Imagination and creativity in childhood. Abstract on the work of L.S. Vygotsky Imagination and creativity in childhood. Chapter i. creativity and imagination

Founder of the Russian school of psychology L.S. Vygotsky viewed life as a continuous process of creativity, “constant tension and overcoming, constant combination and creation of new forms of behavior. Thus, our every thought, our every movement and experience is a desire to create a new reality, a breakthrough forward to something new” 1 .

Predecessors of L.S. Vygotsky in the study of problems of artistic creativity in Russian psychology were A.A. Potebnya and D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, whom he often mentions in his work “Psychology of Art”.

A.A. Potebnya, studying the processes of creativity, established that the driving force of personality development and the reason for all creativity is a person’s desire for truth and self-expression, and crystallized spirituality in works of art provides people with the power that illuminates the path to self-improvement for humanity.

D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky noted that art promotes an intimate understanding of people with each other, helps explain life, raises questions of moral consciousness and gives an idea of ​​human ideals. Social emotions, mediated by intellectual and moral standards, appear in works of art as embodiments of Conscience. It is she, awake in the artist’s soul, who is the criterion of humanity and humanity and is called upon to evaluate and guide people’s lives in the right direction.

Creative activity always creates “something new, no matter whether it is created... some thing in the external world or... a construct of the mind

" Vygotsky L. S. Imagination and creativity in childhood. M, 1991.

or feelings that live and are revealed only in the person himself” (Ibid.).

A detailed analysis of the psychology of artistic creativity was made in the work of L.S. Vygotsky "Psychology of Art".

Recognizing Freud's merits in the field of his discovery of the unconscious mechanisms of artistic creativity, L.S. Vygotsky moves far away from the pansexualism of the founder of psychoanalysis and proposes a completely new concept of art and the nature of its impact on humans.

In matters of creativity L.S. Vygotsky disagreed with Freud and criticized him for his adherence to the Oedipus complex, from which, according to the founder of psychoanalysis, the nature of art originates. As a public person, according to L.S. Vygotsky, there are various kinds of other drives that, no less than sexual ones, can determine his behavior. “Art,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky, - can never be fully explained from the small circle of personal life, but certainly requires an explanation from the large circle of social life. Art as the unconscious is only a problem; art as a social solution to the unconscious is her most likely answer.”

The most important distinctive feature art, according to the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky, is that with its magical power it can transform the dark sides of life into bright works of art, bringing his fans a feeling of high spiritual aesthetic pleasure. “A miracle of art,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky, - recalls the gospel miracle of turning water into wine.... Art always carries within itself something that overcomes ordinary feeling. Pain and excitement, when caused by art, carry something more than ordinary pain and excitement. The processing of feelings in art consists of turning them into their opposite, that is, the positive emotion that art carries within itself.” Art cannot arise where there is only

a simple and vivid feeling, pointed out L.S. Vygotsky. Even a feeling expressed by technology will never create either a lyric poem or a musical symphony; For both, a creative act of overcoming this feeling, resolving it, defeating it is also necessary, and only when this act is present does art realize 1. “The emotions of art are intelligent emotions. Instead of manifesting themselves in clenching fists and trembling, they are resolved primarily in images of fantasy” (Ibid. p. 201).

The most important technique with which the artist achieves a cathartic release of affect is the technique destruction of content by form.“...Every work of art,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky, “contains an internal discord between content and form, and... it is through form that the artist achieves the effect that the content is destroyed, as if extinguished” (Ibid. p. 273).

Using the examples of “Hamlet”, “Eugene Onegin”, I. Bunin’s story “Easy Breathing” by L.S. Vygotsky shows how a writer talks about the darker sides of life, but with the help of expressive means of art - composition, plot twists, author's digressions, comparisons and other techniques, the artist achieves that after communicating with his work, readers, viewers, listeners experience extraordinary spiritual enlightenment, called catharsis. “In this transformation of affects, in their spontaneous combustion, in the explosive reaction that was immediately caused, lies the catharsis of the aesthetic reaction” (Ibid. p. 274).

Creativity is the creation of new combinations based on elements of past experience. In the work “Psychology of Art” L.S. Vygotsky cites the thought of A.F. Lazursky that already during reading and immediately after it “a disintegration of the read passage occurs in the mind, a combination of its various parts with the stock of thoughts, concepts and ideas that were previously in the mind.” And here, as L.S. rightly believes. Vygotsky, the enormous role of the work of consciousness is visible. To reduce all creativity only to the play of the unconscious, as Z. Freud insisted, would be wrong.

Material from Dachess

Vygotsky L. S.– M.: Education, 1991. – 93 p.: ill./Psychol. essay: Book. for the teacher. – 3rd ed. –

The book by the famous Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) examines the psychological and pedagogical foundations of the development of children's creative imagination. First published in 1930 and republished by Prosveshchenie in 1967, this work was not included in the six-volume collected works of the psychologist, but did not lose its relevance and practical value. The book is equipped with a special afterword, which evaluates the works of L.S. Vygotsky in the field of children's creativity.
Teachers and parents will find in the book a lot of useful information about the literary, theatrical and visual creativity of preschoolers and primary schoolchildren.

CONTENTS Chapter I. Creativity and imagination 3 Chapter II. Imagination and reality 8 Chapter III. The mechanism of creative imagination 20 Chapter IV. Imagination in a child and teenager 26 Chapter V. “The pangs of creativity” 33 Chapter VI. Literary creativity at school age 36 Chapter VII. Theatrical creativity at school age 61 Chapter VIII. Drawing in childhood 66 Appendix 79 Afterword 87

A few excerpts from the book:

The first form of connection between imagination and reality is that any creation of the imagination is always built from elements taken from reality and contained in a person’s previous experience. It would be a miracle if the imagination could create out of nothing, or if it had other sources for its creations than previous experience. (8 – 9)

Here we find the first and most important law to which the activity of the imagination is subject. This law can be formulated as follows: the creative activity of the imagination is directly dependent on the richness and diversity of a person’s previous experience, because this experience represents the material from which fantasy structures are created. The richer a person's experience, the more material his imagination has at his disposal. This is why a child’s imagination is poorer than an adult’s, and this is explained by the greater poverty of his experience.
If you trace the history of great inventions, great discoveries, you can almost always establish that they were the result of vast experience accumulated previously. It is from this accumulation of experience that all imagination begins. The richer the experience, the richer, other things being equal, the imagination should be. (10)

Already from this first form of connection between fantasy and reality it is easy to see to what extent it is wrong to oppose them to each other. The combining activity of our brain turns out to be not something completely new in comparison with its preserving activity, but only a further complication of this first one. Fantasy is not the opposite of memory, but relies on it and arranges its data into new and new combinations. The combining activity of the brain is ultimately based on the same thing - the preservation in the brain of traces of previous excitations, and the whole novelty of this function comes down to the fact that, having traces of these excitations, the brain combines them into combinations that have not been encountered in its actual experience . (eleven)

It remains to be said about the fourth and final form of connection between fantasy and reality... The essence of this latter lies in the fact that the construction of fantasy can represent something essentially new, which has not been in human experience and does not correspond to any really existing object; however, being embodied outside, having taken on material embodiment, his “crystallized” imagination, having become a thing, begins to really exist in the world and influence other things.
Such imagination becomes reality. Examples of such crystallized, or embodied, imagination can be any technical device, machine or tool. They are created by the combining imagination of man, they do not correspond to any pattern existing in nature, but they exhibit the most convincing, effective, practical connection with reality, because, having become incarnate, they became as real as other things, and exert their influence on the environment around them. world of reality.
Such products of the imagination have gone through a very long history, which perhaps should be outlined in the shortest possible schematic way. We can say that in their development they described a circle. The elements from which they are built were taken by man from reality. Inside a person, in his thinking, they underwent complex processing and turned into products of the imagination.
Having finally incarnated, they returned to reality again, but they returned as a new active force, changing this reality. This is the full circle of the creative activity of the imagination. (16)

...this phenomenon reveals to us the last and most important feature of the imagination, without which the picture we have drawn would be incomplete in its most essential aspects. This trait is the desire of the imagination for embodiment; this is the true basis and driving principle of creativity. Any construction of the imagination, based on reality, strives to describe a full circle and become reality.
Arising in response to our desire and impulse, the construction of the imagination tends to become reality. The imagination, due to the impulses inherent in it, strives to become creative, that is, effective, active, transforming what its activity is aimed at. In this sense, Ribot rightly compares daydreaming and lack of will. For this author, this unsuccessful form of creative imagination is perfectly analogous to impotence of will. For him, imagination in the intellectual sphere corresponds to will in the sphere of movements. People always want something - whether it be something empty or important; they also always invent for a certain purpose - will it be

(Document)

n1.doc

Vygotsky L. S.

