Let’s Play, Linocut and Print!

Abstract

The main topic of my inductive research – on the cusp of educational science and art education – was the role of graphic processes of reproduction (such as paper engraving, linocut, collage print) in visual education and their developmental impact on the personality of primary school children. Play, linocutting and printing are the three words that embrace the essence of printmaking techniques. But how relevant are these traditional techniques, which require precision, patience and a great deal of time, in today’s continually accelerating visual world? What can a child growing up with flickering images that change every hundredth of a second do with them? During the five months of fieldwork at the Munkácsy Mihály Elementary School of Art, my aim was, among other things, to answer these questions and to identify more accurately as well as to measure the developmental impact that I hypothesised. The focus of my research was on the development of visual skills (composition, abstraction, imagery, association) and the impact of the techniques on cognitive (attention, concentration) and social skills (cooperation, patience, acceptance, self-esteem).