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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 85

Drawing and Modelling

Drawing and Modelling.

Your commissioners are aware that the number of children who are supposed to learn drawing in elementary schools is considerable, but it is small compared with the total number in attendance, and ii is, we have reason to believe, diminishing. We have ascertained by inspection that the instruction is in far too many cases of little value. Instead of a mass of inferior drawings being sent up once a year to South Kensington for examination there, it is necessary that the instruction in drawing in elementary schools should be as carefully supervised on the spot by the Whitehall inspectors as is that in other branches of primary education. In nearly all the places abroad which your commissioners have visited they have found that drawing is an obligatory subject of instruction in the primary school and that it is regarded as of equal importance with writing. The number of hours which the children devote to lessons in drawing abroad is frequently as many as three per week, whereas in England the subject is not only no1 obligatory, but In about three-fourths of our elementary schools no instruction whatever is given in this subject, and in those schools in which drawing is taught the time devoted to it rarely exceeds one hour per week, and even that not always regularly. This want of attention, together with the absence of competent teachers, proper models and methods, and adequate inspection, fully accounts for the inferiority to which we have referred. The page 46 training of teachers for the Irish national schools includes special instruction in drawing, and a "rant for drawing is made to primary schools in Ireland by the commissioners of national education. The drawing in some of the schools of the Christian Brothers and in some of those under the hoard of intermediate education is good.

Your commissioners are of opinion that sound instruction in the rudiments of drawing should be incorporated with writing in all primary schools, both fur girls and boys, by which, also, according to the experience of competent authorities, the willing would be much improved. Something in this direction has already been done in many good infant schools, where children of the age of six draw triangles, squares, oblongs, &c, on their slates. This exercise is repeated on the day of inspection, and is taken into account in estimating the value attached to "appropriate occupations."

We have observed with satisfaction the recent circular (Art Form, No. 1194) of August, 1883, prescribing the new exercise of drawing to scale. We believe the principle therein laid down to be excellent, and we trust that the school managers and teachers will avail themselves of the advantages offered to them in this alteration in the first grade work. The permission recently accorded to teachers to give instruction in drawing and modelling to the children of the elementary schools out of the ordinary school hours is also likely to prove very advantageous.

We are of opinion that more attention than has hitherto been devoted to it should be directed to the subject of modelling in the elementary school. We notice that by a recent addition to the art directory small classes in modelling may now claim a local examination; we believe this to be a most salutary regulation. Modelling is an exercise of great importance to the future workman, and its rudiments can well be taken up, as in continental schools, at the earliest age.

Assuming such preparation in the infant and elementary school as we have here suggested, tho progress of subsequent instruction in art classes would be immeasurably more rapid. Whether the attendance in any given locality will ever be so great in this country, where the instruction has to be paid for, as in France, Belgium, and elsewhere, where it is gratuitous, is a matter for grave doubt. However this may he, there are two points in connection with tho instruction in art schools and classes as bearing on industrial pursuits which require careful attention. The first is one which we are glad to perceive is now fully appreciated by the Science and Art Department, viz, the advantage of substituting practice in rapid but cornet execution in place of tho method of stippling, which was formerly not sufficiently discouraged in art schools and classes; greater attention also than hitherto should be given to modelling. The second point relates to industrial designing. This, for a variety of reasons, the chief of which are the want of sufficient knowledge of manufactures on tho part of art teachers and the absence of sympathy evinced by tho proprietors' of industrial works, has, with some notable exceptions, not received sufficient attention in our art schools and classes. In fact, there has been a great departure in this respect from the intention with which the "schools of design" were originally founded, viz, "the practical application of (a knowledge of) ornamental art to the improvement of manufactures." Large grants of public money for teaching art to artisans in such classes can scarcely be justified on any other ground than its industrial utility.