Teaching Art Sources & Resources by Adelaide Sproul (1971)

"Learning by doing was replaced by preoccupation with packaged, programmed, and predetermined teaching materials, and the humanization of education begun by the followers of Whitehead and Dewey was lost in a mass of data about norms, testing and curriculum plans."

"..powerful urge to create and explore.."

We encourage artists and students to "search their environment with children and to help them use what they find as fuel for creative learning and growing."

"An adult who is relaxed and openly curious can observe and probe new territory with children, learning as they learn and helping them to formulate questions and make connections that are valid."

"Each child must be allowed to choose his own point of departure from a central store of possibilities provided... and to follow his particular interest as it leads him out from the starting point towards many possible relationships. It is this organic growth from the center out that makes for sound learning..."

"The children left with no complaints and I asked the teacher, How did you ever manage that? How did you dare? She replied, Every year I spend more time teaching less."

"The reverberations this experience started in my thinking, at a time when my own teaching was packed with content at the expense of breathing and thinking, continue to be compelling, and I realize more forcefully all the time that learning is not a matter of action so much as it is a chance to absorb, to take time to look and feel and wonder."

"We become panicky if we leave them (students) to watch and listen and choose."

"Delight in how things feel is inseparable from the act of discovery. We begin to turn off children's sense of touch early with the constant admonition "Don't Touch!" ... Direct experience of the way things feel is necessary to the development of an expressive vocabulary, and information that comes through fingers and toes must not be disregarded."

"This teaching to the needs of the whole person changes the usual expectation for pace and accomplishment. Progress is made along a broad and by no means straight front, but it seems to be real progress, not just a technical performance."

"The art period must be lifted out of the context of busywork - something to do when you have finished your lesssons  - and given the dignity of its rightful place at the center of the curriculum."

"We cannot save the paints and clay for later because they are too messy; they must be as available as paper and pencils if they are to be used for real communication."

"It is this rediscovery that makes the delight and the excitement within learning and brings fresh insights and renewed enthusiasm to teachers each time it happens." 

"This book, the result of years of poking and prodding materials from the earth, comes from the convictions borne of that continuing experience. These convictions have been strengthened at crucial points along the way by my teachers and associates and pupils, and more recently, by Nancy Newman, whose interest and understanding have been a constant strength."