Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life looking at trees and have followed, with my eyes, how the branches split into twigs and taper into leaves from quite a young age. This sort of close observation should be a prerequisite for drawing something whether in a realistic style or in one that requires primarily an understanding of the spirit and the idea of the tree rather than its actual physical details. In kindergarten, however, it proved to be a source of frustration in part because my fine motor skills were insufficient to allow me to draw what I saw and in part because when we had to draw trees as part of an in-class activity we were only given enough time to make lollipop-shaped deciduous trees or vaguely zigzag evergreens. Once when the teacher saw me growing frustrated (and falling several steps behind the rest of the class in the process), she told me to just draw the trees the way everyone else did.

I don’t mean to pick on her individually. I won’t even disclose her name (especially since it may have been the classroom assistant rather than the teacher). She probably believed she was doing the right thing; the problem, after all, is structural. Schools too often do not have as their goal the development of creativity and individuals’ ideas, abilities and vision but, rather, the creation of workers who can produce to schedule, who meet standards and only go beyond them in accepted ways and only when there is sufficient time to allow for it. There is no allowance for students to progress at their own pace, even when allowing extra time would mean that they would create something unique.

The worst teachers accept this. The best teachers struggle against it but are limited by class size, the demands of parents and administrators, and similar factors.

In the end, this incident became the most vividly remembered of several which together convinced me that I couldn’t really draw or create much of anything with my hands, except to the extent that camerawork counts.

That may be for the best in my case. I’m probably better at writing than I could ever be at sketching or painting. But I wonder how many genuine talents are suppressed in similar ways.