Beyond Harvard and the SATs

In "Seeing Past Z," Beth Kephart argues that ambitious parents are smothering their kids' creativity with lessons, activities and schedules.

By Katy Read

Aug 5, 2004 | Beth Kephart, a literary nonfiction writer, loves reading so much that she devours several books a week. But her son, Jeremy, did not automatically follow suit: He preferred listening to Kephart read aloud to doing it on his own. At 9, he was unimpressed by the novels his mother had loved as a kid -- classics like "Charlotte's Web" -- preferring instead to read nonfiction about knights and cars and airplanes.

"I didn't mind, I just wanted to broaden him," Kephart says. She sees literature -- along with music, art and other creative fields -- as a way kids can learn to understand life's large issues, "to ask the big questions and to look to themselves for answers." So she gave Jeremy ample time and gentle encouragement until, eventually, he began to read novels on his own, to write stories and poems, even to make his own movies. Not in pursuit of grades or test scores or admission to exclusive schools, but for fun.

In her fourth book, "Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World," Kephart uses the story of Jeremy's creative development as a springboard for arguing that many children are robbed of the chance to develop their own creativity. Although Kephart includes video games and television among the culprits, her particular foe is a child's busy schedule -- filled with lessons and activities and college preparation -- that she believes is imposed by ambitious parents across the country, including many in her own affluent community outside Philadelphia.

Kephart chronicled Jeremy's early struggle with pervasive developmental disorder, a condition often mistaken -- much to Kephart's frustration -- for autism. "A Slant of Sun," a 1998 National Book Award finalist, ends with Jeremy at 7, having overcome those difficulties. Now, in "Seeing Past Z," Jeremy has become a typical boy who attends public school, plays soccer, and plays with friends. He exhibits a child's active imagination: He invents complex personal histories for the characters in a board game; he asks probing questions that his parents can't always answer. The book describes how, with the help of Kephart and her husband, Bill, that imagination evolves (although she readily admits that their efforts weren't unusually heroic or elaborate, but rather the basic Parenting 101 support that busy schedules sometimes force to the wayside.)

Her campaign on behalf of children's creative growth did not stop with Jeremy: Since he was 9 she has been giving workshops in which she leads groups of neighborhood kids in activities centered around books. This summer, she has expanded the group to include kids from lower-income neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

"I'm writing it with the great prayer that other parents who are reading it will say, Gosh, it looks like fun to start a neighborhood writing group for kids, or a neighborhood music group for kids, or a neighborhood pottery group for kids," she says. To that end, she includes an appendix full of ideas for anyone interested in holding similar workshops, along with samples of writing by the kids she has taught.

The title of "Seeing Past Z" alludes to line from a Dr. Seuss book: "In the places I go there are things that I see that I never could spell if I stopped with the Z." Kephart urges parents to help their children find those places beyond Z -- beyond the test scores and prizes and résumé-building -- to grow in unexpected ways. Kephart spoke to Salon in late July from her home in Philadelphia.

What made you want to write the book? How did you come up with the idea?

When I first began to write the book -- which developed out of essays that I began writing about five years ago -- I was looking at the emergence of the imagination in my son. I was interested in all of the elements that fall into place as the creative spirit arises. I would read stories to Jeremy -- the Harry Potter books, books by Roald Dahl. He also liked the Lemony Snicket books. He finally got a desire to read realistic kids' novels on his own. And eventually he began writing his own stories. He started out with made-up newspaper headline stories, went into the comic misadventures of cartoonish characters -- funny things that would happen to kids; there would be supernatural powers involved -- then moved on to movie synopses, with lists of who would star, who would direct. Now he's writing a series of detective stories for TV, so they are all straight dialogue and setup.

Next Page: "I had a few parents say, 'But it's all about getting into Harvard'"

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