“Grown-ups love numbers. When you tell them you’ve made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best?’ Instead, they demand: ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they think they learn anything about him.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Lately, I’ve felt less like a human being and more like a value trapped inside a cell.
Even in the world of education and creativity, adults do the exact same thing Saint-Exupéry warned us about. They don’t ask about the breakthrough a student had, the beauty we uncovered, or how we are learning the true art of living through creation. Instead, the administrative metrics take over. They demand to know the enrollment statistics, the curriculum hours, and the budget line items.
We try to pack the infinite, messy beauty of human expression into neat little rows and columns, letting spreadsheets decide the value of our time. But you cannot calculate the human spirit, or art, on an Excel sheet.
I’m stepping out of the grid. As an art teacher, my mission is to teach the art of living with art, not how to conform to a matrix. I am more than a data point, and my work is entirely too vast to fit into a spreadsheet. It’s time to remember the essential things, the ones that are entirely invisible to the eyes.