determines that? How does a good art teacher inspire a child to find their own personal creativity? How does a good art teacher inspire a child without inhibiting the possible realms of their personal creativity? All of these are extremely important questions that Elwyn S. Richardson explores in her book In The Early World, Discovering Arts Though Crafts. Richardson addresses these issues and put her answers to these questions into practice inside her own art classroom. In her own account of the process of her students’ artistic developments, she explains about a number of things that she believes to be the fundamentals of a healthy and non-inhibiting artistic learning experience.

Creating and maintaining such an open and progressive learning atmosphere is not only extremely difficult but also imperative to the full development of a child’s creative possibilities. It is scarily easy for teachers to fall back on the pre-existing templates for teaching art especially. However, doing so is disastrous to the full development because it leaves so much room for the student to also fall back on such templates which then denies creativity and indiv

idualism. Another problem that a teacher is faced with is the fact that fear of rejection and laziness are so embedded into out society that a child’s natural instinct is to use these templates for creativity because they know they are at least accepted, even if they are “cliche”. Richardson’s teaching experience must then be a balancing act where she must juggle trying to inspire new forms of creativity while also not inhibiting the child by being to harsh with constructive criticism. Richardson does a wonderful job of trying to address all of the issues that are encountered when one is trying to teach a real art class.

I would undoubtedly call Elwyn S. Richardson’s teaching experience a huge success, mostly because she started out with the clear goal of truly teaching her students. But she maintained an open mind about what she wanted to do and was instead constantly observing her students to judge what the next step would be. The dynamics of the classroom involved a constant give and take where everyone was working together. Richardson’s realization that the kids needed a source of inspiration was essential to the success because that diverted the entire process into a new progressive direction. It is the inspiration that creates and it is also what is so easily lost the minute children step into a classroom. Loss of inspiration means a loss of interest and drive and that is what makes the soul get tired and go to sleep. One cannot create something truly innovative if they cannot look inside themselves first. When they can do that, they can become the Picasso’s of our time because as cliche this admittedly sounds, we are so different deep down in our souls and the art is being able to locate that and express it to the world. When we are taught simple stroke methods and perfect lines, the entire essence of art is completely lost. What needs to be cultivated, and what Richardson aimed to cultivate, is the process of finding true, individual inspiration and being able to turn that into something concrete and expressive. It is then that the real art is created.

In the process of deciding which pieces of art and which pieces of writing seemed the most sincere, the children were equally involved as Richardson. The students opinions pulled equal weight in deciding what art went up on the wall. As she explains, “It

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