(paper presented at
Education FOR Art Seminar
in the Hahndorf Academy, 31 July, 2004)
© Donald Richardson,
2004
PREAMBLE
I don't think I will have to convince this audience of the
educational value - or potential education value - of Art classes.
Nor will I need to mention the naïve charm that many of
the children's pictures I will show you have. The purpose of
this paper is to be quite specific bout the educational value
of the subject in our schools - things that have been researched
thoroughly, but not often collected together, as I will do here.
_______________________________________________________________
There is no doubt about it - children are born with a love of
drawing and a need to draw. This is not, perhaps, evident in
their very first days, but before the end of their first year,
as soon as a child can grasp a crust or a piece of vegetable,
sitting his/her high chair, they play with it and realise that
they can make marks with it - they draw with it.. This
may be not what people usually recognise as 'art', but it is
incipient drawing, nevertheless, and the beginnings of, not only
art, but of many other things.
(Many parents will recognise the situation when sometimes a child
will wake early in the morning with a dirty nappy, and the cot
is adjacent to a wall.)
It seems certain, then, that drawing is a natural act - spontaneous
and unconscious at first, but soon impinging on the child's awareness.
He/she begins to 'see' certain things in these apparently aimless
scribbles and to give them names - 'This is mummy feeding the
cat', 'Our garden', 'The school bus', etc, etc. Soon parents
will ask the child 'What have you drawn?', and the idea
that drawings can represent real things - and communicate visually
- is reinforced from a very early stage. This is the beginning
of a process that leads to reading and writing - both forms of
visual communication (the first attempts at writing are usually
on drawings). It is also the paradigm of the scientific method,
an attitude of mind that has been inherent in Western humanity
since, at least, Ancient Greece - hypothesising about how things
really are, and testing these hypotheses by publishing the results.
'Granma as a Baby' is a painting by a three-year-old girl, a
first-born whose mother was soon to give birth to a sibling,
so human generation and generations were on her mind. It is not
a meaningless scribble, because Jane explained it as representing
herself, her family and 'Granma's baby friends'. Donald Brook
famously said many years ago that the child cannot avoid operating
as an artist: both are exploring, studying, representing and
commenting on their environment. The analogy is a very apt and
true one.
Through making pictures, children also begin to develop their
aesthetic sense. Aesthetics is about selecting things because
we 'just like' them. It actually starts the moment a child realises
that he/she can refuse food: the first choice a child ever makes
is an aesthetic one! By disposing shapes across a page, selecting
forms and colours to use and expressing emotions the child makes
aesthetic choices. The aesthetic sense is, unfortunately, often
discounted in the practicality of our lives, but it is really
incredibly important: it is the one that drives key choices like
a life-style, a job, a car, sexuality, a mate. All of these choices
we make without really being able to explain, rationally, just
why or how we make them, but they determine major attitudes and
life decisions.
All this happens before the child gets to school. And drawing
is good fun - play. But - like all play - actually a very serious
matter: learning . education. In an essentially scientific way,
children will match their drawings with what they see and are
trying to represent. They begin to realise that closer things
look larger, that faces are symmetrical, that distant hills look
bluish. This looking, drawing and matching is not 'art' per
se, but empirical checking of the real world - the development
of the inquiring mind; the scientific attitude, no less, but
combined with the aesthetic. An essential paradigm for living
life itself.
It is hard to see how these human faculties and propensities
could be developed by any other process than by drawing. (Have
you ever noticed how private school advertising is often illustrated
by pupils doing art?) Art should be recognised as a basic subject
- the 4Rs: readin', 'ritin', 'rithmatic and art.)
Because drawing is education, we give children Art lessons in
schools. In the primary years they still enjoy doing it but,
unfortunately, Art is too often a 'Clayton's subject' - the subject
you are studying when you are not studying anything. But, the
primary school is ideally placed to build on these early, self-generated,
learning experiences - not only the continuing development of
manipulative skills and eye-hand coordination but also the conventions
and values of visual communication - which, in the 21st century,
seems to have overrun the verbal1.
Of course, this is a result of the development of TV and other,
electronic technologies. But these developments have not outdated
or overrun the need for children to develop their own, individual,
interactions with the world2. While children develop other forms
of manual and intellectual dexterity - and aesthetic choice -
using a play-station or key-board, this experience is quite removed
from the complexities and subtleties of the real world: 'mediated'
in the true sense of the word - and in no way a substitute
for first-hand experience of the real world. Also, the aesthetics
of computer programmes is imposed on the child, rather than discovered
by him/her, and often imparts little that relates to our
cultural heritage because they are usually developed in other
cultures than ours. Because children these days are constantly
exposed to this mediated technology, true art experiences are
even more necessary than they used to be3.
Viktor Lowenfeld flagged all this in his 1940s book Creative
and Mental Growth, which had a great vogue in Western education
for forty years and, together with Herbert Read's Education
Through Art, sponsored the international 'education through
art' movement. Unfortunately, the impetus of this movement has
been overcome by the recent technologies, but the message is
still as relevant. (Perhaps we can do something about this at
this seminar?) The absolute connection between artistic expression
and mental development and health has, more recently, been the
subject of much scientific research by people like Samir Zeki
(Inner Vision, 1999) and Dr V Ramachandrin (who gave the
Reith Lectures last year). Their work makes it absolutely clear
that - because the eye is, in effect, just a neural outgrowth
from the brain, and very closely connected to it - art is inherent
to our general mentality.
