Sunday, October 4, 2015

Students May Need A Place To Paint Pottery

By Deana Norton


It is not simply the real housewives of Salt Lake City, UT, but their children who may want to seek a place to paint pottery, learn music, sketch, or sculpt. Some hobby stores offer classes in all of these activities, but there are also some retail businesses which have an area for the buyer to add their own personal touch to an item they bought. Even a store-bought item becomes more special when the buyer gives it a little something from themselves.

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.

With the public education system dumping arts and music classes, not to mention physical education and free play, kids need these activities more than ever. The basics of school have always been reading, writing, and arithmetic, and no one would argue that these skills are very important to develop in this ever-changing world. However, without being able to see the world in more than a right-brained manner, the next generation will be little more than cubicle dwellers, and we may see a reduction in new technologies or ideas being developed in the United States.

For many students, these electives are the only part of the school day that matters, and removing them will only discourage already frustrated students. The attrition rate in public schools gets higher and higher each year, and so-called experts all want to act like they do not understand why this is happening. It is obvious to anyone paying attention that students who struggle with the reading, writing, and arithmetic curriculum were still excelling in art, music, and often science or literature.

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.

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.

It is unclear whether or not pursuing artistic endeavors outside the educational setting will encourage students to stay in school or not, but it is a social test worth conducting. Even if the rate of attrition in public schools does continue, at least those students will have a better rounded experience overall because they have the ability to paint a portrait or play a song. The hope is that, with the proper creative outlets available, most any student will be better able to endure the boredom of the Three Rs.




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