Imagination and creativity in childhood. SPb.: UNION,

1997, 96 p.
LR No. 070223 dated 02/06/92. ISBN No. 5-87852-033-8
This book by the famous Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky examines the psychological and pedagogical foundations of the development of children's creative imagination.

Teachers and parents will find in the book a lot of useful information about the literary, theatrical and visual creativity of preschoolers and primary schoolchildren.

Head of Editorial Office A. N. Drachev
Original layout by K. P. Orlova
IKF "MiM - Express",

Cover design, 1997

CHAPTERI
CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION
We call creative activity such human activity that creates something new, no matter whether this creation created by creative activity is some thing in the external world or a known structure of the mind or feeling, living and revealed only in the person himself. If we look at a person’s behavior, at all his activities, we can easily see that in this activity two main types of actions can be distinguished. One type of activity can be called reproductive, or reproductive; it is closely connected with our memory; its essence lies in the fact that a person reproduces or repeats previously created and developed methods of behavior or resurrects traces of previous impressions. When I remember the home in which I spent my childhood, or distant countries that I once visited, I reproduce traces of those impressions that I received in early childhood or during travel. Just as precisely, when I draw from life, write or do something according to a given model, in all these cases I reproduce only what exists in front of me, or what was learned and developed by me earlier. In all these cases, the common thing is that my activity does not create anything new, that its basis is a more or less exact repetition of what happened.

It is easy to understand how enormously important such preservation of his previous experience is for a person’s entire life, how much it facilitates his adaptation to the world around him, creating and developing permanent habits that are repeated in the same conditions.

The organic basis of such reproducing activity or memory is the plasticity of our nervous substance. Plasticity is the property of a substance, which consists in its ability to change and retain traces of this change. So, wax in this sense is more plastic than, say, water or iron, because it is easier to change than iron, and retains a trace of change better than water. Only both of these properties, taken together, form the plasticity of our nervous substance. Our brain and our nerves, which have enormous plasticity, easily change their subtle structure under the influence of certain influences and retain a trace of these changes if these excitations were strong enough or repeated often enough. Something happens in the brain similar to what happens to a piece of paper when we fold it in the middle; a trace remains at the point of inflection - the result of the change made and a predisposition to repeat this change in the future. If you now blow on this paper, it will bend in the very place where the mark was left.

The same thing happens with the trace left by a wheel on soft ground: a rut is formed, which consolidates the changes made by the wheel and facilitates the movement of the wheel in the future. In our brain, strong or frequently repeated stimulation produces a similar blaze of new paths.

Thus, our brain turns out to be an organ that preserves our previous experience and facilitates the reproduction of this experience. However, if the activity of the brain were limited only to the preservation of previous experience, man would be a creature that could adapt primarily to familiar, stable environmental conditions. Any new and unexpected changes in the environment that were not encountered in a person’s previous experience, in this case, could not cause a proper adaptive reaction in a person. Along with this function of preserving previous experience, the brain has another function, no less important.

In addition to reproducing activity, it is easy to notice another type of activity in human behavior, namely combining or creative activity. When I picture in my imagination a picture of the future, say, the life of man under the socialist system, or a picture of the distant past of the life and struggle of prehistoric man, in both these cases I do not reproduce the impressions that I once had the opportunity to experience. I am not simply renewing the trace of previous irritations that reached my brain, I have never actually seen either this past or this future, but I can have my own idea, my image, my picture about it. Any human activity, the result of which is not the reproduction of impressions or actions that were in his experience, but the creation of new images or actions, will belong to this second type of creative or combining behavior. The brain is not only an organ that preserves and reproduces our previous experience, it is also an organ that combines, creatively processes and creates new positions and new behavior from the elements of this previous experience. If human activity were limited to just reproducing the old, then man would be a creature turned only to the past, and would be able to adapt to the future only insofar as it reproduces this past. It is the creative activity of a person that makes him a being turned to the future, creating it and modifying his present.

This creative activity, based on the combining ability of our brain, psychology calls imagination or fantasy. Usually what is meant by imagination or fantasy is not exactly what is meant by these words in science. In everyday life, imagination or fantasy is called everything that is unreal, that does not correspond to reality, and that, thus, cannot have any practical serious significance. In fact, imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is equally manifested in all aspects of cultural life, making artistic, scientific and technical creativity possible. In this sense, everything that surrounds us and what is made by the hand of man, the entire world of culture, in contrast to the world of nature, is all a product of human imagination and creativity based on this imagination.

“Every invention,” says Ribot, “large or small, before becoming stronger and actually being realized, was united only by imagination - a structure erected in the mind through new combinations or relationships.

The vast majority of inventions were made by someone unknown; only a few names of the great inventors have been preserved. Imagination always remains, however, by itself, no matter how it manifests itself: in an individual, or collectively. In order for the plow, which was at first a simple piece of wood with a burnt tip, to transform from such an ingenuous hand tool into what it has now become after a long series of modifications described in special works, who knows how many imaginations had to work on it? In like manner the dim flame of a resinous tree knot, which was a crude primitive torch, leads us through a long series of inventions to gas and electric lighting. All objects of everyday life, not excluding the simplest and most ordinary, are, so to speak, crystallized imagination.

From this alone it is easy to see that our everyday idea of ​​creativity also does not fully correspond to the scientific understanding of this word. In the usual view, creativity is the lot of a few chosen people, geniuses, talents who created great works of art, made great scientific discoveries or invented some improvements in the field of technology. We readily recognize and easily recognize creativity in the activities of Tolstoy, Edison and Darwin, but it usually seems to us that in the life of an ordinary person this creativity does not exist at all.

However, as already said, such a view is incorrect. According to one of the Russian scientists, just as electricity acts and manifests itself not only where there is a majestic thunderstorm and dazzling lightning, but also in the light bulb of a flashlight, so creativity actually exists not only where it creates great historical works, but also everywhere where a person imagines, combines, changes and creates something new, no matter how small this new thing may seem in comparison with the creations of geniuses. If we take into account the presence of collective creativity, which unites all these often insignificant grains of individual creativity, it becomes clear what a huge part of everything created by humanity belongs to the nameless collective creative work of unknown inventors.

The vast majority of inventions were made by someone unknown, as Ribot quite correctly says about this. Scientific understanding of this issue thus forces us to view creativity as the rule rather than the exception. Of course, the highest expressions of creativity are still accessible only to a select few geniuses of mankind, but in the everyday life around us, creativity is a necessary condition of existence, and everything that goes beyond the routine and that contains even an iota of the new owes its origin to the creative process of man.

If we understand creativity in this way, then it is easy to notice that creative processes are revealed in all their strength already in very early childhood. One of the very important issues of child psychology and pedagogy is the question of creativity in children, the development of this creativity and the importance of creative work for the overall development and maturation of the child. Already at a very early age we find creative processes in children, which are best expressed in children's games. A child who, sitting astride a stick, imagines that he is riding a horse, a girl who plays with a doll and imagines herself as its mother, a child who in play turns into a robber, into a Red Army soldier, into a sailor - all these playing children represent examples the most authentic, the most real creativity. Of course, in their games they reproduce a lot of what they saw. Everyone knows what a huge role imitation plays in children's games. The child's games very often serve only as an echo of what he saw and heard from adults, and yet these elements of the child's previous experience are never reproduced in the game in exactly the same way as they were presented in reality. A child’s play is not a simple recollection of experiences, but a creative processing of experienced impressions, combining them and building from them a new reality that meets the needs and desires of the child himself. In the same way, children’s desire to write is the same activity of imagination as play.

