764 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



drawing. Teachers will teach for that which the examiner seeks, 

 and the drawings shown will be as free from error, as neat and 

 clean, as the spelling would be under the same plan of examina- 

 tion, and have no more educational value. The ability to locate 

 correctly is the foundation of success in free-hand drawing, and 

 to a great extent in all the graphic arts. It can be as well tested 

 in five minutes as in fifty. A glance at line 1, eighth year, shows 

 that if the teacher has lent no greater aid to the class than sus~ 

 taining the attention during the exercise, the drawing that would 

 without that aid be so badly located as to be almost unrecogniz- 

 able may be made to appear on the eighty-five-per-cent line, ten 

 per cent better than the average adult unaided would make it. 

 That this is true will be recognized by all teachers who have 

 studied the exhibitions of pupils' drawings where a whole class 

 seems to do excellent work. Sustaining the attention of the pupil 

 is invaluable in instruction ; by its power the child of any age 

 above eight may learn as much fact in two minutes as the aver- 

 age adult can unaided in fifteen (see lines 1 and 2), but sustain- 

 ing the attention makes voluntary effort unnecessary ; that which 

 makes conscious effort needless makes it impossible. The power 

 to direct the attention unaided by outside stimulus becomes atro- 

 phied, observation impossible. The use of transparent planes, 

 the theory of perspective, and all devices by which " drawing is 

 made easy," only serve to rob it of educational value by putting 

 the child in possession of technical tricks which make observing 

 facts of no account. 



Having the child draw the familiar object from Nature is an- 

 other fatal mistake. The familiar object and language co-ordi- 

 nate to perfection. The child may study and try to represent the 

 difference between two objects as seen without danger, but he will 

 correctly describe that in language long before he can graphically, 

 because he can, while looking, put what he sees into words ; but 

 to draw, he must look at a blank page and recall, what ? The 

 strongest impression, whether because of the recency, frequency, 

 or intensity of it. I have known the recall to reach back a whole 

 week, a month, three months, because of the greater intensity put 

 into some former effort to observe objects associated with those 

 to be represented, the concept of which the pupil, though four- 

 teen years of age, was powerless to inhibit. It is to this inability 

 to indefinitely continue the inhibition of the conceived thing, 

 rather than to lack of knowledge or defective vision,* that most 



* Lucien Howe, M. D. (Popular Science Monthly, August, 1895), seems to think that 

 eyesight plays an important part in accuracy as seen in drawing. The facts do not sustain 

 the idea. A gentleman who has drawn the test twenty times, with an average error for 

 each location of '075 of an inch, on one occasion made an error of only '033 of an inch, 

 1*5, and at this time it was discovered that so considerable was the astigmatism of his 



