ESL and Printmaking

ESL and Printmaking
Andrew, in Japan, has a Pram Halfwood Press and the two of us are working a a variation of Printmaking Camp. Living in Japan, and with a four-year old daughter, he's highly tuned to the English language teaching programs in Japan. He himself works as a translator. I feel lucky to have met Andrew through his purchase of a Pram Halfwood Press.
It proves, again, that the power of the press is more than one would assume. I think printmaking - the kind of hands-on printmaking that kids sometimes get in school - has something special for kids that the other arts don't have. Since I reinvented printmaking as a time-based art (a printmaker makes a plate and then prints it again and again), I opened up a new experience for people who were wary of trying art for themselves.
When you introduce time as a factor, such as in repetition of making almost the same image over and over from a printing plate, you not only get an experience you don't get from drawing, painting and sculpture, your scope for imagination widens.
I tell people, "You don't have to know how to draw or design to make interesting prints - the mechanics help you out."
Andrew sent me a link to research from New York on art and English as a second language. It showed there was improvement in ESL students who had art included in their curriculum. Andrew and I think ESL programs should include printmaking on a real etching press, too, so our goal is to start a program based on his Pram Halfwood Press.
Reading the New York paper, I did not find one occurrence of the word, "printmaking," but plenty of references to drawing, painting and sculpture. This is typical because the materials and supplies for these visual art media are more readily available and disposable. For printmaking, it's more difficult and tools, equipment and supplies are not so easily thrown out at the end of the day.
With more effort, the rewards grow, in my opinion. If people take up the challenge of more difficult tasks, the experience deepens and can be ingrained in students at an early age. Printmaking requires more focus, more discipline, more intellectual exercise than drawing, painting, and sculpture. Most importantly, in the context of ESL, printmaking requires teamwork and communications.
I have only begun to analyze the paper Andrew called to my attention, and I don't expect any surprises because - in just the first several pages - I see the same old story: art helps.
In many ways, media arts help cross language barriers more than visual arts because we live in an age when media almost dominate our lives. We need to teach young people how to use the machines that are the ancestors of todays technologies that produce everything from music recordings to video games.