“A boy of three and a half years old,” says Ribot, “seeing a lame man walking along the road, cried out:

Mom, look at this poor man's leg!

Then the novel begins: he was sitting on a high horse, he fell on a large stone, he hurt his leg; We should find some powder to cure it.”

In this case, the combining activity of the imagination is extremely familiar to the child from previous experience, otherwise he could not have created it; however, the combination of these elements already represents something new, creative, belonging to the child himself, and not simply reproducing what the child had the opportunity to observe or see. This ability to create a structure from elements, to combine the old into new combinations is the basis of creativity.

With complete justice, many authors point out that the roots of such creative combinations can be seen in the games of animals. The play of an animal is also very often a product of motor imagination. However, these beginnings of creative imagination in animals could not receive any lasting and strong development under the conditions of their life, and only man developed this form of activity to its true height.

CHAPTERII
IMAGINATION AND REALITY
However, the question arises: how does this creative combining activity occur? Where does it come from, what is it conditioned by and what laws does it obey in its flow? Psychological analysis of this activity indicates its enormous complexity. It does not arise immediately, but very slowly and gradually, develops from more elementary and simple forms into more complex ones, at each age level it has its own expression, each period of childhood is characterized by its own form of creativity. Further, it does not stand alone in human behavior, but turns out to be directly dependent on other forms of our activity, and in particular on the accumulation of experience.

In order to understand the psychological mechanism of imagination and related creative activity, it is best to start by clarifying the connection that exists between fantasy and reality in human behavior. We have already said that the everyday view, which separates fantasy and reality by an impassable line, is incorrect. Now we will try to show all four main forms that connect the activity of imagination with reality. Clarification of this will help us understand imagination not as an idle amusement of the mind, not as an activity hanging in the air, but in its vital function.

The first form of connection between imagination and reality is that any creation of the imagination is always built from elements taken from reality and contained in a person’s previous experience. It would be a miracle if the imagination could create out of nothing, or if it had other sources for its creations than previous experience. Only religious and mystical ideas about human nature could attribute the origin of fantasy products not to our previous experience, but to some extraneous, supernatural force. According to these views, gods or spirits inspire people with dreams, poets with the ideas of their works, and legislators with the Ten Commandments. Scientific analysis of the most distant from reality and the most fantastic constructions, for example fairy tales, myths, legends, dreams, etc., convinces us that the most fantastic creations are nothing more than a new combination of such elements that were gleaned from ultimately from reality and were subjected only to the distorting or processing activities of our imagination.

The hut on chicken legs exists, of course, only in a fairy tale, but the elements from which this fairy-tale image is built are taken from real human experience, and only their combinations bear the trace of a fairy-tale, i.e., construction that does not correspond to reality. Let’s take, for example, the image of a fairy-tale world, as Pushkin paints it:

“Near the Lukomorye there is a green oak tree, a golden chain on that oak tree, and day and night the learned cat keeps walking around the chain. He goes to the right - he starts a song, to the left - he tells a fairy tale. There are miracles there: a goblin wanders there, a mermaid sits on the branches; there, on unknown paths, are traces of unprecedented animals; the hut there on chicken legs stands without windows, without doors.”

You can follow this entire passage word by word and show that only the combination of elements in this story is fantastic, and the elements themselves are drawn from reality. An oak tree, a golden chain, a cat, songs - all this exists in reality, and only the image of a learned cat walking along a golden chain and telling fairy tales, only the combination of these elements is a fairy tale. As for the purely fairy-tale images that appear further, such as the goblin, the mermaid, the hut on chicken legs - they also represent only a complex combination of some elements suggested by reality. In the image of a mermaid, for example, the idea of ​​a woman meets with the idea of ​​a bird sitting on the branches; in the magic hut the idea of ​​chicken legs - with the idea of ​​the hut, etc.

Thus, the imagination always builds from the materials given by reality. True, as can be seen from the above passage, the imagination can create more and more degrees of combination, first combining the primary elements of reality (cat, chain, oak), then secondarily combining fantasy images (mermaid, goblin), etc. and etc. According to the last elements from which the most distant from reality fantastic idea is created, these last elements will always be impressions of reality.

Here we find the first and most important law to which the activity of the imagination is subject. This law can be formulated as follows: the creative activity of the imagination is directly dependent on the richness and diversity of a person’s previous experience, because this experience represents the material from which fantasy structures are created. The richer a person's experience, the more material his imagination has at his disposal. This is why a child’s imagination is poorer than an adult’s, and this is explained by the greater poverty of his experience.

If you trace the history of great inventions, great discoveries, you can almost always establish that they were the result of vast experience accumulated previously. It is from this accumulation of experience that all imagination begins. The richer the experience, the richer, other things being equal, the imagination should be.

After the moment of accumulation of experience, “begins,” says Ribot, “a period of maturation or incubation (incubation). For Newton it lasted 17 years, and at the moment when he finally established his discovery in calculations, he was seized with such a strong feeling that he had to trust someone else to take care of completing this calculation. The mathematician Hamilton tells us that his method of quaternions, completely ready, suddenly presented itself to him when he was at Dublin Bridge: “At that moment I received the result of 15 years of labor.” Darwin collects materials during his travels, observes plants and animals for a long time, and then reading a random book by Malthus strikes him and finally determines his teaching. Similar examples are found abundantly in literary and artistic creations.”

The pedagogical conclusion that can be drawn from this is the need to expand the child’s experience if we want to create a sufficiently strong foundation for his creative activity. The more a child has seen, heard and experienced, the more he knows and has learned, the more elements of reality he has in his experience, the more significant and productive, other things being equal, will be the activity of his imagination.

Already from this first form of connection between fantasy and reality it is easy to see to what extent it is wrong to oppose them to each other. The combining activity of our brain turns out to be not something completely new in comparison with its preserving activity, but only a further complication of this first one. Fantasy is not the opposite of memory, but relies on it and arranges its data into new and new combinations. The combining activity of the brain is ultimately based on the same thing - the preservation in the brain of traces of previous excitations, and the whole novelty of this function comes down to the fact that, having traces of these excitations, the brain combines them into combinations that have not been encountered in its actual experience .

The second form of connection between fantasy and reality is another, more complex connection, this time not between the elements of a fantastic construction and reality, but between the finished product of fantasy and some complex phenomenon of reality. When, based on the study and stories of historians or travelers, I compose a picture of the Great French Revolution or the African desert, then in both cases the picture is the result of the creative activity of the imagination. It does not reproduce what I perceived in previous experience, but creates new combinations from this experience.

In this sense, it completely obeys the first law that we described above. And these products of the imagination consist of modified and processed elements of reality, and a large supply of previous experience is needed in order for these images to be built from its elements. If I did not have an idea of ​​waterlessness, sandiness, vast spaces, animals inhabiting the desert, I could not, of course, create the very idea of ​​this desert. If I did not have many historical ideas, I would also not be able to create in my imagination a picture of the French Revolution.

The dependence of the imagination on previous experience is revealed here with exceptional clarity. But at the same time, there is something new in these fantasy constructions that distinguishes them very significantly from the fairy-tale passage from Pushkin that we examined above. Both the picture of the seaside with a learned cat, and the picture of the African desert, which I have not seen, are equally constructs of the imagination, created by a combining fantasy from elements of reality. But the product of imagination, the very combination of these elements, in one case is unreal (a fairy tale), in another case the very connection of these elements, the very product of fantasy, and not just its elements, correspond to some phenomenon of reality. It is this connection of the final product of imagination with one or another real phenomenon that represents this second or highest form of connection between fantasy and reality.

This form of connection is only made possible through someone else's or social experience. If no one had ever seen or described the African desert and the French Revolution, then a correct understanding of it would be completely impossible for us. Only because my imagination does not work freely in these cases, but is guided by someone else’s experience, acts as if at someone else’s direction, only thanks to this can the result that is obtained in the present case be obtained, i.e., that the product of imagination coincides with reality. In this sense, imagination acquires a very important function in human behavior and development; it becomes a means of expanding a person’s experience, because he can imagine something that he has not seen, he can imagine from someone else’s story and description something that is in his immediate experience. personal experience it was not, he is not limited to the narrow circle and narrow limits of his own experience, but can go far beyond, assimilating with the help of the imagination someone else's historical or social experience. In this form, imagination is an absolutely necessary condition for almost all human mental activity. When we read a newspaper and learn about a thousand events that we have not directly witnessed, when a child studies geography or history, when we simply learn from a letter about what is happening to another person - in all these cases our imagination serves our experience.

