Why do we teach art? Why is it important? How will it benefit my child?
I don't want to write an academic paper here, but I do want to talk a little about art education, or at least my experiences of it.
I love art, I love creativity, I do not believe you can teach anything without having a passion for it and being an advocate for it. Sadly, however, the current education system, in my opinion, is becoming so focused on the end goal of grades and data, attainment and ofsted ratings, that teachers have little time left for to really feed that passion and share it with their students. We get caught up in red tape, data analysis, progress data and predicted grades, which of course have their benefits, but for me, as a creative, person, I feel that this amount of analysis is slowly sucking the life out the very core of creativity itself.
In a world full of learning for tests, memorizing information, formula and processes, students rarely have the opportunity to make mistakes and see them as part of the creative process. To make a mistake and then reflect upon that and realise a way to do it better, make a mistake and find out that actually the mistake turned out to be the best way of doing something, make a mistake and learn that it is not the end of the world, not only builds resilience in young people but incredibly creative lateral thinkers also.
In a world full of rules, rights and wrongs, art offers the freedom of complete expression, without any real right or wrong, only with a subjective view, a personal approach, making this a very intimate subject for students where they can truly explore themselves without limitations. Without fear of failure, as failure simply does not exist within art, failure is a core part of the process. Our aim as art teachers is to first conquer the mind, the perception of failure and the perception of creativity. Once we can do that, once we can truly make the students believe that they can, they will, they are creative, then that's when the amazing stuff happens.
I am a firm believer in the higher the ceiling we give the student the more room they have to grow and the more room they have to achieve. If we expect great things from them, great things we will see.
This student on the left, for most lessons building up to this one, would rarely engage in the lessons. He felt he could not draw or paint, so why bother. This is a common obstacle for teachers of art, meeting students that feel that they cannot create so they are reluctant to even start. Then something wonderful happens. They realise that there is no hard and fast way, they realise that everyone will create something different and that is ok. Then they begin, and once they start they mostly cannot stop, the process becomes addictive, applying the paint, the strokes of the brush, they become submerged without even realising it. This young man found his unique style of painting, colour recognition and engagement, and after nearly one year of teaching him I saw a focus that I had not seen before and it was beautiful. This moment, this engagement, this spark of interest, this start of one young mans journey on building his confidence, this, this is why I became a teacher.
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