Imprinting young minds with photography - personal experience of a photographer who introduces school children to process of photographic printing

PSA Journal, Dec, 1993 by Gaylord Younghein

It is startling to see 6-year-old kids washing and drying their prints with ease and self-assurance. It is inspiring, perhaps a bit humbling, to observe how quickly most young minds grasp a printmaking demonstration or compose their own picture.

I have given about 4,500 children their personal, hands-on photographic darkroom adventure within public schools over the past 12 years. I have been sponsored by a dynamic State Arts Council of Oklahoma as an "Artist in Residence." They, plus the State Department of Education, local school board, P.T.A. or community, jointly fund the activity almost anywhere in the state. It is called an "Arts m Education" program, integrated and documented with a school's normal curriculum and partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Ninety other professional artists, in various disciplines, are also certified by the council.

Is this the stuff of "star ratings"? Obviously, such extensive involvement in this kind of education may not be considered a PSA mission by some, yet it would not detract from it one whir if a member chose to participate. Consequently, this article is offered to you fellow PSAers on the chance that you may wish to conduct similar photographic activities with your children, grandchildren or your communities' children.

Your city or state arts council, or local school would greatly appreciate your sharing your in-depth skills with their students in a lighthearted, patient and empathetic manner. This old PSAer has long been "stepping to a different drummer"--"on a road less traveled." The involvement in young people's positive, intellectual growth, via photography, is deeply satisfying with a quality akin to a spiritual uplift.

Also, local chapters of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America always have many youngsters waiting for an adult who cares enough to be their Big Brother/Grandfather or Big Sister/Grandmother for merely a few hours a week. In this context, I don't view photography as the end-result, but as a means of achieving the greater end of changing lives. Your gift of a little time and caring can have an amazing, positive impact on a child. Too many children live in a darkness of indifference. Silently, they cry out; some no longer silent.

I work with no more than six similar students at a time in a classroom or spacious storeroom temporarily converted to a darkroom. Our state law requires a certified teacher or staff person to also be present. Except for older students, conventional cameras and photography are neither feasible nor artistically creative. Therefore I plan appropriate and fascinating hands-on activities for first grade through high school for the dull, the average and the gifted. The creative activities are continuously adjusted for the skill-level of the particular students to assure individual success, yet kept sufficiently challenging to assure their genuine sense of accomplishment.

There are three prime objectives:

1) Build self-esteem, WITHOUT exception, in each student by pride in accomplishment, with their own hands-on creative effort. The aim is to instill so much pride and joy that the students will always fondly remember the experience and carry their self-esteem to future activities. I tell children, "You will be so proud when you leave here that you will feel like you are 10 feet tall and have to stoop to get out the door!" Our sponsors remind us artists, "Having an impact on students is not sufficient; you must hit them so hard with their art and your role modeling, that you spin them around, changing their lives in a better direction." (It really happens!) The artists must submerge their own egos to improve the childrens'--with honest praise for their work.

2) The activity is sponsored by an arts organization so the students' visual products should be aesthetic and reflect their creativity. The school and parents expect a display of students' visual art from light-sensitive materials. In the process, students experience the benefits of being systematic and thorough, learning simple visual harmony through visual story telling, fantasies, abstract designs, symbolism and some fundamental craft skills with lightsensitive materials. All these are valid expressions in visual art.

3) The activity must present no health or safety hazards to children. The most unlikely accident or stupid blunder must hold zero threat to students. Federal regulations say that in a school environment, children under 12 shall not handle toxic chemicals. Convert only spacious, ventilated rooms to a temporary darkroom. Children under 12 are kept physically two feet away, with chairs, from very low toxicity trays of developers and fixers.

So you think this is too elementary for a person of your accomplishment? Ego? Surely you jest! The constant challenge is assuring that all kids produce interesting visual products, using a variety of techniques which are worthy of praise, because kids are bright enough to detect unmerited praise and reject it. With first and second graders, thirty minutes is usually the allotted maximum time because they get too excited. You must constantly, smoothly and precisely orchesitate the process, innovating to solve craft and creative problems in safe and practical ways, simultaneously, for all six kids, with their first try, within 55 minutes (or up to an hour and 15 minutes for a special activity). It is important to work with no more than six students at a time.