The result will be a dual and mutual dependence of imagination and experience. If in the first case the imagination is based on experience, then in the second the experience itself is based on the imagination.

The third form of connection between the activity of imagination and reality is an emotional connection. This connection manifests itself in two ways. On the one hand, every feeling, every emotion strives to be embodied in certain images that correspond to this feeling. Emotion thus has the ability to select impressions, thoughts and images that are consonant with the mood that possesses us at a given moment. Everyone knows that in grief and joy we see everything with completely different eyes. Psychologists have long noticed the fact that every feeling has not only an external, bodily expression, but also an internal expression, which is reflected in the selection of thoughts, images and impressions. They called this phenomenon the law of double expression of feelings. Fear, for example, is expressed not only in pallor, trembling, dry throat, altered breathing and heartbeat, but also in the fact that all the impressions perceived by a person at this time, all the thoughts that come to his mind are usually surrounded by the feeling that controls him. When the proverb says that the frightened crow of the bush is drinking, it means precisely this influence of our feelings, coloring the perception of external objects. Just as people have long learned to express their internal states through external impressions, so too do the images of fantasy serve as a morning expression for our feelings. A person marks grief and mourning in black, joy in white, calm in blue, rebellion in red. Fantasy images provide an internal language for our feelings. This feeling selects individual elements of reality and combines them into a connection that is determined from the inside by our mood, and not from the outside, by the logic of these images themselves.

Psychologists call this influence of the emotional factor on combining fantasy the law of the general emotional sign. The essence of this law comes down to the fact that impressions or images that have a common emotional sign, that is, producing a similar emotional effect on us, tend to unite with each other, despite the fact that there is no connection either in similarity or contiguity between these images do not exist evidently. The result is a combined work of imagination, which is based on a common feeling, or a common emotional sign that unites disparate elements that have come into contact.

“Representations,” says Ribot, “accompanied by the same affective state of reaction, are subsequently associated with each other; affective similarity connects and links dissimilar representations. This is different from association by contiguity, which represents repetition of experience, and from association by similarity in the intellectual sense. Images are mutually combined not because they were given together before, not because we perceive relations of similarity between them, but because they have a common affective tone. Joy, sadness, love, hatred, surprise, boredom, pride, fatigue, etc. can become centers of attraction, grouping ideas or events that do not have rational relationships with each other, but are marked by the same emotional symbol or label: for example, joyful, sad , erotic, etc. This form of association is very often represented in dreams or in daydreams, that is, in a state of mind in which the imagination enjoys complete freedom and works at random, at random. It is easy to understand that this obvious or hidden influence of the emotional factor should contribute to the emergence of completely unexpected groupings and represents an almost limitless field for new combinations, since the number of images having the same affective imprint is very large.”

As the simplest example of such a combination of images that have a common emotional sign, we can cite the usual cases of convergence of any two different impressions that have absolutely nothing in common with each other, except that they evoke similar moods in us. When we call a blue tone cold and a red tone warm, we bring together the impression of blue and cold only on the basis that they evoke similar moods in us. It is easy to understand that fantasy, guided by such an emotional factor - the internal logic of feeling, will represent the most subjective, most internal type of imagination.

However, there is also a feedback connection between imagination and emotion. If in the first case we described, feelings influence the imagination, then in the other, opposite case, imagination influences feeling. This phenomenon could be called the law of emotional reality of the imagination. The essence of this law is formulated by Ribot as follows.

“All forms of creative imagination,” he says, “involve affective elements.” This means that any construction of fantasy has a negative impact on our feelings, and even if this construction does not correspond to reality in itself, then nevertheless the feeling it evokes is an effective, realistically experienced feeling that captivates a person. Let us imagine the simplest case of illusion. Entering the room at dusk, the child, through an illusion, mistakes the hanging dress for a stranger or a robber who has entered the house. The image of a robber created by a child’s fantasy is unreal, but the fear experienced by the child, his fright, are completely valid, real experiences for the child. Something similar happens with any decisively fantastic construction, and it is this psychological law that should explain to us why works of art created by the imagination of their authors have such a strong effect on us.

The passions and destinies of fictional characters, their joy and grief disturb, excite and infect us, despite the fact that we know that before us are not real events, but a fiction of fantasy. This happens only because the emotions that artistic fantastic images infect us with from the pages of a book or from the theater stage are completely real and are experienced by us truly seriously and deeply. Often a simple combination of external impressions, such as a piece of music, evokes in the person who listens to the music a whole complex world of experiences and feelings. This expansion and deepening of feeling, its creative restructuring constitutes psychological basis art of music.

It remains to be said about the fourth and final form of connection between fantasy and reality. This last form is closely related in one way to the one just described, but in another it differs significantly from it. The essence of this latter lies in the fact that the construction of a fantasy can represent something essentially new, which has not been in human experience and does not correspond to any really existing object; however, being embodied outside, having taken on material embodiment, his “crystallized” imagination, having become a thing, begins to really exist in the world and influence other things.

Such imagination becomes reality. Examples of such crystallized, or embodied, imagination can be any technical device, machine or tool. They are created by the combining imagination of man, they do not correspond to any pattern existing in nature, but they exhibit the most convincing, effective, practical connection with reality, because, having become incarnate, they became as real as other things, and exert their influence on the environment around them. world of reality.

Such products of the imagination have gone through a very long history, which perhaps should be outlined in the shortest possible schematic way. We can say that in their development they described a circle. The elements from which they are built were taken by man from reality. Inside a person, in his thinking, they underwent complex processing and turned into products of the imagination.

Having finally incarnated, they returned to reality again, but they returned as a new active force, changing this reality. This is the full circle of the creative activity of the imagination. It would be wrong to believe that only in the field of technology, in the field of practical influence on nature, is the imagination capable of describing such a full circle. Also in the field of emotional imagination, that is, subjective imagination, such a complete circle is possible, and it is very easy to trace it.

The fact is that it is precisely when we have before us the full circle described by the imagination that both factors - intellectual and emotional - turn out to be equally necessary for the act of creativity. Feeling, like thought, drives human creativity. “Every dominant thought,” says Ribot, “is supported by some need, aspiration or desire, that is, an affective element, because it would be sheer nonsense to believe in the constancy of any idea, which, by assumption, would be in a purely intellectual state , in all its dryness and coldness. Every dominant feeling (or emotion) must be concentrated into an idea or into an image that would give it flesh, a system, without which it remains in a vague state. Thus, we see that these two terms - the dominant thought and the dominant emotion - are almost equivalent to each other each other because both contain two inseparable elements and indicate only the predominance of one or the other.”

The easiest way to verify this is again using the example of artistic imagination. Really, what is a work of art for? Doesn't it affect our inner world, on our thoughts and feelings as accurately as technical tools on the external world, the natural world? We will bring simplest example, from which it is easy for us to understand in the most elementary form the action of artistic fantasy. The example is taken from Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter”. This story describes Pugachev's meeting with the hero of this story, Grinev, on whose behalf the story is told. Grinev, an officer who was captured by Pugachev, persuades Pugachev to resort to the mercy of the empress and to lag behind his comrades. He cannot understand what motivates Pugachev. “Pugachev smiled bitterly:

No,” he answered, “it’s too late for me to repent.” There will be no mercy for me. I will continue as I started. Who knows? Maybe it will work! Grishka Otrepyev reigned over Moscow after all.

Do you know how he ended up? They threw him out of the window, stabbed him, burned him, loaded a cannon with his ashes and fired him out!

