Saturday 10 October 2015

Parents May Try Encouraging Students To Graduate By Providing A Place To Paint Pottery As An Elective

By Deana Norton


Housewives in Salt Lake City, UT have found that adding their own special touches to a piece of art for their home makes it a much more intriguing and personal item. This can happen when one embroiders a name onto a garment, or when one paints an item they purchased elsewhere. Hobby stores have noted this trend, and many not only sell the ceramic pieces, but also provide a place to paint pottery.

Many families engage in these artistic endeavors together, as they find they all benefit from it. Teenagers are able to perfect artistic skills which are still very important to them at that age, young children work on those fine motor skills they will need to learn to write, and the in-between age kids learn to concentrate and focus on one activity for a long period of time. Mom and Dad get to spend time together with the children, with no television intruding into their special time.

Such activities are becoming more and more important these days, as many public school systems are taking elective art classes out of their curriculum entirely. They want to focus only on the classes which require total linear right-brained thinking, and this is a shame. As usual, public schools educate for a life of cubicles or service-industry jobs rather than encouraging free thought, artistic expression, and fostering the ability to see new ways to approach a problem.

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.

As time goes on, we are losing more and more intelligent young people to mediocre, mind-numbing jobs rather than them pursuing their own potential. While education and intelligence are not the same thing, intelligence without education will rarely get an opportunity to express itself in our society. When creative people fail repeatedly in a world fueled by linear-thinking standardized tests, they eventually give up on school completely.

There are many people who believe that this change in society has been done by design, by an aristocratic class who only wishes our children to be intelligent enough to operate the machines without being intelligent enough to ask themselves why. The changes in public education which occurred in the 90s lends credibility to this perspective. When you see how many young people have been pigeon-holed into "creative" educational alternatives, it does appear intentional on many levels.

This push to get children into special education classes in order to grant them simplified tests, or no testing at all, has another edge to it known as Ritalin or Adderall. In the modern classroom, about 30% of the students are on some form of mind-altering medication in order to help them "concentrate". The fact is, by removing art, music, and physical education; they have created the perfect storm for active minds held captive to express themselves as active bodies.

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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