A Genuine Experience

You sometimes hear complaints about how the education system here stifles creativity, and very understandable they are, as anyone who's been part of that system will testify, assuming they are ready to be honest about what goes on in many, if not most, if not all, schools here. But the assumption that somehow teenagers' creatvity is stifled is entirely false.

How do I know this? Through direct experience. And today I enjoyed a further twenty-five minutes such experience as I goofed off for that amount of time to make the acquaintance of the work(s) on display of our graduating class from the Visual Arts class. I wished I could have stayed a lot longer than that.

It was striking how the work of each individual in the display had a sort of unitary quality, a sense of growing from concerns genuinely central to that individual. Even now I can remember at least one piece from each student that struck me as genuinely powerful. Above all, it was all so genuine, and you don't get more artful than that.