Listen,” said Pugachev with some wild inspiration. - I’ll tell you a fairy tale that an old Kalmyk woman told me as a child. One day an eagle asked a raven: “Tell me, raven bird, why have you lived in this world for three hundred years, and I am only thirty-three years?” - “That’s why, father, -

The raven answered him, “You drink living blood, and I feed on carrion.” The eagle thought: let's try and eat the same way. Fine. The eagle and the raven flew away. Here we saw a dead horse. We went down and sat down. The raven began to peck and praise. The eagle pecked once, pecked again, waved its wing and said to the raven: “No, brother raven, rather than eat carrion for three hundred years, it’s better to drink living blood once, and then what God will give!” “What is a Kalmyk fairy tale?”

The fairy tale told by Pugachev is a product of imagination and, it would seem, imagination, completely devoid of connection with reality. A talking raven and an eagle could only be imagined in the fiction of an old Kalmyk woman. However, it is easy to notice that in some other sense this fantastic construction comes directly from reality and affects this reality. But reality is not external, but internal - the world of thoughts, concepts and feelings

The man himself. They say about such works that they are strong not in external, but in internal truth. It is easy to notice that in the images of a raven and an eagle. Pushkin presented two different types of thought and them, two different attitudes to the world, and what could not be understood from a cold, dry conversation - the difference between the point of view of the average man and the point of view of the rebel - this difference was imprinted with perfect clarity and with enormous power of feeling in the mind of the speaker through a fairy tale.

The fairy tale helped to clarify the complex everyday attitude; her images seemed to illuminate a life problem, and what cold prosaic speech could not have done, the fairy tale did with its figurative and emotional language. That is why Pushkin is right when he says that a poem can hit hearts with unknown force, that is why in another poem he speaks about the reality of the emotional experience caused by fiction: “I will shed tears over fiction.” It is worth remembering what effect it has on public consciousness some work of art, in order to make sure that here the imagination describes the same full circle as when it is embodied in a material instrument. Gogol composed "The Inspector General", the actors acted it out in the theater, and the author and the actors created works of fantasy, and the play itself, performed in a dream, revealed with such clarity all the horror of Russia at that time, with such force it ridiculed the foundations on which life rested and which seemed unshakable, that everyone felt it, and the Tsar himself, who was present at the first performance, more everyone that the play contained the greatest threat to the system that it depicted.

“Everyone got it today, and I got it more than anyone else,” Nikolai said at the first performance.

Works of art can produce such an impact on the public consciousness of people only because they have their own internal logic. The author of any work of art, like Pugachev, combines fantasy images not in vain, not to no avail, without arbitrarily piling them on top of one another, by chance, as during a dream or meaningless reverie. On the contrary, they follow the internal logic of the images being developed, and this internal logic is determined by the connection that the work establishes between its world and between the external world. In the fairy tale about the raven and the eagle, the images are arranged and combined according to the laws of logic of the then two forces, which met in the person of Grinev and Pugachev. A very interesting example of such a full circle, which a work of art describes, is given in his confessions by L. Tolstoy. He talks about how the image of Natasha came to him in the novel War and Peace.

“I took Tanya,” he says, “I had a conversation with Sonya, and Natasha came out.”

Tanya and Sonya are his sister-in-law and wife, two real women, from the combination of which the artistic image originated. These elements taken from reality are further combined not according to the free whim of the artist, but according to the internal logic of the artistic image. Tolstoy once heard the opinion of one of his readers that he acted cruelly to Anna Karenina, the heroine of his novel, forcing her to throw herself under the wheels of a passing train. Tolstoy said:

“This reminds me of the incident with Pushkin. One day he said to one of his friends:

Imagine what kind of trick Tatyana played with me, she got married. I never expected this from her.

I can say the same about Anna Karenina. In general, my heroes and heroines sometimes do things that I would not want. They do what they should do in real life and as happens in real life, and not what I want.”

We find this kind of recognition in a number of artists who note the same internal logic that governs the construction of an artistic image. In an excellent example, Wundt expressed this logic of fantasy when he said that the thought of marriage can inspire the thought of burial (the union and separation of the bride and groom), but not the thought of toothache.

So in a work of art, we often encounter distant and outwardly unrelated features, but, however, not extraneous to each other, like the thought of toothache and the thought of marriage, but connected by internal logic.

PROSPECTS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF IDEAS L.S. VYGOTSKY

ABOUT CHILDREN'S ART CREATIVITY

Yu.A. POLUYANOV

Problems of art, artistic creativity and psychology of imagination for L.S. Vygotsky’s ideas were relevant from the beginning to the end of his scientific activity. Already in “The Psychology of Art” he outlined a number of such profound provisions on these problems that from 1965 (when it was first published) to the present day and, apparently, for a long time they will excite the minds of researchers, psychologists, art historians, and teachers. The only conclusion is that the basis of the aesthetic reaction - catharsis - is the disembodiment of the content by the form of art, despite solid confirmation in theory and practice (for example, in V.A. Favorsky “The Content of Form”, “On the Expressiveness of Artistic Form”, and in our days remains the subject of fierce debate.In the same book, L.S. Vygotsky outlined those fundamental ideas about children's artistic creativity, which he later developed in “Pedagogical Psychology” and the psychological essay “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood.”

The last work (published in 1967 in the form of a small book) to this day, 65 years after its publication, remains useful to psychologists, teachers, and parents. It is distinguished by scientific accuracy, simplicity of presentation, clarity in the analysis of facts - rare in popular literature.

The basis of this essay is artistic creativity: literary, theatrical, visual. However, the psychological mechanism of productive imagination is described in such a way that it can easily be applied to technical and other types of creativity in children and adolescents. The famous Italian writer G. Rodari, working on the book “The Grammar of Fantasy,” spent a lot of effort, bit by bit collecting scientific information about the imagination of children. Complaining about the paucity of this factual information and the vagueness of presentation in the literature, he enthusiastically writes:

“But L.S. Vygotsky’s book is entirely made of silver and pure gold.”

Using the material mainly from this book, we will try to show the possibilities and prospects for the implementation of L.S. Vygotsky’s ideas in the psychological and pedagogical construction of guiding children’s visual creativity, supplementing them with the provisions of his other scientific works, primarily the work “Pedagogical Psychology”, which clearly indicates the main danger of all existing concepts of aesthetic education of children, namely that “aesthetics in the service of pedagogy always fulfills other people’s orders and, according to teachers, should serve as a way and means for educating knowledge, feeling or moral will.” Consequently, either aesthetics does not fulfill its own task at all, or it is left with a tertiary role of decorating, softening, ennobling people’s life, and not the place of one of the fundamental and sovereign aspects of a person’s spiritual life.

Despite its great popularity among teachers, parents and the close attention of scientists, children's creativity remains a largely mysterious phenomenon for psychology and pedagogy. Creative activity always creates “something new, no matter whether it is created... some thing in the external world or... a construct of the mind or feeling that lives and is revealed only in the person himself.” And for this, “in the development of children’s artistic creativity, including visual creativity, it is necessary to observe the principle of freedom, which is generally an indispensable condition for all creativity.” It would seem that it is very simple to implement this principle, for example, in school lessons, but this is not so. Freedom as non-interference by the hands of a teacher in a child’s drawing, as “refusal of the desire to equate it with the consciousness of an adult, recognition of its originality and characteristics constitute the basic requirements of psychology.” However, it does not follow from this that freedom consists in removing the adult from the child’s creativity.

Primary school teachers are well aware of this curious fact. According to the school programs "Fine Arts", lessons "Drawing on a free topic" are conducted, designed for the maximum manifestation of the artistic individuality of each child. Students are given complete creative freedom, but it baffles a small child (a first-grader). At first he likes that he was allowed to draw whatever he wants. Then he remembers that at school you have to do everything well and correctly, what you can do. As a result, he asks in bewilderment: “What to draw?” “Decide for yourself! Something most interesting to you,” the teacher usually answers. This most benevolent and correct answer from an adult’s point of view for a child means that he is left “alone” with a piece of paper and therefore it is better not to dare to try something new, but to choose something that he has drawn many times and adults have praised. As a result, the same things appear on paper for everyone: houses, trees and the sun on top of them, or the same thing, but instead of a tree there are flowers, or tanks and planes, or rugs with patterns. Two or two students who have previously been creative under the guidance of one of the experienced adults can try to draw something interesting that they really experience.

