Examples from the Childhood of Art

(1) In one of the remote corners of the kindergarten garden there grew an evergreen plant which we call in the vernacular "kuzbarat al-bir," and the children rarely gave it their attention. One day Usama was seen cutting some of it and bunching it in his hand. The teacher called him and asked him why he was breaking the strict orders to protect the flowers and not to pick them. He answered shyly: "My mother loves these green leaves; we always used to gather them together when we were in the mountains and decorate our house with them. But since I came down to Beirut I have seen them nowhere but here, and I wanted to surprise Mama with a bouquet of them, to see how great her joy would be." The children thought the teacher would punish him and take his little bouquet from him for having committed a forbidden act, but she did nothing of the kind; rather she praised him before his classmates and honored in him this feeling for beauty and this appreciation of it, and let him carry his gift to his mother... And this story acquainted her with Usama's mother before she ever met her: she proved to be an artistic lady, who cares for the beauty of her house and attaches importance to the arranging of flowers on the dining table and in the various rooms. It is only natural that such a lady should have a child like Usama.

(2) In one of the handicraft lessons an experiment was carried out on a large number of children in sorting colored beads and arranging them according to the harmony of their colors, and it was established that the best result was the work of Usama and children like him. It became clear that there is a great connection with children's appreciation of flowers, their love of colors, and their understanding of them. For their keen interest in flowers and their observation of the colors of nature refine their visual taste and strengthen in them the instinct for harmony, so that they find distasteful in colors every clash which others might see as something beautiful — and is there any artist like nature in displaying the flowers of the gardens and the harmony of their colors?

(3) In the drawing lesson the teacher approached one of the children, aged three and a half, as he was filling his sheet from the promptings of his imagination. On the sheet she saw a boat with a sail, beneath it a fish, and in the corner of the sheet another, small boat. Sarmad explained his drawing according to the way he had laid it out, saying: "This is a boat traveling on the sea, and this is a fish swimming under it, and that is a boat very far away from the first boat, so I drew it small; and the fish is near, so it came out big!" Can anyone doubt Sarmad's bent for drawing and his appreciation of proportions, even at this early age?

(4) One spring day a man passed by the kindergarten leading a monkey, making it dance and play, and we thought of bringing him into the kindergarten garden for the children to watch. The man began drumming for the monkey and prompting it with certain orders, and the monkey obeyed and danced — which delighted the children greatly. Two days later the children were given pieces of the colored clay called "plasticine" and were asked to make familiar models of the things their eyes fall upon. After a short while the teacher passed by the children's seats and was astonished at the sight of Irfan, who had made from his clay a monkey standing on its hind legs, its hands in the air, and beside it its master, his hands on the drum hung from his neck! And all this with speed and skill. Irfan had not been among the outstanding children of his class before this gift was discovered in him — the gift of manual art, the fruit of the art of the eye — and so he rose in the eyes of his teachers, and came to be regarded with admiration and with esteem for art.

(5) In one kindergarten an experiment was carried out to discover the gift of music among fifty children. They were sitting talking when the teacher began to play the piano, and attentiveness appeared on most of them. Before long this group divided into two parts: some left their places and moved to another spot near the piano, and some resumed their talk. A number of them were observed tapping with foot or hand, keeping the time; and when the teacher changed the time, these children noticed it without any intention of doing so. A strange delight shone in their eyes at hearing these sweet strains. After this, the musical attention given to this group was doubled, and it bore its good fruit, and its result was astonishing. As for the ungifted group, they were exposed a great deal to hearing music suited to them, and after a while a perceptible difference was noticed in their taste for music and their appreciation of it.

(6) Whoever watches the kindergarten children during the dancing will soon have his eye caught by Faten, Greis, and Rayya; in their lightness, the nimble movement of their feet, and the motion of their bodies, it is as though they were created dancers, and they would gladly dance the whole day long without the least feeling of fatigue.

It would be only reasonable for Faten, Greis, and Rayya, for Irfan, Sarmad, and Usama, and for artistic children like them, to have something other than the weekly schedule of lessons prescribed for the other children.

And it is only just that these artists be given sufficient time to practice their art and to study under specialist masters of the arts, insofar as that can be made available to them. For it would be no surprise if from among these children and their like there should emerge artists of world rank, who would preserve the character of Arab art and its beautiful coloring, studying it, grasping its fine points, and clothing it in a new dress in keeping with modern taste while preserving its colors and its lines; thus from death would spring life, and a new age would open, heralded by a wave of renewal of which we stand in the most urgent need.