The World's Shortest Post on Media and Behavior

Do media affect behavior?

Let me put it this way - if media did not affect behavior, there would be no advertising industry.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that media do not affect the feelings, thoughts and behavior of whoever is seeing and hearing them, child or grownup, just point out that maybe those billions of dollars that advertisers spend must be a complete waste. 'Cause clearly NO ONE has EVER changed what they do based on an advertisement.

Next.

P.S. Excellent Book: The Other Parent by James P. Steyer.

Who cares about the food, how are the placemats?

I think restaurants are on to something. Now, being a person with kids means I eat at a lot of restaurants that hand out crayons when you sit down. Sometimes they also give you a puzzle, or a maze, and sometimes the kids' menu is in there somewhere. But the expectation is, there's gonna be drawing during dinner.

Even when we go to the nice restaurants, if they've got paper placemats, those are going to be drawn on. I'll pull out pencils and let the kids go for it.

Well, we've adopted this habit at home, too. We keep a cup of pencils or a package of pens on the table pretty much all the time. I used to think it was because I was really bad at getting the table cleared before dinner - now I realize that I'm doing that on purpose.

Having paper and pencils available is soothing. It accommodates the desire to just sit and make marks. I know many people like there to be a certain decorum at the table, and we do expect people to say "please" and sit on their chairs in between squirming.

But I find this blending of drawing and eating to be really interesting on a lot of levels. I hear from parents of older kids that it's easier to have a conversation with their child when he or she slightly distracted - maybe the TV is on, or you're driving somewhere - anything that is not a full-frontal conversation assault.

Sometimes thoughts flow more smoothly with my younger kids, too, when they have a pencil in their hand. We can talk about their day, or ask questions, and it's a little less stressful. I haven't done clinical studies here, I'm just offering an observation.

Maybe that's why all those old master painters did so many pictures of food.

Art - It's not just for test scores any more!

These days, the way you justify something in education is you show it improves test scores. So, for art to be valuable, it has to make kids better at math. Or reading. Or make them whizzes at multiple choice. In short, for art to be good for you, it has to make you better at NON-art things.

Huh?

What a bunch of poop.

Fortunately, there are great folks like The Wallace Foundation who make big documents proving that all to be hogwash. Since it's not likely you'll read a 104-page foundation report anytime soon, I'll summarize a really great one called "Gifts of the Muse - Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts."

What it says is:

The arts benefit us in a whole spectrum of ways, and we're ignoring a lot of it to our own detriment because we're hung up on test scores and economic growth... which make up only a tiny sliver of life experience.

Here's more of the spectrum:

- The arts create social bonds. We externalize our thoughts and feelings by making and looking at art and media. We tell people what is inside our heads and hearts.

- The arts create communal meaning. We get a shared vocabulary for our experiences. Napoleon Dynamite is a great example. So is Star Wars. So is Knuffle Bunny.

- The arts build a capacity for empathy. We see other people expressing themselves, and we are encouraged to do it too. We react to other people's art and we experience having others interpret our own ideas.

- The arts make you take responsibility for your actions. You make something, you decide if it's what you wanted, you start over or you turn it into something else. Nobody can decide this for you.

That's the super-short version. But I love the way they've framed it. Culture is not made out of money or test scores or college admissions. It's made out of shared experience and self-expression. Yay for the Wallace Foundation!

Funky Diagram - The Last Part

Alright, we're to the last part of the funky diagram. Here's the last post I did on it, in case you didn't memorize it....

Anyway, the last part is How To Communicate To Others. This might be the touchiest part of being a young person making pictures, because it seems like so often people don't see your work exactly as you would like them to.

When kids are Kindergarten age, they are storytellers. They love to draw and talk at the same time, and they don't mind if you ask what things are.

But later, this isn't so easy. Because if you ask what something is, then it means that you can't tell by looking at it. And if you can't tell by looking at it, there must be something wrong with the drawing.

Hm.

This is such an important point. Because when we read a book, we create that book's story inside our own heads. And no two people create the exact same story. Even when we see a movie, we all take different things away from it.

And, so much of what we see every day is designed to get us to think a certain way - billboards, advertisements, television shows - they are all meant to communicate something.

