What Creative Writers Say About Their Schooling
What Creative Writers Say About Their Schooling
Piirto, J. (1978). What creative writers say about their schooling. Presentation at the National Association for Gifted Children annual meeting, Houston, TX. Reprinted in Understanding Those Who Create (1992; 1998) and Understanding Creativity (2004).
A few years ago I did a survey of published poets and novelists who worked in the old National Endowment for the Arts Poets In The Schools program. These were writers eligible for listing in A Directory of American Poets & Writers, who met certain criteria and who were vetted by the Poets in the Schools Program. To be eligible for listing, a writer must have twelve points of accumulated credits based on previous publications. For example, a published novel, is worth twelve points, as is a chapbook or book of poetry. A short story in a journal is worth four points, and a published poem is worth one point.
Here is a sampling of what twenty-five contemporary American writers had to say about their own childhoods and school experiences in answer to this question: “How did your own experiences as a child in school help or hinder your creativity?” Their responses follow.
Writer 1: I was given responsibility and allowed to fail, but I was also allowed to see myself grow and was given recognition. I was also given the sense that there are forces working through us that help us grow and do worthwhile work, and I have ever since believed in these forces.
Writer 2: I was lucky enough to have teachers who told me to get started, praised what I did, and encouraged me to continue. They also insisted I learn much of what is my craft, the skill of using the tools and rules of the trade. My family also, being creative and artistic, kept me encouraged, admonished, and also believing it to be not unusual, but ordinary to do such things well. They were often my best critics.
Writer 3: My artistic life is a negative response to the negativity of this world to my well being. I think it is therefore very positive in its energy flow. I’ve never quit being the daydreaming nonconformist I was at eighteen.
Writer 4: Hard to remember — I was always full of “chutzpah.” I always loved school even when I had awful teachers, the way Francie, in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, loved the library. You must understand that no creativity can occur in uptight, tense, places. Kids must feel good in themselves. That’s the first job.
Writer 5: It is tempting to say that they hindered it. But not all. In my day when a quick child was finished before the rest of the class s/he was asked to do a report or, sometimes write a story. What began as busy work sometimes became the best part of any day. But all too often the different answer was crushed, the need to question what seemed too pat was seen as insolence, a novel approach or use of materials was disallowed automatically without a trial. An abiding horror from grade one on was the objective test in which no possible answer was really right, and my desperate need to explain why could not be met. Under the pressure, one’s creativity soon gets put to figuring out what might have been in the test maker’s mind, so one can guess what the test maker expects. The best thing was learning, in high school, to put a textbook in front of me, to look up from time to time with an interested expression as if I were taking notes, while I wrote my stories in class after class and refined them in study hall. Aside from two excellent high school teachers who continually challenged our imaginations and abilities, virtually nothing in my schooling helped much.
Writer 6: We had “dramatics” for thirty minutes each Tuesday, and were required to recite—with prescribed gestures — a poem. God, how dreadful! Art class was a reward if the whole class was good the whole week and if the teacher had a project she liked, and if there were materials (which our parents paid for in September but we never saw except as a handout of one sheet of manila paper at a time), this on Friday afternoon. Music wasn’t much more. What helped my creativity was having a place of my own in the attic that even my brothers, even my mother, couldn’t invade, where I could even spill ink or paint (not to mention tears) without being punished.
Writer 7: I had the benefit of encouragement by a fine teacher — fine teachers, I should say — my parents, especially my father; and much luck. Most of what gets done in school and most of what gets encouraged in school does not contribute to creativity. When I feel I’m dealing with my own experiences at something like their true value—however those around me and my environment bring this about—I feel capable of doing things. I learned perseverance working in the fields; I learned about persons and nature in those same fields. Having operated a commercial garden and orchard for some thirty years, I’ve had reasons to cultivate the habit of observation and reflection. Schools have helped in that regard, I think.
Writer 8: As a child in a small town school in a high Colorado valley my teachers let me express my feelings for the earth, my horse, and how I hated leaving the ranch to come to town. The influence before that was the limited far-from-town library of three books—The Bible, the poetry of Robert Burns, and The Diseases of Cattle. The latter book first made me want to write poetry. I came across the words hemorrhagic septicemia. When my father pronounced them for me and told me what they meant I heard the words sing and saw the tragic death of cattle.
depressing
& self-destructive
made me develop a “closet”
personality & a disdain
for mass society at large
Writer 10: I was a bookworm and read for escape; I was also paranoid and persecuted by other kids through fifth grade or so. After that, I eventually went to a school for gifted children that was better socially—I wasn’t so weird. High school was an utter waste and that was one of the country’s supposedly best school systems. My creativity? Growing up outside New York and having access to Manhattan’s cultural life was my salvation. Also sympathetic parents.
Writer 11: Even though teachers encouraged us to draw, and even though some of my own paintings and pastel drawings were given special honor and hung in the hall outside the principal’s office, I lost all interest in visual art by the fifth grade. Art projects were too structured (so that teachers wouldn’t fail, I imagine). But then too, in those days, imagination wasn’t much of a priority.
Writer 12: Since I was an only child and my parents were divorced, I grew up in a fairly lonely environment. I think this fostered my reading and my work habits. Writing is a lonely profession. So, I was prepared.
Writer 13: School must have helped—but who knows, finally, where the lyric impulse comes from? Some aestheticians believe the creative impulse begins with an experience bordering on the traumatic. But certainly my reading—which was intense and wide—helped. Otherwise, I might believe that schooling plays a very minor part in kindling the creative fires. But I know many poets who never read a book until their late teens who were uniformly poor in school.
Writer 14: I had a wonderful language/literature teacher through junior high/high school that offered sheer encouragement. As far as anything in early life helping or hindering my urge & ability to write, experiences as a child at home, certainly, were the far greater factors.
