304 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
with the artistic, or, better, the poetic and imaginative, faculties of any person on 
earth ? Is it not rather the one thing which the vast majority of competent critics 
admit to be most needful in modern art ? In: this sense, is not the adoption of some 
such system worthy the consideration of this august Congress ? 
GENERAL DISCUSSION. 
Mr. AxsoN K. Cross. of the Normal Art School and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 
Mass.: In his industrial work he finds pupils who have drawn in the public schools 
and high-schools, unable to draw the forms of simple objects. When they can do this, 
the art schools may teach them art. He quoted Ruskin in regard to the small propor- 
sion of people who see correctly. He feels that ability to give facts must precede 
artistic work. He criticised the statement made by Mr. Talbot at a previous session, 
that drawing from an object is no more drawing than writing with a copy before one 
Is composing. The pupil must learn to spell in art as well as in language. 
Proressor W. M. R. FRENCH, of Chicago Art Institute, said that pupils had come to 
the Art Institute, and after drawing a human figure from the antique, had been unable 
to put a plinth under it correctly. He has, in consequence, introduced the drawing of 
objects involving the ordinary principles of perspective. 
Miss Lucy SiLkE, of Chicago, favored training in the beautiful at an early age. As 
pupils use good language without knowing the rules of language, so pupils may uncon- 
sciously acquire good habits in art from the contemplation of good examples. The 
ahildren’s art is the highest kind of art. 
Dr. JAMES MACALISTER, of the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, said : But one col- 
lege in this country requires any knowledge or skill in drawing for the bachelor’s 
degree. This is a great thing, that one college of the first rank, Johns Hopkins, requires 
drawing for its B.A. The appreciation of art is far in advance of the skill in draw- 
ing. In the London Board Schools the pupils are surrounded with copies of good 
works. Why should not all schools surround their pupils with casts and pictures, copies 
of the best ? Any school can import casts duty free. So far as the speaker's experi- 
ence goes, he considers drawing from the object the only valuable exercise. Tin cans 
and earthen jars correctly drawn are subjects for art instruction. A teacher in the 
Drexel Institute solved the problem of how to get the objects before the members of 
the class by giving each pupil a group of small models at his desk. Give the pupils 
all the good masterpieces possible, but require them to draw from objects. 
Mgrs. F. M. HorrLAND, of Boston, said that the pupils in good schools had found 
great benefit from copying, and even tracing, works of good masters. 
Mrs. Hicks, of Boston, said that it is rumored that young men who enter Harvard 
are said to be deficient in writing English. It is said that their deficiency is because of 
a lack of reading. We are trying to get the pupil to become familiar with art even as 
he should be familiar with good reading. Football and kindred exercises may have 
kept him from English. Perhaps, sometime, nothing will keep him from either. In 
relation to light and shade, she thought that young children can hardly see light and 
shade for themselves. If uniform renderings result from work, pupils are taking the 
impressions of some one else. She would not begin light and shade until the pupils are 
about twelve years old, unless they can be removed from the vicinity and influence of 
their mates. 
Mr. GoopenovGH, of Brooklyn, N. Y., believes in light and shade, and that it should 
oe put in as far down as possible. 
MR. Brown, of Indianapolis, said that pupils can see shadow if the light is allowed to 
enter at one side of the room. A child cannot learn to draw as he learns to write or to 
spell. His drawing must be the expression of his spirit. Even though the ellipses are 
mperfect and the lines do not converge perfectly, the drawings are elorified and finished.