The IMPORTANCE of a good art teacher in schools...

[MiddleFingerMom]

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For a while, my major was Early Childhood Education. I wanted to
teach either very young children or adults -- nothing in between
(I remember what an asshole I was in that "in-between" time and I
didn't want to have to put up with my ignant fucking doppelganger).
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Several hundred women in that major and maybe several dozen men.
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I was no dummy.
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One of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE classes in college was "Teaching Art in
the Elementary Grades". One class a week of bookwork... and one class
a week of hands-on arts & craft projects. FUN!!!
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We learned a list of things NEVER to do as an art teacher -- anything
that might limit or channel or even "define" what art is. Otherwise,
we would be stifling the creativity of the child, even though we might
be enabling them to make something pleasing.
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Simple things really. "Don't insist that the sky is blue." "Don't EVER
say, THIS is how you draw a bird". Basic stuff that I would have
thought most would know instinctively.
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So I'm out as a teacher's aide and it's time for the bi-weekly art teacher
to come in. Cute. LOOKED like an art teacher. Proceeded to break EVERY
commandment in the list on what not to tell the children. Unbelievable.
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So, anyways... this cartoon reminded me of her.
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M.C. Escher's third-grade art project:
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[marzipanni]

1. That's a good one!

I used to babysit for kids a lot when I was a teenager. It was fun to ask little kids what something was that they probably had never heard of, and some really imaginative answer would come forth. But some kids seemed to have been previously embarrassed or made self-conscious about answering, because they didn't know, and they would just say , "I don't know".

[femmocrat]

2. Art teacher here! :hi:

A lot of that free-style kind of teaching led to chaos. Since Discipline-Based Art Education and now National and State Standards have become the norm, the classes are more structured. Especially on the elementary and middle school levels.

It is possible, but really difficult, to let kids "do their own thing" in art class. Unfortunately, without the basics of drawing and design, they will just create a big mess and think it is "art". And unless it is a senior advanced class, some secondary students are put into art because Guidance didn't know where else to send them. Most of those kids cannot be trusted to work independently.

Even Escher had training! :)

[Brickbat]

3. When I was in elementary school, we did crafts and so on in class, but there was also an art room

at the school staffed by Mrs. Bryant. Every week, two kids from class got to spend a half-hour a day in Mrs. Bryant's room working on art projects. Her room was magical. It was full of paints, crayons, oil crayons, pastels, expensive markers, construction paper, that wonderful stuff called manilla, easels, and so on, but also clay, shoeboxes, books of wallpaper samples, pipe cleaners (which we still called pipe cleaners in those days), cotton batting, beads, feathers, fabrics, interesting and dangerous scissors, wire, rubber cement and glues, cardboard, bottles of every color of glitter, wood, sequins, and boxes of and boxes of STUFF that was sorted by color.

Mrs. Bryant wore interesting glasses and a craft apron, and was always a little crabby and intimidating. She clearly took her job very seriously and didn't allow for a bunch of dinking around. On the other hand, all she asked of you when you came in was that you had a pretty good idea of what you wanted to do, and that you would try different techniques to get there. Her room was in an odd part of the school and sometimes it was possible to miss the door and walk right past it. Going to her room always felt like trying to get into Narnia. I remember her room as huge, although I'm sure now it wasn't. It was a great way to do art.

The PTA also had a program called "Picture Person" where in a mom (always) came in and shared a piece of art with the class and talked about it. Then the class would do a picture in the same style. I think that happened about once a semester. Matisse, Chagall's blue horses, Picasso. Loved that program. I loved elementary school.