Thus, “complete freedom,” understood without taking into account the psychology of children of each age, can rarely encourage creativity; more often it leads to repetition, to reproduction, i.e. to what is more accurately called “non-creativity”. With slight variations, the same can happen not only in the first grade, but also later, not only with a “free theme”, but also in the lessons of the so-called “thematic drawing”, more precisely, always when an adult transfers his ideas about independence to the creativity of children creatorartist.

Therefore, the reasons for the paradoxes of such freedom are not only in the child’s desire to meet school requirements and, of course, not in the lack of creative and artistic abilities among younger schoolchildren, but in the fact that “the field of children’s art and the child’s reaction to it differ significantly from the art of an adult,” - explains L.S. Vygotsky. “Two things are striking in children’s art: firstly, the early presence of a special attitude that art requires and which undoubtedly indicates the psychological kinship of art and play for the child.” But, secondly, the fact is that the child “is completely unfamiliar with the important understanding that the line itself, by one property of its construction, can become a direct expression of the mood and excitement of the soul...”. The surprising thing is that almost every child, under certain conditions, creates bright, unexpectedly original and very spontaneous drawings that amaze with the expressiveness of the artistic form.

The possibility of resolving this contradiction in children's creativity is shown by L.S. Vygotsky through a psychological analysis of four forms of connection between imagination and reality.

"The first form... is that every creation of the imagination is always built from elements taken from reality and contained in man's previous experience. It would be a miracle if the imagination could create out of nothing...". Consequently, “the richer a person’s experience, the more material his imagination has at his disposal. That is why a child’s imagination is poorer than that of an adult...”. The pedagogical conclusion from this “is the need to expand the child’s experience... The more the child has seen, heard and experienced, the more he knows and assimilated... the more significant and productive, other things being equal, will be the activity of his imagination.” The conclusion is certainly useful, but the statement about the poverty of a child’s imagination is unusual. It is common to think the other way around. However, we will try to clarify this contradiction later.

“The second form of connection between fantasy and reality is another, more complex connection... between the finished product of fantasy and some complex phenomenon of reality.” This refers to the connection with the images that the child receives from books, paintings, music, etc. For the development of imagination, it is important “... to introduce the child to the aesthetic experience of humanity... to include the child’s psyche in the general world work that humanity has done for thousands of years...”. When implementing this position, one should avoid widely practiced interpretations of works of art, explanations of “what the artist wanted to say,” in which the viewer sees only what is depicted in the picture

(according to L.S. Vygotsky - “material of art”), without paying attention to what is expressed in it - to the artistic form of constructing this material.

At primary school age, the ability to perceive the meaningfulness of an artistic form can be developed in fine arts classes through analysis and modeling of the composition of a picture, constructing relationships of shapes, sizes, and color combinations on it. The teacher’s verbal explanations in such cases only complement the children’s actions. They, of course, do not copy the works of masters of art, but try to understand the methods of their construction, so that later, using them, they try to realize the individual concept of their drawing. What is developing is not the rational verbal analysis of the picture, but the children’s mastering, through their own actions, of general methods of constructing rhythm and arrhythmia in a composition, coordinating and miscoordinating color relationships (color), representing the dynamics and statics of images - the principles of the structure of harmony or disharmony, i.e. expressiveness and beauty. Children try to “build images of the imagination, guided by the principles of beauty.” Thanks to this, learning and creativity can be united in an organic unity, without contradicting each other.

With such unity, the third form acquires special significance - the emotional connection between reality and imagination. “This connection manifests itself in a double way. Every feeling strives to be embodied in certain images, i.e. emotions, as if it selects for itself the corresponding impressions, thoughts and images...”. Experiences that have no real connection can be united on the basis of a common emotional similarity brought about by our mood. “However, there is also a feedback between imagination and emotion,” when images of the imagination give rise to feelings. “The image of a robber created by a child’s fantasy is unreal, but the fear experienced by a child, his fright, are completely valid, real experiences for the child.” While drawing, the child actually experiences the imagined event. But this does not happen the same way as in everyday situations. “The emotions of art are intelligent emotions. Instead of manifesting themselves in clenching fists and trembling, they are resolved primarily in images of fantasy.” Observe how in class children express their attitudes towards the images that they themselves create in the drawings. Some whisper something to themselves, others also gesticulate, and still others hum something. They draw different things - some are funny, some are scary - but everyone has happy faces. Experiences, even very expressively expressed ones, are resolved in a manner similar to those described by L.S. Vygotsky in the “formula of aesthetic reaction,” i.e. always positive.

The fourth form of connection between imagination and reality differs significantly from the previous ones in that fantasy constructions can represent something essentially new that does not correspond to any real object. Being embodied by a person, having become a thing, this new thing begins to really exist in the world and influence other things and people. "Such imagination becomes reality. Examples of such crystallized, or embodied, imagination can be any

technical device, machine or tool." But these are not only technical devices, machines, tools, which have no analogues in nature. No less effective are images and symbols created by the artistic imagination of people: Prometheus, Orpheus, Don Quixote, Ilya Muromets... This and works of sculpture, architecture, folk art crafts, which have become the same symbols for people, like the monument to Peter I (Bronze Horseman) created by E. Falconet, like the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, like paintings of utensils from Khokhloma or Palekh.Such things and images can be created many generations of people, becoming the “crystallized" fantasy of the people. They are no less real to us than what we see every day. They are passed on from generation to generation, improving, including more and more new aspirations, dreams and ideals of people. Spiritual impoverishment occurs when such cultural inheritance for a new generation is interrupted, going into archives, museum storerooms, specialist research, and not into the practice of education.

For children's creativity, things that they have made themselves are very significant. Products of artistic work of junior schoolchildren are born as a result of mastering a cultural tradition, but they, of course, cannot be compared with the masterpieces of world culture. However, in case creative luck they can “live” for a long time in the life and consciousness of the author’s child and are also included in the activity of his imagination, like national symbols. Rich opportunities for this are provided by classes in decorative and applied arts and various forms of design, where the artistic form is built based on the fundamental principles of measure, rhythm, symmetry, compositional and constructive balance, which are quite accessible to younger students.

To summarize, we note that the life experience of children is undoubtedly poor. The experience of communicating with culture is just beginning to accumulate, but with emotions the situation is more complicated, because the psychological mechanisms of the creative imagination of children are different than those of adults. Children's experiences are not so diverse, but their feelings largely guide their behavior, so their impressions of reality are stronger than those of an adult. Let us add: where an adult has known everything for a long time, a child sees a lot for the first time, discovers new, interesting things in the world that captivate his thoughts and feelings. Therefore, the images of his imagination are very vivid. The experience, knowledge, and life beliefs of an adult can not only enrich fantasy, but also be a brake on it. New and strong impressions from the phenomena of reality and cultural creations can be combined in the child’s imagination into the most incredible combinations also because the control of everyday logic is still very weak, and what is unacceptable for an adult to be combined, a child easily combines into a bright and original image.

L.S. Vygotsky considers the ability to combine images of life and cultural experience on the basis of association and dissociation to be the main mechanism of human productive imagination. Calling for the development and exercise of children's combinatorial abilities, he warns those who imagine imagination as “... an exclusively internal activity, independent of external conditions, or at best... guided only from within by feelings

and the needs of the person himself... In fact, this is not so." Often, the primary decisive factors in constructing an image are the child’s external actions. By combining two or three different forms, for example, a mosaic or a collage, he sees that the result is the silhouette of an unusual animal or a characteristic profile of a person. Actions in the external plane they are most often consolidated, manifesting themselves later in attempts to build other combinations of forms.The child masters ways of searching for combinations of elements, which are now included in the internal activity of his fantasy.

The imagination is also capable of creating images that cannot be considered combinatorial in the full sense. Elements of combinatorics are, of course, present in them, but in filmed form they are not the main thing in constructing the image. In children's drawings, they stand out for their special expressiveness, for example, exaggeration or understatement of individual figures or parts that convey their meaning in the depicted event. Even more often, the expressiveness of a composition directly depends on the state of the student in a particular lesson. If he works, often distracted, indifferent to the content of the drawing, passive in the choice and search for means of artistic expression, then the arrangement of images on a sheet of paper is built according to a pattern that is the same for many of his drawings, despite the difference in their plans. On the contrary, with a focus on what appears on paper, with an active search for shape and color, and a partial attitude towards what is depicted, the composition is always unique and different from the compositions of both the child’s previous drawings and the works of his classmates.