Writer l5: I got F in conduct in junior high. That helped a lot. I had fun in class. My father was pissed. But I don’t mean badness, cruelty, “hoody” behavior. I mean acting up wittily, that glee that shakes up a long school day. My father and I get along fine now, but in those days, he must have imagined that I was being mean and foul or something — to get that F. I was being, simply, irreverent and spontaneous. I was finding my own way to like school while the teacher was going over and over stuff. And I know that’s elitism. Some of the kids needed all that drill — and I was in the way with my whispering and chortling. But I kept it up. Irrepressible. A pain. Guilt tormented me when I lay awake thinking how much the teachers resented my ways. Next day I’d do it all again. Well, I was, luckily for me, intellectually quick, and they might have had some way of endorsing that. The “quick” kid is often discriminated against by the necessities of disciplined mass education. Something in me was addicted to rebellion in this matter.
Writer 16: I would say that most of my school experiences were god awful. However, I was a very rebellious student, and often learned things of value by default. For example, at thirteen I was subjected to the first “teaching” of Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice). I immediately responded to Will S., and realized that the teaching had nothing to do with the poetry. Accordingly, and with full recognition of what I was doing, I read all of Shakespeare on my own. I did not wish to have it spoiled. One old classics master was also an amateur botanist, and he sparked a lifelong interest in me, on walks in the woods, which got me out of competitive sports. Probably the most positive of any of my school experiences.
Writer 17: A dual language background and a large dose of ethnicity helped. I was, for the most part, discouraged rather than encouraged by my teachers.
Writer 19: For the most part I was lucky. I ran into several teachers who encouraged me to write as much as I wanted to and rewarded me with kind words. Also, my classmates seemed to enjoy my efforts. God bless them all. In college however I was not so lucky. I could not and would not write a standard paper. One idiot actually asked me if I would mind writing a more conventional paper the next time. And I did mind, and that’s why I dropped out. I’m getting mad right now just thinking about it — and also this other idiot in teachers college, who took us to visit a classroom — where, by coincidence, this incredible woman was doing a creative writing class. I wrote an essay on whatever it was we were supposed to report from that visit, but I went on to report on the creative writing aspects — and this nut marked me down for going beyond the limits of his assignment. Shame on him. He is the reason I seriously question the creative capacity of anyone who graduates from a teacher’s college. In fact, my college experience was so bitter, so anti-creative, I have my doubts about anyone who graduates. Period.
Writer 19: I remember school as a struggle to slant my paper in the same direction as the right-handed kids. School generally is carefully constructed to eliminate sensitivity, assertion, intelligence, and guts. The question is, if I didn’t get the creative impulses from school, where did they come from? Certainly not from middle-class parents. Not from my genes. I think they came from the fact that I was fat, repressed, left out of the social scene. And when you’ve got that many strikes, you’ve got to be creative to survive. Creativity then, was a survival option — and survival is the synonym of public education and of middle class, middle Ohio parents.
Writer 20: I think my experience hindered my creativity in the sense that there was no structured openness. We would write an occasional poem (in rhyme, of course) for a holiday or for some kind of Catholic school competition, but there was no joy or interest in the process of the poem, only a dogged persistence until a certain result was achieved. There were no “arts” taught, no music, and so I think it might be fair to say that creativity was neglected rather than hindered. Real hindrance and destruction did not begin until college where no one made any bones about women’s inability to create anything but babies.
Writer 21: I certainly go back to moments of childhood often. I think I give a special place to “creative/epiphany” experiences. I’m not sure any specific “creative projects” were important in their own right. But if you listen and respect someone who fascinates you with the ability to perceive what you can’t quite (and I think a creative artist should do this naturally) and offers you an opportunity to pierce the veil of the mysteries, I think this becomes the route to creative experiences of your/child’s own. Creative experiences are not planned — that’s an opposition of concepts.
Writer 22: I was somewhat self-made. Schools did not hinder or help. They simply functioned. I was the one with the motivation and it was outside of their sphere.
Writer 23: Creativity was a secondary, perhaps even tertiary, priority in my schooling; hence, even though my creative output was exemplary it did not truly flower until college. Curriculum designers need to develop creative tracks in the same way that academic and business tracks are defined, to isolate students with creative talent and to model their studies to develop and refine this talent. This is not to say that the minimally creative student should be ignored; every student should be exposed to creative endeavors and encouraged to foster, if not their own creative output, at least an appreciation and understanding of the arts.
Writer 24: My school experiences were hindered, thwarted, denigrated, ignored by insensitive, dull prejudiced elementary school teachers on the one hand, but freed up, encouraged, praised, and shown off by loving, caring, talented teachers in junior high school on the other.
Writer 25: I didn’t get help from school until I was in college. I started to write a lot in Latin, where I was bored silly, and to avoid getting bad citizenship marks, I wrote and kept my mouth shut. It was a great place for “reverie.” An hour where no one could interrupt me (except to translate an occasional sentence.) College classes were even better because in lectures I wouldn’t be called on.
From these comments one can see that some writers liked school and others hated it; some were openly rebellious and others were sneakily rebellious. Some hated college while others liked it. But they all had a strong reaction to their schooling, and praise for good teachers and encouraging parents.
Perhaps the personality traits of creative people were already taking hold; the independence of judgment, the nonconformity, the challenging of authority, the search for truth, the uncompromising verbal intelligence that saw fools for what they were and called them that. Personal attention from teachers, encouragement, and love for the subject matter being taught — all influenced these writers and led them to praise. Writers are probably not much different from other creative people in their reactions to school, though one would suppose writers would get better grades, since so much of school curriculum is verbally oriented.
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