Sunday, October 4, 2015

Reasons One Might Find A Place To Paint Pottery

By Deana Norton


It is not simply the real housewives of Salt Lake City, UT, but their children who may want to seek a place to paint pottery, learn music, sketch, or sculpt. Some hobby stores offer classes in all of these activities, but there are also some retail businesses which have an area for the buyer to add their own personal touch to an item they bought. Even a store-bought item becomes more special when the buyer gives it a little something from themselves.

This is an excellent activity for a family to do together, as it not only allows them to share their own unique abilities, but it brings them all together in an activity that does not involve eating or television. Young children around the ages of 8 to 12 benefit by the act of concentrating on one activity for a long period of time, children around the ages of 3 to 8 are honing their fine-motor skills, and teenagers just like to be artistic and unique. Mom and Dad get bragging rights for the work their kids do, not to mention being such good parents to engage in this activity with their children at all.

Such activities are becoming more and more important these days, as many public school systems are taking elective art classes out of their curriculum entirely. They want to focus only on the classes which require total linear right-brained thinking, and this is a shame. As usual, public schools educate for a life of cubicles or service-industry jobs rather than encouraging free thought, artistic expression, and fostering the ability to see new ways to approach a problem.

When you remove the one enjoyable part of a school day, then the rate of students dropping out, skipping class, or engaging in other activities when they should be in class increases. This can only increase the rate of attrition in public schools, leaving this country in worse shape than ever. There are many bright young minds dropping out of public school these days, and a lack of opportunity to express themselves through art is probably at the core of their scholastic retardation.

Each year the numbers of students who drop out rather than graduate in the usual way becomes more and more nebulous. The frustrated students who do hang on till the end often do so because they are part of clubs in the school which allow them to pursue the arts still, or at least grant them understanding ears to hear them. The standardized testing system which was put in place during the 90s has been a sore subject for many creative-minded students because it requires them to have a learning style of rote memorization, which many do not possess.

There are many people who believe that this change in society has been done by design, by an aristocratic class who only wishes our children to be intelligent enough to operate the machines without being intelligent enough to ask themselves why. The changes in public education which occurred in the 90s lends credibility to this perspective. When you see how many young people have been pigeon-holed into "creative" educational alternatives, it does appear intentional on many levels.

This push to get children into special education classes in order to grant them simplified tests, or no testing at all, has another edge to it known as Ritalin or Adderall. In the modern classroom, about 30% of the students are on some form of mind-altering medication in order to help them "concentrate". The fact is, by removing art, music, and physical education; they have created the perfect storm for active minds held captive to express themselves as active bodies.

Parents who are still able to create, and wish their children to be able to do the same, are encouraged to look into these kiln studios as a way to help bring about a well-rounded education for their children. Without music and art, culture becomes far too much like Brave New World. There has to be a balance between what you have to learn and what you want to learn.




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