focuses on encouraging creativity, rather than teaching skills, she writes. "Let arts rooms be boisterous laboratories focused on process," even if it means students don't "produce something shiny for the hallway or the spring concert."

I remember making a hand turkey in elementary school. I loved it because it looked like a turkey, and was way easier than trying to draw a turkey freehand. I did not have a unique artistic point of view, nor did I wish to have one. I don't remember if my mother put the turkey up on the refrigerator or elsewhere. I was the second of four children, and her life was rich in hand turkeys.

I do remember that my original poem won the Thanksgiving poetry contest in fourth grade, voted the best effort by my classmates, but was denied the promised honors (can't remember what) because it was about feasting rather than thankfulness. I believe "eat" and "feat" were rhymed, and possibly "meat." The teacher was apologetic. My classmates were indignant. I was annoyed. My unique literary vision was denied! My lived experience was ignored!