Last week, my son did a trial lesson at a local art school. My initial impression of this school was that all the kids--overwhelmingly girls--were sitting very quietly in front of their easels, and were remarkably well-behaved. I thought, what a wonderful, calm environment. And yes, it is wonderfully calm, but my son was terrifically bored, and I must say that I don't blame him. He had to sit there for an hour copying a drawing of a robot's head--an activity that requires zero imagination. The goal of the school is for a child to be able to copy as well as possible. Even some of the best artwork that I saw at the school's web site virtually screams, "I am a copy; not a shred of original thought went into this."
For children that love to be perfect--to draw absolutely straight lines, to shade in colors precisely within a certain boundary, to transfer someone's else's ideas to a piece of paper--this class is great. And there are a lot of kids like that. For children that have at least a few ounces of imagination, and don't want cookie-cutter pictures that look like everyone else's--this class is horrible. But this particular art school is fantastically popular in our community.
So many artistic activities for kids are designed these days on this cookie-cutter model. The Suzuki Method is very much designed so that any kid can scrape out a few miserable notes on a violin, or pound them out on the piano. Their parents are not demanding anything more. I don't want my son to be perfect in the Suzuki sense, or in the way that this art school dictates. I want him to experience art in a more visceral, exciting way than he does in these sorts of classes.
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