Art Design Technology in the Primary Classroom Cognitive Development

Children are forgetting how to use their easily, experts say swissinfo.ch

Technology plays an ever-increasing role in children's production of fine art. All that is needed now are a few gestures or to slide a finger over a tablet screen. But is this to detriment of young people's skills?

This content was published on March 24, 2013 - 11:00

Every day new art apps go on sale, for every age grouping and interest. Paint like the Old Masters, create complex graphics, pattern an architectural work - with new technologies the possibilities in art and design are limitless.

In light of this development, does it make sense anymore to describe by hand and utilize traditional materials? Luigi Moro, visual training expert at the Academy of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), is in no dubiety. Teaching the art of drawing is only as important in the age of digitalisation, he argues.

Visual training adds to the development of pupils' intellectual and intuitive skills and sharpens their sense of aesthetics and sense of taste, Moro believes.

"The discovery that you lot tin can leave behind a sign with your hand which can sally into a form and become an object, exerts such a potent magic, that in the end it volition always triumph,"  he says.

"When a pupil manages to create something beautiful with his or her own hands, that makes them happy. For this reason we have to train pupils and give them the instruments they demand. We have to provide the weather condition and so that this training can exist passed on."

In this time of abstract and technical activities visual and educational art take become more than of import, Moro's colleague Dante Laurenti tells swissinfo.ch.

Laurenti emphasises the negative upshot new technologies have had on immature people's manual skills. "Ten years ago it took a month to teach sixth class pupils a clean style of drawing; now it takes vi months."

Co-ordinate to Laurenti the new generation "is losing manual dexterity because they are no longer used to using their hands".

Manual skills training

It is for this reason that there needs to exist a time in school for learning what are one'south personal interests and strengths, peculiarly when if it might bear upon on a career selection later, says Moro.

"It is a daily struggle to make information technology clear how important drawing and educational art is for the grooming and cognitive development of the pupil."

To get pupils interested, it is important that the classes are clearly worked out and of a high quality. "You have to offer a circuitous activity that is also suited to the skills of the pupils and structured in such a way that it volition exist a meaningful feel, with a realistic investment of fourth dimension and effort."

Cristiana Canonica Manz, art education expert at SUPSI, notes: "1 finds satisfaction in [establishing] the relationship between the imagined object and the finished product. For this, an educational structure needs to be provided by a teacher."

This structure is ofttimes lacking for drawing in primary schools where the teacher is often non specialised, Laurenti observes. "Even in primary school where pupils want to produce more structured and realistic drawings, at that place are situations where cartoon is scheduled for the last two hours of Fri afternoon, almost equally relaxation time."

Schooling in Switzerland is a responsibility devolved to the cantons, meaning there are 26 dissimilar didactics systems in the country. The cantons are currently trying to harmonise their practices.

Laurenti believes that there is an opportunity now to increase the time allocated to drawing to four hours per week by reducing more abstract and intellectual subjects.

"This would likewise solve numerous bug for pupils of satisfaction and behaviour. And when pupils are happy, their operation in other subjects volition likewise improve," Laurenti says

Residual and intelligence

That does not mean that the new means of information technology should be ignored, Moro said. "That would be totally wrong. It is much more nigh introducing this in a meaningful balanced way, in an active and intelligent way and equally a stimulus."

Canonica Manz adds: "The claiming for the instructor is to know these methods and brand them understandable to children. So that on the i hand the experience with information technology is different to that which they are having outside school, and that on the other hand transmission skills also remain essential."

The value of manual skills has been explicitly recognised during recent schoolhouse reforms and equally part of preparations for the harmonisation of compulsory school systems. The heart school syllabus of canton Ticino, for example, notes that "manual skills are an important and irreplaceable time for the harmonious growth of pupils".

Withal things are developing ever farther in the other direction, non just in school but also in society, and opportunities to engage in manual or craft activities are shrinking. That is why schools need to offer the space and tools for it, Moro says.

To do otherwise would be to deprive children of the right equally a citizen to "benefit from this type of intelligence".

School harmonisation

Schooling in Switzerland is a responsibleness devolved to the cantons, pregnant there are 26 dissimilar teaching systems in the state. The cantons are currently trying to harmonise their practices.

In 2006 Swiss voted to add a national education commodity to the constitution. The ramble amendment came into force in 2009.

Progress and then far will be reviewed in 2015. Under evaluation: whether national education goals have been reached and if harmonisation has been sufficient. If not, the land can innovate the necessary steps to firm upwards the constitution.

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Source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/back-to-the-drawing-board_art-is--vital--for-children-s-cognitive-development/35301268

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