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 What do students consider to be "art"? According to the World Arts Council, most students who were asked this question considered art to be painting. Almost seventy percent of students age 15 through 18 said that painting was art. This takes into account all manner of painting from watercolor to pastels, oils, and acrylics. A much smaller number, twenty percent, said that sculpture was art. This number includes students who said that sculpture included wood and clay. Eight percent said that stone sculpture was art. Only two percent of the students surveyed thought that working with wood was art. "I think that paintings are artistic," one student said, "but sculpture isn't." According to Liza Melter, art director at Bandas University, students tend to associate art with color; things that lack color aren't considered art. This research will be used in the future to help better develop high school and university art curriculums.

Newspaper clipping

Local high-school teacher communicates with blind students via sculpture. Matt Creaborne, an art teacher at Crestview High-School, recently began using sculpture to assist blind students with such subjects as math and geometry. He got the idea by watching the great Spanish sculptor Rigo Rossi use his hands to count off measurements as he sculpted. "By using their hands, students can feel things like distances and spatial relationships," Mr Creaborne said. "This allows them to think abstractly, just like in geometry." Mr. Creaborne's technique will be tried in several other schools this fall including three high schools for blind learners. According to Jim Miller, director for assisted student learning, Mr. Creaborne's methods should help visually impaired students match non-visually impaired students in terms of their test scores in mathematics. "We are looking forward to big improvements in test scores in the next few years," Mr. Miller said.