When we draw, it's very personal. So, having someone misinterpret or make fun of your drawing is the same as making you invisible or picking on you.

So the key is, when you see someone drawing, to simply look and react and encourage. Because this can mean the difference between a child continuing to draw and develop those brain cells and putting down the pencil for good.

Here are good things to say to a kid, whether it's your kid or your friend or your friend's kid, about his or her drawings:

"It looks like you put a lot of thought and work into that."

"I like this part. Can you tell me more about it?"

"What is going on here?"

"How did you decide to draw it that way?"

Things that are not so good to say include sentences that start with "That reminds me of..." or "I like your horse!" (When it's really a dog). So don't talk yourself into a corner by trying to tell what the drawing is. Let the artist take care of that.

Run, Shark, Run!

If you've spent any time at all around kids drawing, you may notice that there is a whole lot of, well, violence going on. Even the littlest ones will say, "See, this one's on fire, and this one blew that one up, and that's the flames coming out..." or whatever. Things explode, people end up dead, there are bombs, and fires, and all sorts of destructive events.

I think that this stuff comes from the same part of your brain that contains slapstick humor, the part that tells you that falling on your butt or hitting yourself in the head (or better yet, hitting someone else in the head) is funny.

And, I'm going to think about it more, but I'm guessing that these are really really short stories. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. Something bad happens, then something blows up, then someone dies. Or their head comes off. It's a great way to get a reaction from your audience too. Because if you're like me you end up saying things like, "Wow, that's a bummer for that guy." And this is satisfying when you get a reaction.

It's also satisfying to show big things happening, and destruction does that really well.

So, I don't worry about it too much. I mean, if a kid is doing a diagram on how he's going to destroy someone in particular, or seems upset, that's different. But the blam-o slapstick stuff is okay. Shoot, that's the old Warner Bros. cartoons.

Funky Diagram Part 3: How to Think On Your Feet

Alrighty then, we're on to Part 3 of the Diagram. As a refresher, it looks like this:




Part 3 is terribly, terribly important because it is all about experiments and surprises. These days it seems all we want is the RIGHT answer. We want to be RIGHT all the time. Kids in school are supposed to learn to do things right so they can pass tests. Problem is, often there is more than one way to be right, or the right answer doesn't become clear immediately.

I worry that this has become too all-or-nothing. Galileo didn't do everything perfectly the first time. A lot of Leonardo's inventions were kind of weird. The lightbulb, the computer, recorded sound - nothing came without lots of experiments. In fact, here's an article about the earliest known experiment in recording sound that just got discovered. It is really cool.

I've watched a lot of kids have a really love/hate relationship with the eraser end of their pencil. In fact, when the eraser gets involved, most of the time that kid is not too happy. In fact, I've worked with a class for an hour or more only to find that one or two kids still have blank sheets because they've drawn - and then erased - any number of drawings.

Here are a couple reasons why:
1. The eraser sometimes means failure. You didn't draw it right, so you have to erase. Only people who mess up HAVE to erase.
2. The eraser is being used to obliterate a "bad" drawing. You must wipe the whole thing off the paper so it never happened.

Thinking on your feet means being willing to experiment and to be surprised. An eraser can be used to make smudges, or to draw in reverse on a white board. They can also be stuffed into pencil sharpeners, but that's a different story.

So, I try to get kids to think before they erase. Can you set the drawing aside and come back to it? What's the real reason for erasing? At least by asking you can find out more about how you feel about what you're drawing -- good or bad.

On to Funky Diagram Part 2: How to Discover Answers

Okay, getting back to the diagram (if you need a refresher, I introduce it here.)

Part 1 was, How to Ask Good Questions.

Now, here's Part 2: How to Discover Answers.

I had a good chance to consider this on my recent trip to the coast, because we were totally throwing rocks and running around in sand and checking out stinky tide pools. We were ACTIVELY engaged in our surroundings.

Things with screens (TVs, DVDs, games, phones, etc.) are primarily PASSIVE. Look, I used to work in the game industry, so I've played lots and lots of video games. And video games, even with role-playing and all of it, are passive things. No matter what you do, you are reacting to the design of the game. You have to figure out how to get around, how to accomplish things, and all of that.

