"This was not because of the teacher, who was a very understanding and gentle woman, and gave these children much more time for art than would most first-grade teachers. But she was under pressure of the curriculum, the academic lockstep, and both she and the children were under pressure of the nervous parents, worried about their children's 'progress'—that is, whether the Ivy League express was running on schedule. The children began to feel, after a while, that there was no time for art, that it was not serious—and six-year-olds in school are very serious. They are also very sensitive to what adults value. They show a parent or teacher a picture, and the adult says, in a perfunctory voice, 'How nice, dear.' Then they take home some idiot workbook, whose blanks they have dutifully filled in, and their parents show real joy and excitement. Soon the pictures get shoved aside by the workbooks, even though there is more real learning in a good picture than in twenty workbooks." John Holt

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