PROCEEDINGS 



OF THK 



Delaware County Institute of Science 



Vol. V, No. 4 



July, 1910 



WASTED ENERGY IX ART EDUCATION. 



BY ALBERT \V. BARKER. 



While almost all schools and many universities offer what 

 is called art instruction, it does not follow that this repre- 

 sents agreement in aim among the school-boards, trustees, 

 committees and teachers who have charged themselves with 

 the work, nor that a substantially coherent and adequate 

 result has followed upon it. Everything that has been made 

 by the hands to give pleasure or instruction to the eye is 

 brought before some class or other as a product of art, to be 

 done over or praised or imitated, and this is called an art 

 lesson. The field of nature has been searched for objects 

 to draw or model or arrange, and the most diverse ideas are 

 gravely proposed concerning their relation to art and this also 

 is an art lesson. Before the work of art, the philosophizer 

 has dealt in abstractions and generalizations, and as in 

 modern tales of crime and detection, has found every motive 

 and traced every step, showing how easy all is with once the 

 clue in hand. Lastly, the mere chat and gossip of the studio 

 has been carefully set down as though of precious benefit to 

 the student, and this in detail, sifted and expanded, has been 

 an art lesson. Meantime, down to the ver\- fundamentals of 

 purpose and method, art instruction means entirely different 

 things in different schools. 



In so far as this represents natural and reasonable difter- 



