When I grew up we had art in school. You know, that glorious class where often you got your hands dirty and sometimes the “best” artists didn’t have the best marks in the other classes. That class where you could be unique and different and it was still alright.
I remember using crayons and making yellow clouds because there was no white crayon that we could use. The other kids would outline the cloud in blue and then lightly shade it blue. Neither side thought about leaving the cloud part of the white page uncoloured and thus white. Both sides were wrong, but it was okay.
But how does any of this help us to be prepared for the real world? Well it doesn’t directly and that’s the point of curmudgeons like me who want to take art out of school.
But I say, “Why stop there?” Let’s get rid of things like music and literature, too.
Music has been shown to expand the intelligence of people and especially growing children. But that can easily be provided at home. How many households do you know that never play music?
Literature has been used to help learn the language of English and its huge amount of words. Instead, we’ll have to make children learn the language from how to books. This way they can learn the words and also something useful, like how to install a toilet.
And there are a whole set of “disciplines” that are called arts in the university level. Why don’t we rid ourselves of all of them so we can teach more useful things in our schools.
One of these arts is geography. The legend tells us all we need to know about most maps. Once we figure that out, we’ve got most of the whole subject figured out.
Another art is history. It has been said many times that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Well I say look at the United States. Many Americans heard part of their history and deliberately want to go back there. They took history in school and want to repeat it in real life. There is also such a large amount of anti intellectualism in those groups that I think they wouldn’t mind doing it without the benefits of science. Let them have their pseudo sciences as they die of preventable health conditions.
So basically we should just teach the STEM classes in school. That’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. With just those courses to focus on, we might lead the world in those fields.
Jus donut xpect us 2 leed in udder feelds.
