Teh question is: does starting people of with paint by numbers lead to the eventual creation of good artists?

Or simply lots of people who are expert at painting by numbers?

I don't think there is a definitive answer to that. It is a question that has raged in education circles for decades.

Whether it was 'The New Math' or 'Phonetic (developmental) Spelling' or a raft of other attempts to simplify the teaching process, they all rely upon the presumption that eventually, the 'proper' knowledge will take hold and supplant the teaching aid in the minds of those so educated.

But there is an old adage that it is far harder to unlearn your bad habits that it would have been to learn the right way to start with. And history shows that to be the case.

Another old adage is: those whom ignore history, are destined to repeat it.

In reply to Re^5: Your main event may be another's side-show. by Anonymous Monk
in thread Your main event may be another's side-show. by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.