There is hope - Wii games, for example. And Second Life. But you're still... consuming what someone else has set up. Someone else imagined it first.

To really Discover Answers, you need to be in the driver's seat. You need all your different types of senses and brain cells. When you draw, it's you, and your pencil. When you look at something, you have to decide how you're going to look at it. Is it something you can pick up and move around? Do you need to move yourself around to get a better look? Or is it inside your head? Can you move it around in there to get a better look at it?

When you go to start drawing, you have to decide what materials you are going to use. Do you need mooshy pastels, or sharp crayons, or a big felt-tip pen? Or are you just using whatever is handy at the moment?

Discovering Answers means being willing to be surprised, and being ready to see a whole lot of different ideas. Often the best answers come from somewhere that is unexpected. After all, isn't that what research is all about? If you already knew everything, you would never have to look anything up.

These days it is really easy to mistake data for information. Data is stuff you can display on a screen or look up in a database. Data is what you get when you search on Google or Wikipedia. It can be really helpful, but it is only part of the story.

When you are going to draw something, what you need is information. You need to know all about something, like how it makes you feel or what it's like at different times of day. Drawing is expressing your feelings and your imagination. You can't get that off a screen, it has to come from your experience.

So, Discovering Answers means you have to be ready and willing to pay attention to your world and to experience it as the messy, surprising place that it is -- not something neatly designed for a screen.

Alien!

I love this. It only shows exactly what it needs to tell the story. And it looks like, at least initially, the Earthling is friendly to the alien visitor. Those empty squares make me really wonder what happens next. What do you think?

More about the Funky Diagram Part 1

As I mention in my previous post, asking good questions means changing your perspective, and seeing something in a fresh way to get your imagination moving.


For example, cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and museum educator Philip Yenawine developed something called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This is a very simple way of looking at art and asking questions about what you see. It reveals a lot about how different people can look at the same thing and have different reactions. You can learn more about it here.


While VTS is aimed mainly at art in museums, I'd like to take it a step further and use it to look at advertisements. We are so covered in media and messages and SELLING these days it's hard to know where one ad starts and another one stops. And to me, teaching about art also means teaching about how to look at all the stuff that comes into our field of view with smart, savvy eyeballs.


So, here's something to try. Grab a magazine, and turn to an advertisement.


Now, answer these questions:

1. What is going on in this ad?

2. What do you see that makes you say that?

3. What else do you see?

4. Go back to #1 and repeat. Keep at it until you feel like you've given the ad the once-over.


Now that you've taken a really good look at the ad, you can try these questions from Common Sense Media:

1. Who made this ad?

2. Who did they make it for?

3. How does it get your attention (sizes of things, colors, pictures etc.)?

4. What is the message of the ad?

5. How does it communicate the message (pictures, words, celebrities, etc.)?


Asking good questions can turn you from a passive consumer to a smart, savvy, creative thinker and problem solver.

A couple of pointers:
- There are no right answers to the questions above - it's all about revealing what people see.
- Little kids will come up with really random answers to these sometimes! This can be great fun - and very enlightening as to how our ad-saturated world really looks to them.
- If you have more than one person looking, be sure to notice that everyone has their own answers and that's okay too.

Funky Diagram Part 1: Asking Good Questions

I said I would offer some background on my 4-step diagram that helps me design activities and art lessons. The steps are:
1. How to ask good questions
2. How to discover answers
3. How to think on your feet
4. How to communicate to others

Let's start with the first one: How to ask good questions.

Every great discovery starts with good questions, new questions, risky questions that haven't been asked before. To really see something, you have to be willing to ask questions that you are not used to.

Try this exercise in looking without drawing:
- Find a really boring object. Maybe a chair, or a box, or a pencil. Anything will do.
- Put it in front of you.
- Now, look at its shape. Let your eyes follow its outline. Stare at it long enough that it stops being a chair, or a phone, or a piece of paper and starts just being a blob in front of you.
- As your eyes follow the outline, you'll notice something. That outline has nothing to do with the shape of the object that you might have in your head. For example: a chair might make you think of a square with legs under it. But when you outline a chair with your eyes, all you'll see is a place where it goes up, then maybe to the right, then maybe at an angle, then back to the left... not very chair-like at all.

