mercredi 7 octobre 2015

Students May Need A Place To Paint Pottery

By Deana Norton


Salt Lake City, UT is not the only place where housewives and their children are seeking artistic expression. Whether one writes a song, creates a sculpted bust, or just adds their own special touch to a store-bought item, they see benefit by virtue of pursuing the activity. One can find classes at hobby stores nation-wide, but there are some strictly retail operations which have the kilns already firing and are simply waiting for us to find a place to paint pottery.

This is an activity that families can do together, in fact, and it is very beneficial to all members of the household. Teens get to perfect their artistic skills, tweens learn to focus on one thing for long periods of time, and young children work on motor coordination. Those find motor skills are going to help these youngsters as they learn to write.

Public schools are cutting out more electives these days, and forcing children to take only linear types of classes. Most people agree that the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic are very important lessons students should focus on. However, by removing the arts they are taking away what is, for some students, the only class they enjoy at all.

When you remove the one enjoyable part of a school day, then the rate of students dropping out, skipping class, or engaging in other activities when they should be in class increases. This can only increase the rate of attrition in public schools, leaving this country in worse shape than ever. There are many bright young minds dropping out of public school these days, and a lack of opportunity to express themselves through art is probably at the core of their scholastic retardation.

What is worse is that we may not even know at the end of any school year just how many students have dropped out rather than finishing public school due to this lack of elective classes. Students can join scholastic clubs, and that does encourage some of them to stay. However, a creative mind will often score low on the right- brained, linear testing because that is not how they learn, and many will give up after repeated failures.

What they are finding is that many of these activities may have been so poorly scheduled in schools so as to discourage students from taking it. By ramming in more classes, they can graduate others more quickly. By keeping standardized tests as part of their curriculum, teachers can focus all their attention to sending girls and boys off for "Creative education".

By creative alternatives they are usually talking about special education, and this has always consisted of a dumbed-down curriculum managed through workbooks and multiple-choice quizzes minutes after the material is read. They are not required even to memorize, only to read and moderately comprehend. This allows teachers to focus on the linear, right-brained students who test well.

Has a painting studio the power to keep a student in school through graduation, no one knows. However, it can grant them the opportunity to express themselves artistically, which builds a more well-rounded human being. Perhaps a child can endure the boredom of the Three Rs a little better if their parents provide the electives elsewhere.




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