I can see this story as both positive and negative.
When you were in elementary school, I’m sure you can recall doodling on papers while daydreaming about being elsewhere. Almost every kid does it, but some teachers aren’t as tolerant of it as others. However, even if schools don’t always condone creative expression, it’s important that parents support that side of their children. When 9-year-old Joe Whale got in trouble for doodling in class, his parents urged him to keep drawing even if his teacher didn’t agree with it.
His parents picked up on Joe’s natural talent and sent him to an after-school art class where everyone around him was in awe of his abilities. Joe’s artistic abilities were so remarkable that he was asked to decorate the dining room of ‘Number 4’ restaurant in Shrewsbury, England. Known by most people as The Doodle Boy, Joe now has his own website and social media pages to showcase his work!
~~~~~~~~
The teacher is trying to teach. The kid is not paying attention.
He gets in trouble. Adults reward him.
Is this good or bad?
“When you were in elementary school, I’m sure you can recall doodling on papers while daydreaming about being elsewhere. ”
I still do that well over 70 years later.
I got in trouble for acting smart…
He won’t learn anything in school anyway. I think you might be a little envious BFH.
I know I am.
There is a time and place for everything.
Joe’s parents are wise in that they put him in an art class to further his creativity.
However to tell him to continue to ignore his teacher’s rules is fostering disrespect of authority. Breaking rules and disrespecting authority at a young age leads to the social upheaval that loots stores, burns buildings and kills peoples later on.
I’d rather see him do something he wants to do and is good at versus being forced to learn how to be less white. Buttt… If the school was trying to teach him 2+2 actually does equal 4 and he says “NO, I don’t care what it equals I want to doodle,” then there is a problem.
My doodling in class got me my first job as a draftsman while in college, which lead to my career as an engineer. My friend asked me for one of my drawings and showed it to his dad who was a structural engineer and gave me my first real job after high school. The rest is history.
I was doodling tanks and planes and soldiers from World War 2 when I was 10 or so in 1963 in 4th and 5th grade. It was the era of Combat on TV, movies like The Great Escape, The Longest Day etc. And I was reading every history book that I could get ahold of about World War 2. It drove my teachers nuts because they thought that I wasn’t paying attention, I was paying attention alright but not just to them because of my avid reading. I also daydreamed a lot and talked to myself and others in class and that drove the teachers nuts as well. They thought I had ADD when I was in Junior HS, I was just bored out of my skull and hated school. A couple of years later when I discovered Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and Rat Finks and cool cars I was doodling them and could draw some pretty mean looking cars, that also got me into trouble with the teachers. And I would doodle and draw characters in the margins of the paper of all sorts when I wrote letters home when I was in the Navy in the early to mid 70’s. I still have lots of those letters that I want to share with my kids and grandkids after I’m gone so they can see what I was like back then. And I still have a wild imagination which is a good thing. I was the kid who was really Ralph Phillips (or Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes or Red in Red and Rover) in the old Warner Bros. cartoons about the boy with the wild imagination that always got him into trouble and I’m not going to change. I also was the only one who knew that space was curved in Algebra in 10th grade because of reading a factoid about it in a Superman comic book and everyone who thought i was dumb was amazed that I knew that.
I’d rather have him express himself by doodling than being put on ADD medication and be in a stupor. I swear half the problems we have is due to the control of boys in the classroom via shame and medication in order for them to be more compliant. Any left handed child (as he is) needs to tap that creative side.
Did the teacher tell him there is a time for learning and a time for drawing? A good teacher could foster, rather than discourage, his drawing while still encouraging him to learn.
Rewarding the kid for defiant behavior in public school will make him into an insufferable brat. His parents need to keep him challenged by home schooling him or getting him into a creative private school –which they may be able to afford now, having monetized his works on a website selling t-shirts and prints.
I wonder how he was doing in school? There are some people who can pay attention by doing something with their hands (doodling, knitting, crocheting, etc.). If his grades were suffering then I would go with what Racer X stated above. The parents need to let the teacher handle the doodling in school and they can handle out of school.
He already knows that he is a guilty white person who is personally responsible for all the unforgiveable problems in the world. What more can school teach him? He’s better off developing marketable skills and learning from life experiences.
“If the school was trying to teach him 2+2 actually does equal 4…”
If the school was doing that, it should be shut down pending anti-racist training.
I don’t want to brag but when I was that age I was known as the “doodler boy”.
I don’t think it’s an either-or. This was me in school, not paying attention to the teacher’s lesson on times tables or whatever. Instead I was drawing The Beatles, guitars, Big Daddy Roth cars, dirt bikes and choppers. I had a 7th grade English teacher who was an ex Marine pin my head down on the desk behind me and chew me out for not paying attention while his face was literally 2 inches from mine. Scary stuff. But… he was right. I paid attention after that in his class and got an A on my next test.
Thankfully, I also had parents and a few great art teachers who encouraged my creativity and I ended up making a lifelong career of it. Like the kid in the story, I also got hired for projects while in school. In 5th grade an art teacher would come pull me out of class so I could spend the day painting art on the school lobby windows. Talk about privilege!
So, I’m not sure what the moral is here. Haha. Maybe that the kid should be disciplined for not paying attention AND encouraged to pursue his talent. Worked for me.
For the past 20 years schools have been geared toward girls.
Girl power this, girl power that.
Boys are not wired to sit for 5 or 6 hours a day.
99% of teachers are also women and not patient women.
They’ve been trying to chickify boys for ages.
If the teacher were interesting maybe the kid would do better and pay attention.
My kids were always in trouble for talking because they were so bored. Of course we were a household of geeks who watched science and history shows on tv all the time so my kids knew much of what was being taught already.
I paid attention in Mrs. Nealy’s 4th grade math class but she was aware that I liked to draw and she made it her objective to torment me for it. Math was not my strong suit no matter how I tried and even got extra help to get through it. If there was board work to be done she would always call on me to get in front of the class to do problems. My daily nightmare because I’d always screw up and get it wrong.
“ Why don’t you sit down and draw your silly pictures.” To which, she would call on Rosalie, the teachers pet, to finish my math problem correctly.
Thank god for Mrs. Ryan who recognized my ability in art and encouraged me in her class. She reached out to my parents because she thought I could grow up to be an artist one day.
Eff you Mrs. Nealy.
Rosalie grew up to be a lawyer.
Thank you Mrs. Ryan.
I did grow up to be an artist.
There is 1 genius among 1 billion doddling students. Geniuses always emerge eventually. But to indulge the remaining billion in b.s. will destroy everyone.
With today’s education nazis running perversion education in schools, they probably prefer seeing kids diddling instead of doodling.
I like seeing you all fired up there, Illustr8r!
Yup, it all depended on the teacher.
How is this an issue?
Kids 9. He got paid for decorating an entire restaurant.
Here’s my issue. All we do is bag on public education. We’re not very supportive of it. So when a kid comes along and succeeds in spite of it….we’re supposed to find fault with it?
The fudge is wrong with you people. Either public indoctrination sucks and our kids are better for avoiding, or beating the system… OR the little monster needs to sit down, shut up and be indoctrinated.
Pick one and lets stick with it. This flip flopping is tiresome.
I say good for the kid, fudge the school.
When I taught 4th grade in a private boy’s school, the so-called “ADHD” types were put in the back of the room and allowed to doodle while I taught. It’s a way for highly intelligent visual type learners to focus. The next day they could be counted on to ace the test.