Full text of "The Discovery Of The Child"
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HAP T E R XXI DRAWING AND REPRESENTATIVE ART THE exercises which we have described as drawing were really an education of the hand intended to prepare it for writing. They were determined as an element in that complex preparation leading the small hand of the child, still uncertain in its motor co-ordina- tions, to execute that minute form of drawing known as writing. These elements, or factors, which are separated from one another (as we have seen from the movements leading up to writing) in order that they may move towards a synthesis which, in the case of writing, is one of the most characteristically " explosive,** some- times become an element which may be made to combine with other different syntheses. Thus this particular drawing which we have described becomes also an artistic element, a co-efficient of drawing proper. It is, therefore, neither drawing nor writing, but is a starting point for both. Today one hears a good deal about * free * drawing, and for many people it is a matter of surprise that I have set up such rigid restrictions for drawing for the children, who are obliged to compose geometrical figures and then fill them in while holding their pencils in a special way, or who are limited to filling in with coloured pencils figures already drawn, I therefore feel obliged to