Love Hundertwassers take on what true illiteracy is for him and the implications the adult creative illiterate has to underake to free up his och hers dreams. This text was originally written 1981 and first printed in a brochure for a travelling exhibition SOS - Kinderdörfer (art by kids). If you have not yet seen Hundertwassers school buildings or playgrounds hit Google immediately!
“Our real illiteracy is not the ignorance to read and write and not the incapability to repeat other people’s knowledge, but the inability to create.
A child possesses this creative ability,
the seemingly illiterate, seemingly ignorant child
is not ignorant and not illiterate at all.
On the contrary, it is in full possession of his own creative powers.
By our educational system, he is being degraded to a true creative illiterate.
For the grown-up, who suffers
under this creative impotence, which was forced onto him, the only possibility left is to return to his own childhood and to start again from the last moment,
where he was dragged out of his dreams.
But these dreams were not just longings, but his real basis, without which he can never grow into a human being.”