Opinion — Whether art classes should be compulsory in high school

It is hard to dispute that drawing and painting do children good; the real question is whether that justifies obliging every high-school student to take them. I agree with the premise but only partly with the conclusion: art deserves a guaranteed place in the first years of high school, yet it should become a choice once students approach their final examinations.

The developmental case for art is sound. Drawing trains a kind of attention that few other subjects demand, since a student must look at an object for minutes rather than seconds, and it rewards experiment in a way that mathematics, where an answer is usually either right or wrong, does not. For adolescents buried in theory-heavy subjects, an hour with a brush also provides a creative outlet at the age when stress begins to build. There is a practical argument too. Many future architects, designers and animators discover their aptitude only because a school put a pencil in their hands, and children whose parents cannot afford private lessons have no other route.

Compulsion throughout high school, however, ignores how the final years work. In exam-oriented systems such as Vietnam's, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are stretched to the limit by the subjects that decide university entrance, and every additional compulsory lesson is taken from sleep or revision. A reluctant student made to produce a still life for a grade learns little except resentment. By that age, moreover, students have had several years in which to find out whether art speaks to them. Offering it as an elective keeps the door open for those it does, without penalising those it does not.

Art is too valuable to be left to chance, so I support making it compulsory in the first years of high school, when it can reach every child. In the senior years, though, it should be offered rather than imposed, because creativity cannot be produced on demand.