I found this article to be a blast to the past for me. I learned a lot about the development of children’s art making when I was in the my undergraduate studies at the College of Saint Rose in Albany. One thing that really resonated with me within this article was how important it is for students to be creative and to have the liberty to express who they are within their artwork. I had an art history professor who wouldn’t let us doodle in class because he felt like it was an art form and that if we were creating art, we weren’t listening.

What really intrigued with all of the information that is presented within the high school section. I’m used to seeing inappropriate little doodles (especially from boys) all over school property. Burton suggested that they are working through the material and through visual language to work out the ambiguity of the world and of their bodies, and their lives. For my SLO test I had to give students an array of materials and the objective was to visually display an emotion of mood within their one day artwork. I had a lot of generic responses. However, I had a lot of students create really thought provoking art works. One in particular was from a muslim students who depicted “feeling controlled” you could tell that she didn’t to discuss why she felt the way she did, but she was able to depict it visually in order to get a message across. The article made me think of this situation. Older children use their artwork to work out or dig deeper into ideas and feeling that they normally would not discuss.

This, from burton perspective is because they are entering a mode that is similar to scribble play or drawing that kids would do in their adolescence. This reminds me of frobel and his toys that would have students working out complex problems through play. The development that Burton described was very much like this process. Students should, and be allotted time to create art work that is expressive, creative, thought provoking, and meaningful to their development and their life.