In today’s world, it is widely perceived that painting and drawing classes are integral to pupils’ enhancement and therefore should be obligatory in high school. Personally, I wholeheartedly disagree with this position.
There are numerous reasons why art classes should not be made compulsory in educational institutions. First and foremost, art can be irrelevant to pupils’ future career paths. To be more specific, students’ future career choices can probably be engineering or economics, which are unrelated to art. It means that studying painting and drawing techniques are time-consuming. Another justification is that time limitations can prevent high school students from studying arts-based subjects. University admissions are becoming increasingly competitive, meaning that should high-schoolers switch their focus from core subjects to non-academic ones, they may not stand a chance of being admitted to their dream university. As a consequence, making art classes obligatory can potentially bring pressure on pupils thereby hampering their productivity.
On the other hand, there are those who maintain that painting and drawing classes are of paramount importance to pupils’ improvement. Part of their argument is true in the sense that art can enhance pupils’ imagination. As artists have to think about what they are drawing, their imagination ability is enhanced through the time, which plays a crucial role in science subjects, such as geometry, thereby supporting students in their studying process. However, there are other techniques and alternatives to widen visualisation ability. Thanks to the development of technology, there are numerous applications, such as Desmos, which can illustrate three-dimensional spaces to help pupils imagine effectively. Compared to the art classes’ time consumption, this time-saving technique can allow pupils to improve other skills.
In light of the above arguments, as the art classes’ demerits outweigh their merits, I believe that it should be an optional subject.