IMAGINATION – WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? by Lynne Benton

This blog follows on neatly from yesterday’s Blog by Sheena Wilkinson, though when I wrote this I had no idea what hers would be about! 

I’ve just been going through a pile of my mother’s old exercise books, dating from the late thirties.  After she died I brought them back with me when we emptied her flat, but I’ve only just got round to looking at them. I was particularly keen to read her English books, to see what sort of work children at the top end of primary schools were expected to do back then.  We hear so much that those were “the good old days” that I was prepared to be impressed.

This is what I found:

As far as neatness was concerned, full marks.

As far as grammar, spelling and punctuation was concerned, full marks.

There were also several famous poems copied out faithfully.

But as far as writing anything creative was concerned, very few marks!

In four English exercise books I found only two pieces of genuinely creative work (ie stories – in those days nobody seemed to consider that children might try to write their own poetry!).  Only two stories which gave rein to the imagination.  I know my mother once said she didn’t have any imagination – maybe it was because she’d been given no chance to develop one.  All the other pieces of work were obviously exercises, probably copied down from the board, or from a book, or factual essays - beautiful to look at, but with no encouragement to be creative. 

I had thought that since we are, theoretically, so much more enlightened today, children would have far more opportunities to produce original creative work.  When I was at school in the sixties, although we were expected to use correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, we were also allowed the freedom to write stories about whatever interested us..  And when I was teaching in the late sixties and seventies there was plenty of emphasis on creative work of one sort or another.  Nowadays, however, with all the current emphasis on strange expressions like “fronted adverbials” being apparently essential for passing SATS tests, what space is left for creative work?  Clearly the technical aspects of grammar and spelling now take precedence over everything else.  Of course they are important, but they should help with creative work, not replace it.  This seems to me to be taking a backwards step, rather than looking forward.

My teachers, like Sheena's in her post yesterday, loved their subject and inspired me – but then they weren’t expected to teach to the tests all the time.  Okay, we did have the dreaded 11 plus in my day, but that was all – no SATS tests from age 5 upwards. 

I can’t help remembering a talk I heard once given by a famous children’s writer (I’d better not name her for reasons that will become obvious.)  She said that when she was at primary school her teacher used to come in every Monday morning with a hangover (now you see why I’d better not mention any names!) and said, “Sit down and write a story.”  So every Monday morning the whole class did just that – and she, as a budding writer, absolutely loved it!  (Was it in fact this opportunity that made her into a writer?) Of course one shouldn’t recommend such a way of teaching, and my teachers were way too responsible to behave that way, but I know I’d have loved to spend a whole morning writing a story! 

Of course we can't blame it all on the schools, or on our unbeloved ex-Education Secretary.  There should be time and opportunity for creativity at home, too - and in many cases they do.  But as comedian Jenny Éclair once said, all children should by law have a chance to be bored, because it was out of boredom that inspiration, imagination and creativity came – and I do agree.  How good it would be if after school and during their holidays children no longer had to worry about homework and tests, but instead had time and space to come up with new and creative ideas for amusing themselves.  This would surely be more useful for life, and would give their imaginations a chance to flourish.