Often the drawing does not contain any unusual combinations and conveys a very real event, but the special characteristic of the image directly indicates that the child has penetrated deeper than what is visible, into the inner world of his characters. Finally, one can notice that with equal originality of the combination, some drawings “live”, while others only indicate life. The effect of “revival” does not depend on the child’s ability to draw or plausibly detail the drawing, but only on the strength of his creative imagination.

At the same time, it should be recognized that images of artistic imagination, in the emergence of which combinations of impressions of reality do not play an important role, are a rare phenomenon in children, and little studied in psychology. L.S. Vygotsky mentions them more than once, but does not give any clear mechanism for their origin.

These, briefly, are the main dependencies and mechanisms of children’s productive imagination, which are described by L.S. Vygotsky. Based on them, we can answer the question of what ensures freedom of creativity for a 7-10 year old child in visual arts.

“It is impossible to teach the creative act of art; but this does not mean at all that the educator cannot contribute to its formation and manifestation.” The most important condition for the manifestation of creativity, L.S. Vygotsky believes, is that the activity of a child’s imagination almost never occurs without the help and participation of adults. The younger student learns not so much from the teacher as with him. Together they go through a long history of the incubation and development of modes of activity, culminating in an act of creativity. In their joint ascent to creativity

very conditionally, three stages can be distinguished: preparatory, staging and final, which are most often not localized in time and place. Each, however, has its own content, and each corresponds to a special form of interaction between the teacher and students.

The preparation stage solves two problems: accumulation and updating of material and mastering the methods of constructing an artistic form. It is rarely localized to individual parts of classes, but covers the teaching as a whole. It covers two types of material.

The first is everything that the child takes from life “...as a ready-made thing - everyday relationships, stories, incidents, everyday situations...”. Freedom of creativity is promoted not only by the quantity and variety of material accumulated by students, but also, most importantly, by the ability to update it in a timely manner. This ability is not equally developed in children. Some can only act according to a model, i.e. exact instructions from the teacher. They do not connect their life experience with visual activity, and therefore they do not come to creativity. Such children are an exception, a deviation from the norm. However, the important thing is that the sample task closes the freedom for creativity not only for them, but for any child. For other children (and these are the majority), in order to actualize life experience, they need the opportunity to choose from something that, at least by analogy, is close to their observations, reflections, and experiences. When a teacher’s assignment gives a wide range of options for solving it, some of them find their own among them, others add new options that are relevant to them. For some children, it is enough just to suggest the direction of searching for the source of the idea, and they easily find something that is personally interesting and meaningful to them, which ensures a creative solution to the task.

Another type of material (also ready-made) is the properties of paper or cardboard, graphite or wax pencils, gouache or watercolor paints. Children can become familiar with the simplest of them in practice. The teacher will also suggest more complex ones - the correspondence of the material to the type, genre, technique: painting or decorative painting, graphics, mosaic. To do this, he selects in advance (he advises the elders to choose) material that frees children as much as possible from additional tasks and operations that are not related to the purpose of the lesson. For the smallest children, the material is sometimes completely prepared. For example, for appliqué, these are figures of different shapes made of colored paper that do not depict anything real, the combination of which, for example, into fairy-tale buildings, children will look for. If the teacher asks them to cut out the shapes themselves, this will complicate the students’ work and distract them from the main thing - the combinatorial task.

The stage of mastering the methods of constructing an artistic form directly relates to the second form of connection between imagination and reality as finished products of fantasy in culture. Much has already been said about her. It remains to add that for freedom of creativity it is necessary to constantly develop children’s ability to aesthetically evaluate both works of art and phenomena of the surrounding world. According to L.S. Vygotsky, the importance of teaching the language of fine art increases even more when it acts as “... a means of educating the perception of works of art, because it is impossible

fully enter into a work of art, being completely alien to the technique of its language." This condition stimulates children's ability to aesthetically evaluate more successfully than information and verbal explanations about works of art. The objects of children's aesthetic judgments can equally be the works of master artists and the best children's drawings (precisely the best: there is little benefit from looking for "mistakes" in unsuccessful drawings). The distance between masterpieces of art and one's own visual activity for a primary school student is so great that instead of the artistic form, he sees only the eventful material of the picture. It is difficult for him to see beyond the appearance a painting is a complex combination of methods of its construction, their inextricable connection and independence of form from the event material. It is not easy for a child to appreciate the uniqueness of the artistic solution of a painting. He masters all this by evaluating the drawings of his peers. Through them, the child “builds a bridge" between his artistic attempts and great art, and in the end he learns to aesthetically evaluate his own drawing.

The staging stage is the concept of the drawing. In children's drawings and stories, their imagination is directed. Constructing an image turns out to be a solution to the problem. The conditions of the task are restrictions that create “resistance of the material” (everyday, visual, etc.), without which freedom does not lead to an act of creativity. Such restrictions must be consistent with the capabilities of the students. The task and idea should precede and guide the actions of the artist. However, the ability to formulate a plan in children is not only individual, but also age characteristics. For most first-graders, the idea is a scattered verbal listing of what will be in the drawing. The idea as a task and an image of a future drawing is formed not before, but during the process of depiction, and therefore this image cannot change or deviate from what was invented in words. The development of the ability to construct an idea in a figurative form is facilitated by such a discussion of drawings, in which, along with its various advantages, the originality of the idea is especially assessed, determined not by the extravagance of the depicted (it is often borrowed from cartoons, television shows, etc.), but by the individuality expressed in the drawing child, distinguishing him from other children.

The act of creativity always requires a special state of concentration and complete subordination of one’s actions to what is being depicted. This state can easily be destroyed, especially by the critical intervention of even a beloved teacher. The act of creativity differs from other forms of learning in that at this time the child does not accumulate experience and knowledge, but gives it away. This is development through dedication, where the very act of creativity "... teaches the child to master the system of his experiences, to win and overcome them... teaches the psyche to ascend." The relationship between teacher and students is strictly individual. The child will be as free as the teacher knows his character, interests, aspirations, knows so much that from the first lines or spots on the sheet he can guess what the child is up to and in what direction he is able to develop and realize his plan, and tactfully helps him in this. L.S. Vygotsky warns that in no case is it permissible to correct errors or

forcing the child to show the “correct” image. The teacher should not touch either a pencil or a brush children's drawing. Evaluating successes and failures will be useful later when the adult and child discuss the completed work together. The teacher's participation in the act of creativity is to instill in the student confidence in his capabilities and abilities, understanding of his aspirations and confidence in his success. And although “a child... draws not at all because a future creator is emerging within him, but because the child needs it now, and also because certain creative possibilities lie within each of us,” for the active development of these possibilities it is necessary and success is a must, which the teacher constantly tries to prepare for each child.

Thus, freedom of creativity, among other things, is ensured by the compatibility of the student and the teacher during the preparation and completion of the creative act. This explains the well-known facts that with some teachers children show miracles of creative imagination, with others - the poverty of imagination.

The ideas of L.S. Vygotsky considered here, supplemented by the works of his followers (mainly D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov) and the author’s own research, made it possible to develop a “Fine Arts” course in elementary school, which was first tested for many years in experimental teaching of children, and in recent years in the practice of a number of schools in our country. This experience gave very encouraging results and at the same time showed that in the legacy of L.S. Vygotsky there is much that is not yet fully understood by both educational psychology and the psychology of art. Thus, in the book “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood,” and even more so in his other works, you can find answers to questions about raising children that were not even touched upon in this article. Since their writing, our knowledge about imagination and creativity has expanded and changed in some ways, but this has not canceled any of the main conclusions of L.S. Vygotsky.

Today, as time shows, it is not enough to be “filled” with knowledge, to be good performers. Time demands people who are able to think outside the box, who are creative, who are capable of growth. After all, a creative person adapts more easily to rapidly changing conditions of life and production, is able to determine the directions of his activities, find original solutions, and ensure his economic independence.

