Professor Stork

Professor Stork's Picture Book Obsession

Childrens picture books support the entire learning experience, from reading, math, history, and science, to sports and the arts. Yet budgets for art, music, and creative education in public schools have been declining for years. Teaching creativity in the classroom has been relegated to the back burner – the obvious first choice for budget cuts, sometimes for explainable reasons, but never for good reasons.

And while most communities provide wonderful opportunities for children to expand their creative thinking and experience the arts at local venues, most community venues are severely underutilized, and still schools rarely partner with these community venues to offer children quality alternatives to arts education. Children have gone offline by going online and we need to bring them back.

In a world that is changing exponentially faster than ever before, the need for children to experience “outside the box” creativity is critical to their future. They need to understand:

  • What a global society looks like.

  • Where the jobs be?

  • How societies can positively support all citizens?

Parents should plan frequent family visits to community venues such as libraries, art galleries, book stores, and museums. Parents should get on the mailing lists of these venues to become aware of upcoming events.

Math, reading, and science, while inspirational on their own, will not be enough for children to compete in tomorrow’s world. Children need to understand global cultures and be able to think outside the box to come up with creative solutions to problems the world has never before faced.

Plan a cultural mini-trip every other weekend to a local venue and, of course, have tons of fun along the way!

– Professor Stork