What just happened? You opened up a whole world of questions about an ordinary object. Questions that weren't there before. Like, what is it really shaped like? How does its outline go? What shapes make up this object? How does it relate to the space around it?

This what I mean by asking good questions. To ask good questions, you have to change your perspective. When you see something in a new way, it becomes a new thing. In the case of visual arts, you get past the symbols you may have in your head ("chair," "pencil," "paper,") and really start to break an object down into just its shape.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can take a piece of paper and a pencil and start outlining that shape on your paper. You'll be amazed at how accurate your outline can be, when you are not trying to draw the "symbol" of a chair and you are just following exactly what's in front of you. But you don't have to draw the shape to change your perspective.

Language is a Virus.

Laurie Anderson said that... I don't actually know what it means. But, I do think it's useful to consider all the languages that we speak as human beings.

Music is a language. Math is a language. Body language is a language. Packaging is a language. Filmmaking is a language. Architecture is a language. And, art is a language. Each of these things lets us express complex things about ourselves and the human condition. And they also let us transcend our cultural or verbal differences.

Learning about drawing is learning visual language. Again, kids know this intuitively. They are unfinished beings who need lots of ways to get their thoughts and feelings out. They do not know what is best put in a sentence or what is better expressed as a mathematical equation. They just have feelings and opinions and ideas, in raw form.

Mark making is one of the most direct ways to externalize one's thoughts. It does not require any particular training. But the simple act of getting something out onto a piece of paper or in the sand on the beach fires off neurons and refines a person's sense of identity and ability to think... and later to adapt those thoughts in to all sorts of languages.

So, next time you are at a museum, look at the art on the walls and imagine the artist standing there painting it - or welding it, or sculpting it, or whatever. Try to imagine what that person was feeling during that process. Think about how you feel when you look at a work. Does it make you edgy? Peaceful? Ask your kids how they feel when they look at art. Look at them looking at art. Watch what they gravitate toward. Often they will look at the same piece again and again. Olivia (of the children's books) loves a Degas painting. My kids really like Chagall.

Many museums have a day each month when they offer free admission. This is a great way to get kids in there, because you are not "risking" the admission price if one of the kids involved is having a bad day or missed a nap. I know museums can be kind of stuffy sometimes, but I personally love the sound of young voices echoing through a gallery.

Supersonic Bad-Guy Blaster!

This is a drawing by my son, who is about to turn 4 (I have to use my own kids until I get permission from more parents to use their kids' work, so bear with me).

As you can see, there is a main character on the right. This is the "Iron Giant." He is blasting with his arm (that's the "Supersonic Bad Guy Blaster") - tons of ink and pen movement have gone into giving that arm all its power. Then there are two figures at the left, one is Sean and the bottom one is his friend. There's also a vanquished orange dude at the bottom. Oh, and he's blasting off at the upper left with flames coming out of his feet.

Two things of interest here:
1. It was very informative to be present at the time of creation of this drawing. Most of the lines around the main figures are emphasis, or blasts, or have sound effects that went with them as the pen was zooming around. It was more of a performance piece than just a piece of artwork. I see this a lot with Kindergarteners too.
2. I can't get over how much drawings at this early age look like Petroglyphs. (Here's a good example - scroll down a bit to see the photo). It makes me wonder if, even though these were made in rock, they may have had stories that were told as they were drawn. Maybe they needed something more durable than dirt, but didn't have paper, so they used the walls.

The Age of the Artist

When I show art on here, I will generally tell you the age of the kid who drew it. This is not to say where that kid is developmentally, just to help you picture the scene as the drawing was being created.

I do not want to emphasize developmental age here, because it goofs up what I'm trying to get at: That drawing and creative thinking give people keys to the unique world between their ears. There is a general progression that artistic development tends to follow, so I'll refer loosely to that. But age is more of an insight into an individual person and where he or she is in life, not a developmental judgment. (There can be a lot of angst in teen drawings. Go figure.)

For example, Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and did not read until he was 7. His parents said he was "sub-normal," and one of his teachers said he was "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." Some of those foolish dreams turned out to be the basis for how we see our universe.