Caregivers and early childhood educators make use of the curiosity, desire to know, and visual acuity of children to provide much of the basis for language and other learning.

There is no instruction in visual literacy either in schools or out, nor even recognition that learning to look is, like reading, a process of stages.

If we want novices to develop solid rapport with art based on direct, personal connections, why shouldn’t we think about what art is appropriate to get them started?

It sounds simple, wanting to provide young people with learning that endures, as well as feelings of confidence and self-esteem. But, as all who work with adolescents know, such goals are easier to aspire to than to achieve. As a society, we offer less than we should to help adolescents negotiate the tumultuous teen years.

WHAT IF YOUR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS had both the confidence and language skills to debate complex ideas with you and their classmates and, at the same time, were able to disagree civilly and build on information and ideas from others? What if they expressed opinions based on detailed observations and consistently provided evidence to back them up?

In order to produce children who know how to read well enough to perform practical tasks, at the very least, parents and caregivers talk to children as babies, introduce books early on, and prepare them for school, where various step-by-step processes are employed to help children achieve functional verbal literacy before the end of elementary education. Not so with visual literacy.

Teachers are looking for ways and means to accomplish learning that teaching methods of the past (especially the recent past) haven't addressed.