In a heartwarming video clip,3 a class of young Japanese children is
shown being instructed by an art teacher to ‘draw anything that comes up to
your mind’. While all the other children draw pictures of flowers and other
recognizable objects, the teacher notices a boy using crayons to color his art
paper completely black. He continues to do this day after day during class,
after class and even at home. His refusal to say what he is drawing creates
great anxieties for the teacher, his parents and the school administration. The
team of medical experts who examines him is baffled but fails to diagnose his
‘disorder’, and the boy is sent to a medical facility for observation. There he
continues to focus on coloring more pieces of art paper – most are completely
black but some have white patches on them. One day the art teacher discovers
a puzzle amongst the boy’s belongings at school and suspects that the
boy maybe drawing a large picture that requires the piecing together of the many sheets he has been coloring. The medical team rushes to arrange the
sheets and discovers the picture the boy has been attempting to draw – a
giant whale. The video clip ends with the caption: ‘How can you encourage
a child? Use your imagination’. It is disappointing that the adults involved
in the story made the judgment that the boy’s ‘different’/‘atypical’ behaviour
was ‘abnormal’, and assumed that his behaviour was caused by some kind
of ‘disorder’. With reference to the six ‘inadequate’ notions of culture stated
earlier, the adults – regardless of their differing roles, responsibilities and
backgrounds – seem to think that school culture is homogenous; a thing that is
devoid of individual agency. They expect every person in the school and society
to possess behavioural uniformity, a single identity within the group culture;
behaviours that conform to traditions/customary ways; and they believe in the
timeless quality of their group traditions.