Reply to English teachers -- WHY art assignments???

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Reply to "English teachers -- WHY art assignments???"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree there should be an alternative assignment option. The art ones used to make my kid miserable. He would agonize over them and endure so much stress, and for what? Even if fun for the majority of kids, why put the others through it when it is not even pedagogically pertinent?[/quote]

Because regular English assignments make some kids miserable and we force them to work at it and engage in the struggle and do their best and learn and improve even when it’s hard. Those are good experiences for your child to have too. Not everything is easy, and these assignments are valuable precisely because they flip the script on which kids it’s hard for and which kids it’s easy for. Teach your kids there’s value in working hard at something that doesn’t come easily to them and stop complaining that teachers give assignments your kids aren’t naturally good at. Believe it or not, communicating through pictures is also an English class skill - political cartoons, propaganda, marketing, advertising. All different types of relevant English course skills and knowledge. [/quote]

That’s all fine and good but some people literally cannot become artistic. We can all be taught the basics of grammar and punctuation and structure of writing and improve. But some of us could take 100 art classes and still not be able to draw beyond a stick figure. [/quote]

Students should be given a choice between the "art" project and a written assignment. To this day (and I'm over 50)  I can't draw anything that would resemble an actual object or person. There are plenty of ways for a child to show mastery of a subject without the pressure and anxiety of creating art. If you want them to demonstrate with pictures, let them cut things out of magazine. More importantly, why is a 9th grader wasting their time of these types of assignments. These kids can't write anymore and don't get me started on grammar and punctuation. They most definitely will need those things to succeed in life. And for those who say that kids go to school and have to deal with difficult tasks, asking a child who is not artistic to "just try" (and then get graded on it) is not comparable to writing, math, and analytical skills. [/quote]

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