Voorschoolse Muziek Educatie
Early Years Music Education
Doings & Makings
oktober 2023
Slowly but steadly (artistic) activities have become doings and people who create f.ex paintings or compositions have become makers. In other words, a sort of “leveling” in the field of art (education) so that everyone feels fine. So what you ‘produce’ is always good because it is an expression of your-self or what you experience or any other non-external reference. You can feel like an artist. Just like we have “scientists in the crib” (Kopnik and co) and “children making art” .
The verbs making and doing are without reference without content without respect for what the person doing the doing and making the making is actually creating. Especially when the reference is to a professional artist. Also: is every creation worth of the refrigerator?
If any reference to a possible quality of the composition, play, painting, sculpture, drawing, etc, is gone, all makings and doings only have worth for the person in question. That is okay of course but possibly not a premisse for art education.
Making and doing should be accompagnied by a something that is either the proces - composing, painting - or the result of the making and doing. Calling a young child a composer or a painter is the other end of a proces. This errases any need to have art education: they are already there. The one finger on the black keys next door 4-year-old girl is a composer but so is Bach.
“But it could be where young children begin - and we take those starting points, what is interesting and original on the child’s terms, rather than the terms of the wider culture. The challenge is then, how do we take the child by the hand and lead them to some form of practice that has wider, cultural value” (Susan Young).
