‘Pin Men’ Condemned

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31052, 6 May 1966, Page 2

‘Pin Men ’ Condemned

(Special Crspdt. N-Z.P.AJ LONDON, May 4. Grandparents who draw “pin men” to amuse grandchildren and parents who draw circular men are influencing children’s art, says a group of art teachers. The attack on the pin men and rounded cats is included in a report by the Surrey Educational Research Asso-

ciation. It. was made by the art teachers, who studied the drawings of children aged four to seven over a four-year period. Adults could interfere with the normal development of the children’s pictorial symbols by teaching trick methods of drawing, the teacher said. A spokesman for the association said: “A pin man is really quite a sophisticated drawing art. You are giving a child a sophisticated idea which is quite wrong. We believe children should draw what they see and pin men

are influencing their ideas.

“The reason we are against circular cats is that such a drawing gives a child a onedimensional impression. “A child's impression is something quite different. A cat which is just two round blobs with ears and a tail is putting a straightjacket on the child."

The group says that teachers will “be doing no good” if they influence children to produce copies of a kind of art the teachers themselves particularly like.