Teaching Creative Art in Schools
- Author:
Rosalind Eccott and Arthur Eccott, A.R.C.A.
Evans Bros. 4/6.
The authors of this book have chosen a title with a familiar sound. In the first chapter, the Theory of New Art Teaching, it is said of normal children: “if they are taught properly they will be better balanced all round and considerably steadier in adolescence even more does this apply to the Special School child. The ideas expressed in this chapter are more or less carried through the second one, dealing with the younger children, but much of the book is ope11 to criticism. Perhaps the secret of this is in the admission of defeat by their method of teaching’ in the preface:?” Over twelve, the problem is how to encourage good work from children whose creative urge has, as is usual between twelve and fourteen years, died down.” Ap’ parently the authors have not attempted to solve that problem by continuing the methods employed with the very young. By reducing the size of paper, limiting the use of paint to water colour tubes, and confronting children oI nine-and-a-half to eleven years with the pef’ nicious system of ” teaching diagrams ” they bow to the convention of making a ” lesson out of the time allotted to Art in the curriculumSurely, if the child’s creative instinct is to he preserved, the best way to do so is to contin^6 the freedom allowed to the child of eight, as has been proved by the excellent examples seen a contemporary exhibitions of children’s work’ and by the illustrations in recent publications 011 the subject of Art in Schools.
It seems that by allowing children to make a comparatively small picture and enlarge or rather ” reserve this honour of enlarging those who have done the best work,” is hardlya a reward, and certainly not in the spirit of th ” New Art Teaching.” Neither is the practict; of encouraging adolescents ” who fail to ge satisfaction from ordinary school drawing,” make copies of photographs for use in designee lino-cuts. If a child has been trained in th methods described in Chapter I from eight yea# old till adolescence, it will not be found neceS sary to resort to the photograph to stimuli interest.
The subjects in the chapters on Design Pattern-Making, Co-operative Work in ^ Classroom, and The Value of Lino-Cuts, ha^ been much more ably dealt with in other recei1 publications. It is a disappointing book?but the price 15 a recommendation. C.H
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