I Am Better Than Your Kids - Maddox [1]
Then came the backlash.
I got hundreds of thousands of emails, some of which criticized me for grading the children harshly. I was accused of ageism—someone who discriminates based on age. The most common criticism I received was, “How dare you criticize kids? They’re children! Of course they can’t draw as well as you can, asshole!”
The irony is that, I’m actually not being ageist. By using the same standard to judge a child’s art as I would an adult’s, I’m treating them with equality. If a kid wants to impress me, he has to draw something awesome, just like an adult would. Kids don’t get a free pass just for being kids. In fact, the only way to treat kids fairly is to expect the same standards of excellence as you would anyone else.
Good Job
The two most dangerous words in the English language are: “good job.” It’s a quick little lie that parents tell their kids to encourage them to keep trying. Parents are afraid that if they tell their kids the truth, they’ll get discouraged and stop drawing. So what? More kids need to be discouraged. Since when is every kid supposed to be able to draw? Think about your own life for a moment. Of all the people you know, how many of them are artists, professionally? How many of them do something even tangentially related to art? For most people, that number is zero. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fine artists (including painters, sculptors, and illustrators) held about 23,600 jobs in 2008. With the U.S. Census Bureau estimating 307 million people in the US in 2009, only .008% are artists. You probably don’t know any artists. Statistically speaking, nobody does.
Somewhere between the time parents first gush undue praise and college, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. At a certain point, no amount of encouragement will make someone any better at art. That’s when something wonderful happens to these kids: they realize that they suck. Just as no amount of encouragement alone can make someone an airline pilot, mechanical engineer, or heart surgeon, kids come to realize they’re not actually artists.
So why art? Why is this the one discipline that parents feel necessary to push upon their kids? Why not mechanical engineering? Why do you never see parents handing a kid some graph paper, a calculator, and a copy of Newton’s Principia? Oh, I know! Because encouraging kids to keep trying something they suck at—or aren’t interested in—is a waste of time.
The only exceptions to this rule are reading, writing, and arithmetic. These skills are necessary for communication and understanding of all higher levels of education that succeed them. Visual art is not. Painting and drawing are forms of expression, and disingenuous support gives the child a disincentive to become better. Creators who can endure critics are the only ones who deserve to be creators. That is, anyone whose resolve is too weak to weather criticism of his or her art, shouldn’t be creating art. I’ve read tens of thousands of emails criticizing me over the years, for everything from my writing, grammar, style, penis size, clothing, hygiene, friends (or lack thereof), family and my receding hairline, to my sexual prowess and orientation (I’ve been accused of being a “gay faggot,” performing fellatio, and being a virgin all in the same paragraph). I’ve heard it all. And yet, I still create, because it’s what I love to do. I don’t need anyone to pat me on the ass and say “good job” to keep writing. In fact, both of my parents have begged me to stop. My mom even prayed that I would get cancer before going on my last book tour. She hoped that my book would fail, I’d go bankrupt, and that