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Re: perspective and appropriate age


From: Marvin Bartel (marvinpb_at_TeacherArtExchange)
Date: Sat Feb 08 2003 - 22:26:37 PST

>Patricia Knott wrote: "I remember some 10 years ago having a
>conversation with a colleague about what grade level is most
>appropriate for teaching perspective and decided middle school,
>maybe. I'm not sure the research on spatial perception and child
>development, but I came to the conclusion that some will get it and
>some won't."
This is true. Some fail to learn reading and writing, but we still
try every way we can to teach them. Perspective drawing is not as
essential as reading and writing, but I think many children are
capable of learning lots of skills at a much younger age than we
generally teach them.

Yesterday, my five-year-old granddaughter was riding in the back
seat. Out of the blue she said, "When you are sitting in the car and
looking out the window, all the other cars look so much smaller than
our car - except for the cars that are right next to us." When I
asked her why, she said she did not know. But after some discussion
and continued observations she could correlate he seeming size
reduction with the distance away from us. She is more thoughtful
than many her age, but it is probably never to soon to have children
start to make observations, think about what they see, ask questions,
practice skills, and learn to express themselves.

When we say that "some will get it and some won't", might it be that
some never had enough careful observation tasks to practice when they
were younger. Could it be that their brains missed the chance to
develop this visual capability because we neglected to ask for it
soon enough? If reading and writing were taught with the same
casualness that some teach art in the lower grades, how many children
would actually learn to read and write?