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][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]

You 100% can get better with instruction and practice. You won’t be gifted, but you can improve. Lots of kids go to school and spend all day doing tasks in which they will never be gifted and will never find them easy and will never end up with as good of a product as Larlo over there. It’s ok for your kid to also experience that feeling once in a while.

Also, no non-art teacher is going to dock your kid points because an image on a poster was traced rather than drawn free-hand. It may not be possible for your kid to get to “impressive” but they can get to “serviceable”. The problem OP is describing is a kid who is used to easily producing “impressive” work and can’t handle the fact that on this project they may work really hard and only get to “serviceable.”[/quote]

Right, it's not like art is all about talent whereas other fields are not... I hated sports growing up, I still had to do PE. I was a bad runner and became somewhat better over time. I was bad at music and became somewhat better over time. I do actually have some artistic talent and have also improved over time by practicing more. Everything has a nature and a nurture component, not sure why it would be different for art.[/quote]

We have art class to teach art. English class doesn't teach art; it just demands art.[/quote]

It's wild that English teachers can grade on art, but social studies teachers often are not allowed to grade on spelling and grammar. [/quote]

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