Nurturing and Self-Esteem

[Jason Tandro]

I think there are only two essential arts: writing and music.

Writing is key, and is both science and art. Creative writing allows us to hone our talents for communication and technical writing gives us the skills we need to express them clearly.

Music is also key in not only understanding our musical culture, but (and this is coming from a guy who can't sing to save his life) spending time in a musical environment has actually been proven to increase IQ.

Now the other arts I wouldn't call essential, but I would say it is a very good idea to spend some time in them.

Drawing, painting, etc. is the traditional "art" and is, as you say, wonderful for expanding the mind.

CAD is a nice mix of science and art as well and has various real world applications. A few CAD courses in my grade schooling have helped me out tremendously in the office.

Programming is more of a science than an art, but I'd like to see more kids taking programming courses. The things you can do with it when you really know the syntax in and out is fantastic, but even just learning programming theory teaches troubleshooting skills, technical thinking and many other skills.

And fingerpaint. We must have fingerpaint.

[tay120n64]

When I gave my opinion I was mainly looking at it from the perspective of wanting to pursue art as a career and not the inherent need of humans to create and expand their imagination.

I would never demean the importance of creativity. (just so we're clear )

[psychokind]

Jason Tandro wrote:

Writing is key, and is both science and art. Creative writing allows us to hone our talents for communication and technical writing gives us the skills we need to express them clearly.

spoken language before writing! what you are able to achieve just by talking to people is just awesome.

[Jason Tandro]

psychokind wrote:

Jason Tandro wrote: Writing is key, and is both science and art. Creative writing allows us to hone our talents for communication and technical writing gives us the skills we need to express them clearly. spoken language before writing! what you are able to achieve just by talking to people is just awesome.

Yeah, almost forgot about forensics. I rocked that original oratory category. #3 in my region! Of course, #1 was my friend and colleague Meg Smilowitz who was infinitely more talented than I was.

Hers was a heartfelt report about something very serious and something that she had experience in. Mine was a tier or two above stand-up comedy about a less than serious subject. Meg was nice about it and said that she liked my oration, but iono.

[Manibrandr System]

Jason : To that, I would say that you are smart enough to cheat the system.

But seriously, yes there are a lot of problems with the idea that could use refinement, but it shows a lot of promise for the future of our education. From my personal experience, I have learned as much, if not more from listening to recorded lectures from UC Berkley, than I have in class at my old school. I would go as far as to say that forcing an all-day long attendance from the very early rays of sunlight, and giving homework that regularly takes until midnight to complete impedes on the students' ability and desire to learn.

To deny the advantages of adopting the internet technology as a tool for education is pretty disingenuous. The current institutional method of education is very time-inefficient and demanding. Then at the end of the assembly line of "knowledge" you are equipped for a world that is already 15 years left behind. Text books are often very horribly outdated, and ill-suited to correction when the demand for one comes up. (Just look into a textbook for Computer Science to see what I mean. It teaches a computer language that is very much useless by today's standards. We had to learn Pascal, which is fucking useless. They should have taught C++, html, CSS, Java, Javascript, Ruby or Python instead.)

I also should mention that giving out mandatory assignments that gets students out in the real world to achieve something is far more effective at developing people skills than to have to do it with a group of simillarly inept and inexperienced students who were practically told all throughout their education that the only way to success is to step on other people's toes.

It also sounds pretty hypocritical to dismiss the visual arts as a vital aspect to society while giving concession to music and writing as a vital creative stream. They are all equally important.