Kids Draw The News is a new weekly special assignment in the CityRoom blog of the New York times. Kids 12 and under are asked to illustrate a chosen current events story selected by the staff. I have mixed feelings about it because the age range is wide and the results are so varied. I know it is for entertainment purposes only, and not a "real" art assignment, but it would be so much richer if it were. Because of the vast age range, some kids really get what the stories are about (so far a brawl at the New York Athletic Club and the incident of a crowd member calling the mayor "pharaoh Bloomberg" at a City Hall rally) and some don't. Ask kids age 5-10 what their concerns and artistic goals are, and most of them will not mention anything about adult politics and scandal.
The way that they get the story also affects their interpretation of it- did their parents tell them the short version and ask them to draw a picture? Did the parents read the article or a summary of it out loud? Or maybe the child was old enough and interested enough to read the entire news story themselves. This is not the a short-coming of the kids, but what I see it the extraction of one or two juicy details from the story used as the inspiration for a drawing. What I don't see is understanding, interpretation, reflection. I am not demanding more of the kids, but it makes be wonder who's idea it was and what purpose it might serve. I think a more relevant and learner-centered idea would be to ask older kids (maybe 11-15) to choose a story from the past week and to react to it visually, with or without accompanying text.
