Taking Art-Making Away From Kindergarteners is Anti-Education

So, I was having another one of those headshaking conversations with a kindergarten teacher that makes me crazy. She mentioned that a LAUSD supervisor had told kindergarten teachers she didn't want to see cutting and pasting or art-type projects displayed on the walls. Teachers were only to put up real "work."

O my gosh!

As parents know -- and supposedly well-trained educators who've completed child development coursework -- the work of five-year-olds is cutting, gluing, drawing, painting, and gaining those fine motor skills in the right and natural way. You can't get to fluid writing until you provide those opportunities consistently.

Now, kids who have had this normally at home during their preschool years are prepared for the "rigor" of kindergarten. But, our schools are full of children who have not even made marks on paper. The teachers see the result of this every day. Yet their hands are tied. Instead of doing what they know is right, they are forced to make young children try to perform beyond their abilities. It just doesn't work. These kids need double the amount of cutting and drawing opportunities to make up for the deficit.

You know the catch phrase -- we need education reform. True reform means providing education that is developmentally appropriate. Kids learn through art-making. It develops half their brain power, their hand power, their focusing power...which must be in place to master the school-type subjects.

We get more for our education bucks when we provide systematic art education. I've personally seen it work. Just because California hasn't been doing it, in no way means it doesn't work. We have to teach young kids in the way they learn best. Through art. That way, teachers have a better chance of helping kids learn subjects that aren't so natural or of interest to them -- and get those all-important test scores that are important to...adults.

In other school districts that spend less per student, but still have their art programs, they know they can't get rid of them even in tight financial times. There's value in giving kids even 50 minutes per week of art instruction. It's really is so little time out of the frenzy of test prep, so it seems easily expendable. But schools get a big bang for that focused instruction devoted entirely to right brain thinking. It ripples out into the rest of the school day.