ART AND THE CHILD.

Otago Witness, Issue 3755, 2 March 1926, Page 15

ART AND THE CHILD.

TWO TYPES OF PUPILS. READING OF “BLOOD” STORIES. LONDON, January 7. Mr G. F. Sinclair, Master of Science, lecturing on “The Places of Aesthetics in Education,” at the Education Congress, said that {Esthetics wa6 a great socialising influence tending to produce the communism of spirit towards which the world was slowly and painfully advancing. Life was a striving after an idea with three aspects—the moral ideal of perfect conduct, the scientific ideal of perfect knowledge and the aesthetic ideal of perfect sympathy. These three ideals served as a standard by which a man’s success in life was measured. Progress must be made towards all three, as they were mutually inter-dependent. A life which took no part in aesthetic activity was mere existence. The spirit was starved and growth ceased. Everyone should be trained in msthetic appreciation. He also thought that children should be trained to be artists, if only to make them more appreciative of the work of others. Ruskin was not a great painter, but he appreciated painting. In too many schools literary activity was stressed to the detriment of other forms of art. Two types of pupils should be arranged for, the literary artist and the handicraft artist, because some children thought and felt to their fullest capacity while composing an English essay or translating a Latin author, while others experienced the maximum spiritual growth while making a bookcase or embroidering a dress. For this reason the bias of expression must be in some cases towards literature and in others towards handicrafts. CULTIVATION OF TASTE. Mr Edward Holden (Gloucester Technical School) said it was marvellous how one could get a boy’s appreciation by doing something which 99 times out of 100 would be declared to be wrongful. They could claim the interest of boys by reading a book of the “blood” type. He would have no hesitation in taking a group of boys and letting them go through one of the “deepest and reddest blood stories” one could possibly choose If they took that as a reading text-book, in two or three years’ time they would be able to appreciate Ruskin or Tennyson, or any other form of good literary work Miss Pepper (principal of the Liverpool Domestic College) spoke about the more homely arts. Cookery and needlework subjoins, she thought, might obviously have an {esthetic value. She was afraid teachers did not see the eestetic value of the sub jeets and that they directed their .attention to the utilitarian point of view. By teaching the resthetic value there was the joy of the Creator as well as the observe* in a work of art. That was realised in the making of Christmas cakes. There a pupil put in a good deal of work in the making of what was probably done away with in half an hour. (Laughter).