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KIDS IN ACTION Drawing the Ideal School | ||||||||||||||||||||
How do children in Africa live, and what kind of schools do they wish for? "The Ideal School As Drawn by African and Japanese Children" is an art exhibition that provides rare insight into the thoughts of children from African countries. The show, sponsored jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan and UNICEF Japan, is being held at the UNICEF House in Shinagawa, Tokyo from July 1 to 29.
For this exhibition, 22 pictures (two from each country) were selected from among the 550 drawings submitted from 11 schools in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia, Nigeria, Madagascar, South Africa, Morocco, and Zambia. Including 20 drawings submitted from Japan, 42 works in all are being exhibited.
Alemayehu Tibebu Desalegn (11) from Ethiopia, who loves drawing pictures and whose favorite color is green, drew an impressive-looking school building. His picture also showed himself and his friends playing soccer on the school grounds. "My ideal school is one that is well managed, has toilets, and has classrooms that aren't packed," he said. Dada Safia (17) from Morocco drew a beautiful school building surrounded by a forest and a blue sky. "My ideal school would have to contain nature. It would have a big athletic field for playing on, and the classrooms would be decorated with lots of flowers."
Many of the pictures submitted from Japan feature schools surrounded by nature or schools that can move around, such as boat-schools and airship-schools. Ono Keisuke, a fourth grader who drew a picture of a big boat-school, loves the sea. "We would be able to fish and swim," he said, "and since it's a boat, it would be fun because we could go to many different countries." Fifth grader Takashi Ryota drew children playing by a school and a rainbow floating above the clouds. "A rainbow expresses that children throughout the world each possess a different kind of kindness," he explained. While the countries of Africa and Japan may be different, children from both places love sweet candy. Mariam Hesham Tawakol (7) from Egypt drew a school with lots of brightly colored candy, including orange and pink varieties. "A candy school is a sweet dream of peace. There, anyone can fly freely up in the sky, and there is no war or suffering."
Fifth grader Mitamura Ayako drew a two-layer cake school floating in the sky. "A school where you can freely come and go to the sky and the sea is my dream school. My ideal is a place where kids from all over the world can study together." On July 22 a panel will announce prize-winning pictures from among the 42 works on display. |
