What is art, anyway?

Ok, rows of desks in an art room.. not a great sign.. but not being judgmental the girl decides to sit and begins to doodle on a piece of paper that has been placed on each desk.

The teacher comes in hastily, looking stressed, and his hands are dirty.. a good sign.. and he quickly washes them in a huge stainless steel sink just as the last children find a seat.

He explains that he is also the school's football coach.. she doesn't quite know what to make of that.. and that they have just finished an extended practice session for tomorrow's match.

The teacher then runs through an introduction of what they will cover over the year, some art history, colour theory, painting and drawing, and collage.

He asks if there are any questions before they begin. A few hands go up. One girl asks if there will be any pottery.

Her mother is a potter and she has dabbled quite a bit, even turned pots on the wheel, glazed and fired. She loves the firing process especially, the excitement of not really knowing what's happened in the kiln until the door is opened.

She is advised they will make a coil pot in the 3rd term, and the teacher brings their attention to a few pots on a shelf, fired clay with no glaze. He does the firing in the holidays. There is more scope for pottery later on in the school life, especially in 4 and 5 year's time.

A boy asks if there will be metal sculpture. His dad works in a scrapyard and he's always getting odd bits of metal and welding or bolting them up to make useless things, usually funny. People have been telling him he is a metal sculptor. But no, no metal sculpture at this school.

Another girl asks if there will be printmaking or photography. She looks agitated as he just shakes his head at her.

This girl has had an interesting time of it since kindergarten when her teacher there had asked the children to draw her, a portrait. She had turned her crayon on it's side and covered most of the page in a yellow field with a few soft orange misty swirls through it. The teacher asked where the portrait was and the child replied that she didn't know the teacher yet so couldn't draw her. The teacher had said it's simple to just draw an outline, and the child had replied that people don't have an outline. Then the teacher had told her to draw an outline.

The child's parents were sensitive enough when in tears she had shown them the work and relayed the accompanying criticism to withdraw her from that school and search for a school that would foster her artistic talent, which was already apparent at 5 years of age.

They had tried another local government school, but didn't get past the interview process before they knew it would be no better.

They had tried a community style school but found the artwork, although encouraged there, was restricted and with religious overtones and kept searching until they found another community school which had a child lead approach, but only accepted children up to 12 years of age.

The teacher now flicks through some images on a screen. They are what appear to be hastily drawn copies of works of art, and the teacher reads from a book in a monotone a brief outline of each work and artist. The agitated girl is looking angry now, and rudely asks the teacher if he drew those images himself. He replies in the affirmative and adds that they were drawn a long time ago.

The teacher now places a plaster cast sculpture on the front desk and asks the students to draw it. There are angles and curves, many planes and faces. Then he draws an outline sketch of the work on the white board, in the same vein as the art history drawings and advises the children it should look something like that. The agitated, now quite obviously angry girl stands up, shouts at the teacher 'You're no art teacher! I'm not putting up with this for one more minute!' and leaves the room, slamming the door so hard that some artworks fall off their shelves, including one coil pot which breaks into a few pieces. The class is stunned and the teacher looks angry as he walks over and picks up the fallen artworks. He says he's doing the best he can, and that he's done his training.

With a cold feeling, the unschooling girl recalls a conversation she overheard between two women when she was visiting the local art gallery. She gets email notifications of exhibitions and events at the local art gallery and museum and enjoys using these resources and others nationwide. The women were discussing a local school art teacher and how many students he had alienated, how much talent he had ruined and how sad that is. She realises she is in the classroom of that very teacher. She is about to follow the lead of the angry girl and get out of this retarded place when a loud hooter is sounded. The teacher notifies the class it's a signal for a special assembly.

The school is notified that a child has been found dead at home, a suicide after leaving school during the day. The unschooling girl doesn't hear much of the principal's address, just that the school wants to head off any rumours or gossip, and asks that the children show respect to the family and friends of the poor child. She realises with sadness no-one had noticed that the boy, the writer, had not attended gym or art that afternoon.

What they aren't told, because no-one thought it relevant, was that when the boy's mother arrived home there was some classical music playing on the boy's ancient record player, and one word written on his notepad: Blind.

He had gone home from the music class, thought he might do some writing to take himself away for a while, but nothing arose. He put on some music to escape to, but he couldn't relax and his inner vision was completely blank. The years of torment, starting with racial bullying when he had moved to this country, this town at 5 years of age and followed by years of bullying and hiding himself from the world as much as possible, all arose within him and he felt like nothing and no escape from the emptiness.

He filled a bath with warm water and cut his throat with a broken disposable razor.

Walking home this afternoon, tears falling down her cheeks, the unschooling girl sees a car pull out of the school carpark and drive towards her. Something flies out of the driver side window and lands in the roadway.

The principal's car continues on past her, the principal's son intently looking down, busy with a game or texting, whatever. Neither notice her.

She walks up to where the brown paper bag from a local fast food chain has tipped it's contents on the road like an ad for a decadent society, or the school saying 'Now there's some art for ya', picks up the cups and paper, slips it into the bag and wanders towards home to put it into the various recycling bins, a habit from working in environmental and cleanup groups.

She normally allows her feelings full expression, but doesn't want to have a tearful outpouring in front of the school so she begins to run. She needs to get to one of her special places which will help her process this pain and raw emotion before going home.