You wouldn’t expect a child to learn to write without instruction, so why do we expect them to be able to draw without instruction?

Writing is just another form of drawing – a method of making sense of the world and communicating ideas with marks.

Most people agree with the saying that a picture speaks a thousand words. I certainly do. So why do we spend years teaching children to say and write thousands of words when they could just as well make themselves understood by drawing pictures?

Probably a quarter of children, maybe more, are happier conversing in pictures than they are in words.

Language-minded people tend to become teachers and generally don’t have the skills to teach drawing.

When I take a drawing session with 6 year olds and teach them how to draw something, they are amazing. They all get it in their own way and make wonderful, exuberant drawings.

Eleven year olds get it too, because I show them step by step how to create the drawing. Adults, if they try, get it as well, but they are very self-conscious.

The young ones are allowed and encouraged to draw all the time, so they have the habit of drawing and they pick up a lot of skills, mostly through trial and error, because no one is giving them tuition.

Eleven year olds are beginning to get self-conscious and compare the quality of their drawings with great artists. They don’t have time to draw much at this stage and so begin to lose the habit and the skills, but they have enough residual skill to follow along and do great drawings.

Adults have lost their skills and any muscle memory for drawing. They find it hard, but not impossible. With habit and practice, they can draw quite happily, as long as they are encouraged and don’t expect to be Picasso overnight.

Drawing is a learned skill that requires habit and practice. Drawing has been ruined by the modern concept of “ART”. My art teacher stood well back, not wanting to interfere and “spoil” my natural style. Their only help was to ask what I thought of it. Drawing is not about free expression. Art has made teachers frightened to teach drawing skills in case artists lose their free expression.

The opposite is true. Having been taught drawing skills, the brain does not need to think about the construction and grammar of the language of drawing. It comes as naturally as written and spoken language does, when practiced daily. When you don’t have to think about the technique and construction, you are completely free to assimilate ideas and interpret them to your hearts content, free from the worry of visual illiteracy.

Why do we not teach our children to be properly literate

Pictures are 50% of literacy – no wonder we can’t get the levels of literacy up. We aren’t teaching half the curriculum!