ART EDUCATION. I3y 



height and width of simple objects in ten-minute drawings. 

 These would be valuable onlj' for the discipline obtained, and 

 therefore would not have to be kept safe. It is not fair to 

 the child to use models that are too small or put them where 

 they are partly hidden by the heads of the pupils in front of 

 him. It is not fair to a child not to give a large percentage 

 of the available time to drawing for correct proportions. 

 It is hard work for the teacher, but teachers have to work 

 hard. It is not fair not to show the child his errors in time 

 to give opportunity to correct them : in the study of draw- 

 ing, results are always approached by trial and correction. It 

 is not fair to the child to teach him or permit him to depend 

 on pencil-in-hand measurements or ruled lines. The straight 

 lines and measurable dimensions are easy. The hard prob- 

 lems must be solved by the hand and eye unaided, and they 

 become capable of these through the doing of the easier. It 

 is not fair to the child, nor to the children of the next genera- 

 tion to let the subject degenerate into kindergarten play. 

 Because it has led to no adequate result in incompetent hands, 

 certain school-boards have displaced drawing altogether or in 

 part for instrumental draughting, which is a useful craft, but 

 which has none of the character-building power that exists in 

 freehand drawing when properly taught. It may be answered 

 that all that can be done, is done ; that children are incapable 

 of more, and that teachers have neither the time nor the energy 

 to do the work properly. This last is true in a measure at 

 least, but there is another side to the story. To do the really 

 valuable part of the work and to do it right, would take no 

 more time or energ}'^ than is now wasted. 



The examination drawings made by public school students 

 at the time they enter a vocational school of art are a fair test 

 of the way in which the subject is taught in the public 

 schools. If these drawings are right in the essentials, if they 

 show that the student has been taught that the large propor- 

 tions are most important, that detail is secondary, that con- 

 struction and the relation of parts are of more consequence 



