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

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.

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.

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.

Creative education for most means special education where they may be granted a certificate of completion rather than a diploma. Most school districts have changed this tactic, but not all ? More than half of all public schools are still dumping students into special classes in order to help some students to avoid standardized tests, all so they can increase their overall test scores.

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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