There is a very famous French landscape painter named Corot, who said in his old age, “I wake up every morning and pray to God to let me see the world as innocently as a child. As I grew older, I realized that my children were my teachers, and that there was no such thing as learning to paint, or even to draw, and that all that mattered was that we all had eyes.
Now that spring is here, I walk around my apartment in the morning, in a city as ugly as Beijing, with such bad weather, but every flower is beautiful, every tree is beautiful, and I think I might be only five years old at this time.
How to Raise Children to Be Independent Thinkers
Don’t treat a child too much like a child, he is who he is and he has his hobbies and talents that you just can’t see at the moment. Some children may not be interested in all art at all, but they are interested in guns, ships, and weapons.
I often meet parents who tell me how my child should learn to draw and how they can draw like you. The question isn’t that, the question is do you know your child? Whether or not you are watching him with a cold eye, what things he likes and what things he hates, the education in this begins – if it can be called education.
The most important thing for a parent is to look coldly, and then take the child to what interests him, not to force him to go to what he hates or doesn’t feel like going to. So, the first thing to overcome is the parents’ own “paternalism,” and paternalism is a terrible thing.
Our Conceptual Education Starts Too Early
Until the age of 13, I would advocate not explaining to a child what “beauty” is, what “ancient” is, and what “modern” is. If you take him to a museum, don’t explain it to him at all. One thing he won’t understand, and another thing he’ll get bored. Just let him see, and if he really doesn’t want to see, take him out, he wants to eat, he wants to play, keep his animal nature, and let him play.
Don’t indoctrinate your child too early with so many words, such as “master”, “art”, “beauty”, “education”, and so on. “These are words that are taught to him by adults, not children. We start our conceptual education too early.
For those who are almost precocious, extremely sensitive, you could say gifted, between the ages of 10 and 15, you have to be especially careful about what he really likes, what he can’t get back, what he’s going to do, what he’s going to do, and if you hit him, he’s going to do it. This is serious, this is when you have to be careful, he really wants to do this thing.
If what he likes happens to be painting, music, writing, or science experiments, it’s very important for him to be in a good environment where he can hear and see and be surrounded by kids who are doing the same thing.
As for the so-called art history, antiquity, modernity, this school, that school, I think it’s almost like middle school before he starts to be interested in these words, these concepts, and has the understanding and the judgment, that comes later.
Man is an animal that imitates, but at the same time he is an animal that downloads.
The parent just said that the child worships me, but he just heard about it, he heard about this person from the media, and then the child will aspire to it. According to Mencius, all children, in their childhood, the people they admire the most are actually mom and dad, so the role of mom and dad is very difficult. -I also want to be like my parents, to cook like him, to walk like him, to look around like him.
Man is an animal of imitation, but at the same time he is an animal of downloading. The computer has the word “downloading” in the brain of all children. You take them to any situation, whether it is happy or sad, they have downloaded it whether they understand it or not. It can be stored for a long time after it has been downloaded, and when it becomes sensible, educated, and intellectually developed, it will recall the downloaded impressions of its early years. So it’s really not a good idea to be a parent, because you’re either teaching the child without even noticing it, or you’re already ruining the education.
Don’t make value judgments about children, and don’t talk too much!
I always see two things in museums all over the world. One is when an adult holds a baby in his arms while the baby is sleeping, but this is a kind of abortifacient education, a very good “baby education”, which is not the same as taking him to a noisy restaurant or shopping mall while the baby is sleeping.
The other is that it’s not uncommon to see elementary and middle school teachers take the class and go straight into a museum. It’s not a browsing tour, but rather the teacher does her homework, leads the class to a certain picture, and then teaches a lesson right there for an hour or two.
If he doesn’t think the picture is good, he’ll say “that’s interesting”, interesting. If an adult says yes or no, right or wrong, that’s killing the child, that’s how the child is killed.
The child’s innocence is gone. But a very tough child, you kill him again and again, and in the end he picks up the pencil and goes back to his original form, which is one of the few geniuses. So the only thing I would like to say to parents is: before the age of 13, don’t talk too much about children’s painting or any other literary interests.
Does painting have anything to do with spirituality?
This is what adults teach. Your question is not very spiritual. Don’t mind him, you are spiritual at your age, and you are spiritual every day.
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