In the middle primary-school years, children become self-conscious
about their pictures not 'looking right'. Their hypothesis-forming
and -testing activity reveals to them that their childish symbolism
- although it can communicate certain things visually - does
not really show how the world looks. And it is clear that most
think that acquiring the skill of drawing realistically is something
of a 'rite of passage' to adulthood. Something like this happens
in all fields, of course: sport, economics, learning to drive
car, social behaviour etc, etc. In all these instances we assist
children's passage to adulthood by teaching them relevant things.
But not in art! Lowenfeld, from his background in the Vienna
of Sigmund Freud, convinced us that repression of childish impulses
leads to mental instability; therefore, children should be allowed
to express themselves freely, without adult supervision or intervention.
But, unfortunately, few children can - by their own innate resources
- 'graduate' from child to adult art. Lowenfeld's disciples devoutly
hoped that they would. But most don't! (This is what I call 'The
Bootstraps Theory' of art education.) Norman Freeman (1980 and
1985) established that children's problem is not inadequate perception
or conception but what he called 'synthetic incapability' - that
they lack the skills to represent what they perceive and want
to draw.
Drawing is more than mark-making or symbolism, (which are close
to purely aesthetic expression), and many artists have used both
to create fine works (Jackson Pollock, Paul Klee). Children struggle
to develop out of this stage4. Unfortunately, many children in
the higher primary grades - in their frustration - give up making
art entirely. Others turn mark-making into graffiti! (I believe
that the cure for this social scourge is to provide worthwhile
Art programmes in the upper primary school. Isn't this a cogent
argument for more Art at that level?)
As children as young as four or five wish to learn the skills
of representation, the school should build on what is, in reality,
an innate and natural tendency5. And, here, the focus shifts
to the teacher. Very few teachers know enough about the skills
of realistic representation to tackle it with confidence and
effectiveness. However, it is well established that anyone with
enough intelligence and manual skills to learn to write can learn
to draw, so there is nothing arcane about these skills. Teachers
just need to be taught them!
In summary, we need to recognise widely that deep, in-principle,
learning can result from drawing from observation. This includes:
the development of individual perceptiveness (which, being a
principle, may extend beyond the purely visual)
the ability and courage to make personal judgments (which may
not be limited to aesthetic judgments, though the significance
of these in life terms should not be undervalued)
visual communication skills and knowledge of visual symbols and
conventions (which have increasing relevance in this increasingly
visual world)
a sense of personal worth and the value of individuality
a realisation that there can be different points of view and
ways of seeing and representing what is seen
a rational and detached way of looking at the world
a repertoire of personal and conventional visual imagery which
can lift creative expression above copying and repetition of
stereotypes.
But there is much more that can be learned from Art classes.
SELF-EXPRESSION
Self-expression is essential for children's mental development
and health and art is an excellent - and perhaps the most accessible
- medium for self-expression (even - in the early years - more
accessible than writing). Children can work out their personal
adjustments and frustrations though painting and drawing, and
it is imperative that they be given frequent opportunities to
do so in school. It is well established that, for children who
have suffered trauma, drawing and painting about this trauma
is effective treatment.
(Vanessa and Johnny anecdote).
VALUES CLARIFICATION and CONFLICT RESOLUTION
A work of art is the physical manifestation of its creator's
attitudes and values. This applies as much to child artists as
to adult. And the acceptance or rejection of a work by its community
(whether it be a nation or a classroom) reflects its values
- and the two often conflict. Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles,
when acquired for 1.3 million dollars by the National Gallery
of Australia in 1973, was reviled by many - and still is. Children's
art, too, can express political, ethical or religious values
and, at a time when a class commonly contains children from varying
backgrounds, class discussions which address questions like:
How free should an artist (or a person) be?, How detached or
engaged in a particular situation?, How 'real' is a picture?,
Is nudity justified?, When does art become pornographic? etc,
provides an opportunity for individual students to reflect upon,
and clarify, their values and for the group to resolve conflict
situations in a neutral and mediated paradigm for adult life.
Such discussion is especially valuable at a time when children's
values are being manipulated constantly by advertising and the
other communications media
THE HISTORY OF HERITAGE
And, while we are talking about values, we need to recognise
that there is a further aspect of art learning that is invaluable
- even irreplaceable in a democracy: education in the history
of culture and heritage: not just ours, but that of others, too
- especially of those who have come to live in this country from
other traditions. In fact, studying the history of art is by
far the best way of tacking such matters and children respond
enthusiastically to it.
THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM
It is regrettable that few primary teachers have had worthwhile
pre- or in-service education in drawing - or any aspect of Art.
This must be remedied if Art is to assume its true status in
our education system. It can only be achieved by a combination
of pre- and in-service training. This objective is attainable.it
only requires us to initiate action. The children of this state
deserve nothing less.
NOTES
1 Last weekend's Australian quoted a report of the
(American) National Endowment for the Arts that, while more Americans
can actually read than ever, 17 million of them gave up
serious reading in the last decade - and that much the same is
happening here.
2 We should mention here that animation and design computer programmes
that represent reality use the historic skills and conventions
of manual drawing.
3 This problem even extends to the games and toys that are available
commercially. Very few of them encourage children to explore
and hypothesise about their lives and environment. They are totally
'mediated' - entertaining rather than educational, made too easy
to do, too unchallenging, not requiring creativity. I tried last
year to buy a set of building blocks for an infant but no toy
store stocked them!
4 It is not surprising that it is a struggle: it took Western
civilisation hundreds of years to develop a Leonardo da Vinci.
5 Here we must stress that teaching children to draw, far from
regimenting them or suppressing their individuality, releases
them to express their own ideas more convincingly.
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