On teaching art to children

I am discussing ideas from Mona Brookes’s inestimable book “Drawing with Children.”  The first part of the discussion can be found HERE.

Brookes has this wonderful advice for art teachers that ought to be etched on the lintel of the door to the art classroom; in the section entitled “How to use this book,” she gives this sage advice:  “If you are going to be teaching children, don’t introduce them to the lessons until you have dealt with the majority of your own drawing blocks and confusions.”

How much of most people’s reluctance to draw stems from the discouragement they learned at school from teachers who projected their own discouragement outwards?  Lots of kids enter the building with a love for drawing only to leave with the dejected feeling of “can’t.”