Promoting Awareness of Adult Biases in Children's Artmaking

I had a conversation recently with Beth Balliro of MassArt, and one thing we chatted about was the benefits of including contemporary art in the visual art curriculum. Contemporary art is less about the object and more about the idea, and the conceptualization behind it. This reminded me about something I’ve been meaning to share…

Visual art teachers need to be aware of the language we use and the biases we have when approaching students’ artmaking in our classrooms.

Some of our students are amazing renderers: they are naturally drawn to and excel in the realistic representation of the object on paper. Many of us put a lot of stock into this ability and emphasize it as an essential skill necessary to be an artist. But this is an incredibly westernized perception of artmaking.

What about those students who are drawn to the physicality of artmaking? Or the simplicity/complexity of expression through abstraction? Or a focus on process rather than on product?

Diane Jaquith once shared that students value what we assess. Along these lines, art teachers are constantly using language and nonverbal forms of communication to talk and respond to students’ artmaking. Our actions and reactions to our artists’ processes and products are powerful, and awareness of our own biases toward art is something to always remember. We work with a variety of artist, all of who approach artistic expression differently.

Something to keep in mind as we continue to combat colonialism and convergent thinking in our classrooms.


Collaborative painting by Danny, Matthew, and Nicolas, Grade 4:


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