Kids and education and stuff

[crabfoot]

A boy who is a budding David Hockney is not going to be allowed to spend all day staring out of the window and reproducing what he sees on canvas. He can do it for 50 minutes (if the school arts teacher can work outside of the box)

Having had the same art teachers and gone through the same regime as David Hockney, I can definitely say that he had two sessions a week of one and a half hours each, plus the opportunity to do another two hours at the "art club" on one afternoon per week.

On the other hand, the school would not have provided canvas (too expensive), and one of those teachers (Mr Bayer, a crusty old Germanic ratbag of the first water) would not tolerate looking out of the window or unnecessary absence from the work table. He'd throw things at you - fortunately he was not very accurate.

He did teach me to draw straight lines freehand ...

[Chabrenas]

He did teach me to draw straight lines freehand ...

It was my maths teacher who taught me to draw circles freehand, and his wife who got cross because I refused to use a ruler to draw margins in my English class exercise books. I had two good art teachers, both in primary school. The first taught me to sketch and shade with a pencil. The second was complimentary about my drawing skills, but removed my pencil and got me to spend an entire lesson learning to 'draw' a wine bottle in one stroke of a No. 6 paintbrush before leaving me to build on that skill with subjects of my own choosing.

My secondary school art teacher wore magenta blouses with emerald green skirts. 'nuff said. Mind you, it takes a bit of enthusiasm and creativity to motivate a bunch of fourth or fifth formers to enjoy art without turning it into a mucking around session.

[Chabrenas]

I went to one of the most academic schools in the country (top 4 in the league tables etc.) yet it didn't stifle creativity - we were taught creativity in numerous ways, from learning to run businesses to music / imagination / arts / sports etc. - the basic principle was that if two of you shared an interest you could do it...

Such schools do exist, but they rarer than they should be.

Once, when I was in Detroit for a week or two chasing around a couple of motor industry IT installations, I found that Detroit County Day School was running an exhibition in a shopping mall in a smart area (presumably to entice wealthy parents to send them their children). They had exhibits that showed creative and highly-skilled work by their pupils, but what struck me was the way they'd tackled the problem of timetabling a very wide range of lessons where so many were optional subjects and children were allowed to choose what to study. They had handed the problem over to the students, who came up with a 9-day rota instead of the standard fixed 5-day weekly timetable.

[Clinton]

I watched Ken Robinson's videos on Youtube, particularly this one and this one.

Apologies for quoting myself, but as this is an old thread, I thought it would save you time.

The video by Ken Robinson on "schools and creativity" is the #1 more viewed videos on TED as per their list posted today! I'm not surprised. For anyone with even a vague interest in kids' education, you really need to view that! (He's not paying me anything, promise)