In an age in which aural and visual information is at a premium, few Americans are aware of the dynamics of production skills in areas such as drawing, painting, construction, dance, music, and drama because they have been denied this training in their formative years. In a typical kindergarten setting, children learn hand-eye coordination without the benefit of art training. They scribble with crayons and cut paper with scissors. They sing, dance, and act without the benefits of knowledge of musical composition or the basic principles of composition and design, simply because their teachers were never taught these skills in their college courses. Other disciplines usurp the arts and tend to relabel and abuse them entirely out of context.
Children sing and act at school functions without adequate instruction or a conscious purpose.
They are allowed to print school posters without education in penmanship and typography. And computer graphics programming bypasses traditional concepts of composition and design, which contributes to visual chaos on the World Wide Web. The problem compounds itself throughout the grades. In the United States, that is precisely how art is introduced to elementary school students. One may well ask why that lack of training persists.