Art for Everyone’s Sake: Kids’ Art Classes for a Kinder Tomorrow
There are so many benefits to kids’ art classes that we almost don’t have to list them: Left-side-of-the-brain development? Check. Better hand-eye coordination? Check. Getting kids to sit still for a whole hour? Check. But did you know that doing art can actually help someone grow up to be an all-around nicer person?
At Art for Animals’ Sake, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, kids’ art classes are taken to another level. Cheerful and talented art teachers present animals as models and motifs, and even bring real live rats into the classroom for children to make furry friends with.
The volunteer instructors are helping us to work toward our mission of building a more compassionate world, one finger painting at a time.
“Every single being on this planet wants to live a full and healthy life,” said AFAS Founder David Walega. “We focus mainly on youth, with the goal that if we can build on the natural empathy that kids have for animals, you’ll develop into a person who is kind both to human and non-human animals.”
In addition to being generally intrigued by non-human animals, kids are also a lot less self-conscious than adults. This makes creating art the ideal approach to learning empathy. David begins kids’ art classes by asking students to closely observe the animals. Most of them have never heard that no two rats have the same exact tail, or that if you look closely enough a chicken’s “black” feathers are actually green, deep purple, and blue. Kids being kids, they will gladly scrutinize a rat’s tail to get the details just right and bring a multicolored hen drawing home to claim the place of honor on the fridge.
But what transpired was more than just a very unique kids’ art lesson where everyone had a whale of a time. The students start to see each animal as an individual. They are living, breathing, feeling beings that stare back at them with the same curiosity. They react to gentle touch with happiness and to sudden loud noises by being startled. And at some point a child begins to wonder: If even rats and chicken, which are allowed in our society to be tested on and eaten, aren’t so different from me, what about all the other living things?
“It starts a conversation,” David explains. “They haven’t had their sense of wonder knocked out of them yet. As adults, our lives are so complicated and our attention so committed to so many other concerns.”
In a perfect world, the concept that “all living things are just as alive as me” should be pretty self-evident. Given how little our society values not just lab rats but the poor, the disabled, the foreign, the overweight, and even the hopelessly unfashionable, this is unfortunately a revelation to many.
Being a kind, compassionate grown-up animal, human or not, comes with even more benefits than kids’ art classes. Compassionate people do better in personal relationships and even at work. Selfish workers with no people skills actually tend to get promoted last, even if they’re talented, because it turns out that no one likes to do a total jerk any favors. Having empathy for others instills a sense of purpose and connectedness.
In short, compassion is pretty amazing! And it has to start somewhere. Why not with a charming little rat in one hand and a paint brush in the other?