Therefore, one of the very important issues of child psychology and pedagogy is the question of imagination and creativity in children, the development of this imagination and creativity, and the importance of creative work for the overall development and formation of the child.

L.S. Vygotsky in his work “Imagination and Creativity in Childhood” notes that there is an opinion that childhood is considered the time when fantasy is most developed, but as the child develops, his fantasies decline. But it is not so. Psychologists' studies show that a child's imagination develops gradually as he accumulates certain experience. All images of the imagination, no matter how bizarre they may be, are based on the ideas and impressions that we receive in real life. In other words, the greater and more varied our experience, the greater the potential of our imagination.

That is why a child’s imagination is in no way richer, but in many respects poorer than the imagination of an adult. He has more limited life experience and, therefore, less material for fantasy. The combinations of images he builds are also less varied. It’s just that sometimes a child explains in his own way what he encounters in life, and these explanations sometimes seem unexpected and original to us, adults.

At the same time, imagination plays a more important role in the life of a child than in the life of an adult. It manifests itself much more often and is much easier to break away from reality. With its help, children learn about the world around them and themselves.

A child’s imagination must be developed from childhood, and the most sensitive, “sensitive” period for such development is preschool and primary school age. “Imagination - as psychologist O.M. Dyachenko, who studied this function in detail, wrote - is like that sensitive musical instrument, mastery of which opens up opportunities for self-expression, requires the child to find and fulfill his own plans and desires.”

Imagination can creatively transform reality; its images are flexible, mobile, and their combinations allow us to produce new and unexpected results. In this regard, the development of this mental function is also the basis for improving the child’s creative abilities. Unlike the creative imagination of an adult, the imagination of a child does not participate in the creation of social products of labor. She participates in creativity “for herself”; no requirements for feasibility and productivity are imposed on her. At the same time, it is of great importance for the development of the very actions of imagination, preparation for upcoming creativity in the future.

Imagination is one of the most famous and at the same time incomprehensible psychological phenomena. Man needs imagination; firstly, imagination makes a person interesting to others and intellectually developed, and secondly, it is necessary for the reasonable organization of one’s behavior. And thirdly, a person needs imagination in order to use it to satisfy his unfulfilled needs in life. Finally, imagination plays a particularly important role in creative activity.

In childhood, the need for creativity is realized in play, all kinds of improvisations, and drawings. This need is a response to the environment that surrounds the child. By playing, drawing, improvising, the child truly experiences the imagined event. Children try to build images of their imagination, guided by the principles of beauty. Thanks to this, learning and creativity can be combined in an organic unity. Direct stimuli for creative activity at a young age include active communication between an adult and a child, play situations, drawing, modeling, design, etc.

During the period of primary education, educational activity becomes the main activity in a child’s life. Hence, it is logical to assume that in this period, in order to further deepen and improve the mechanisms of imagination, educational activity should become leading in realizing the need for creativity. The reading lesson is of particular importance in this regard, since the center of the lesson is a work of art as a product of creativity. When studying works of art, various types of creative work can be used, aimed at in-depth perception of the text and promoting the development of imagination and speech in younger schoolchildren.

Reading, as an academic subject, involves the use of a variety of non-standard lesson forms in the work of the teacher, since it is based on the imaginative thinking of students and requires constant attention on the part of the teacher to the emotional individual perception of the text. Modern students often prefer the TV screen rather than a good book, so the goal of reading lessons is to arouse interest in reading, and through this cultivate the need for systematic reading of a fiction book.

During the lessons I offer students a variety of creative tasks:

Make up a story;

Compose your own fairy tale, illustrate the most exciting moment;

Using the technique of personification, describe what transformations winter has made (based on reproduction);

Come up with your own fable and design it;

Write riddles about the seasons;

Come up with an instructive story, the title of which would be a proverb, write it down and arrange it beautifully;

Write an essay about your favorite time of year, use quotes and images from poems about nature in your essay;

Invent your own confusion;

Design a cover for a fairy tale, a program for a performance;

Draw an illustration for any story you like;

Come up with a crossword puzzle that would encrypt the name of the writer whose stories were read in the last lessons;

Draw what is most beautiful;

Come up with words for the game.

What do such tasks give?

Firstly, the teacher has the opportunity to test the knowledge of students and evaluate many for the lesson; secondly, in students - to identify creative abilities, talent, giftedness; thirdly, they develop the ability to work in a team.

When preparing for reading lessons, I try to think through all types of work so that the student actively thinks creatively throughout the lesson.

And how many interesting, creative tasks children can complete when studying one work. For example, the fairy tale “The Cockerel and the Bean Seed”, “Fear has Big Eyes”:

Dramatizing a fairy tale

Reading by roles;

Illustration,

Making crosswords,

Retelling on behalf of the characters,

Preparation of questions based on content,

Come up with your own ending to the fairy tale,

Choose a proverb for the fairy tale.

Children love to act as science fiction writers. I offer them fantastic hypotheses.

“If I were Winter, then I...”

“If I were a woodpecker, I would...”

“If I were a wizard,...”

“I enjoy autumn because...”

“If I were a snowball, then...”, etc.

Every day I conduct five-minute poetry workshops, during which, on a given topic, students are asked to complete a poem based on its beginning or end.

Here's what happens:

"First snow,
First snow
Let's all gather in a crowd,
And on the hill in a crowd
Let's go for a ride
Play and tumble" (Natasha P.)

“Winter-winter, winter!
You're white and cold
Freeze the ice on the river,
Cover everything with snow.
To skate,
And tumble in the snow" (Tanya F.)

“Winter-winter, winter!
You are a beautiful beauty!
She came to visit us,
Brought snow" (Lena L.)

The closest thing to literary creativity is theatrical creativity or dramatization. For the purpose of speech development and adaptation of the child in the classroom, “theater” has been introduced into the “Russian ABC”. Through acting out pantomimes, with the gradual inclusion of children's statements, schoolchildren will learn to control their voice, gestures, facial expressions, and will understand that it is often not so much what is said that matters, but how it is said. “Theater” allows some to remember, and others to learn the most common fairy tales, to reveal through acting out the characteristics of each hero. When conducting all types of dramatization, the key is the ability to read a line, express in it the character traits and mood of the character.

Using creative tasks in elementary school lessons and in extracurricular activities helps me:

Form a creative personality;

Prepare children for creative cognitive and social work activities;

Develop logical thinking, memory, speech, imagination, fantasy;

Arouse students' interest in new knowledge;

Strengthen the knowledge and skills children already have in subjects;

Carry out interdisciplinary communication.

All creative works of students, and these are drawings, applications, poems, fairy tales that the children composed themselves, are stored in the “Rastishka” bag. Parents must become acquainted with the intellectual, creative and spiritual growth of the child.

The main thing in the pedagogy of creativity is not to let God’s gift fade away, not to prevent the “Mysterious Flower” from blooming in the child’s soul.

At the initial stage, the teacher needs to skillfully stimulate the child’s independence and encourage him to develop himself, educate children with joy, conveying to them our optimism, love of life, undying admiration, and desire to create. To do this, the teacher himself needs to be a creative person, to introduce novelty, unusualness, and non-standard methodological techniques, means and forms of teaching.

To summarize, I would like to note that the life experience of children is undoubtedly poor. Where an adult has known everything for a long time, a child sees a lot for the first time, discovers new, interesting things that captivate his thoughts and feelings. New strong impressions from a phenomenon of reality can be combined in the child’s imagination into the most incredible combinations, and what is unacceptable for an adult to combine can be easily combined in a child into a bright and original image. Creativity cannot be taught. But this does not mean that an educator or teacher cannot contribute to its formation and manifestation. The most important condition for the manifestation of creativity, L.S. Vygotsky believes, is that activity in a child’s imagination almost never arises without the help and participation of adults. The younger student learns not so much from the teacher as with him. Thus, freedom of creativity is ensured by the joint activity of the student and the teacher. The teacher’s mission is to instill in the student confidence in his capabilities and abilities, understanding of his aspirations and confidence in success.