December 30, 1933
THE STATE
Page Seventeen
THE NEW ART OF 11 FINGER-PAIN 1ING”
and the North Carolinian who established it here and abroad
★
THERE'S
л
North Carolinian
who has returned to the fold
after twelve years in Europe,
filled with the plaudits of educators
and artists from Constantinople to
New York, from Rome to London,
from Paris to Bucharest.
Ten years ago Ruth Faison Shaw
founded the Shaw School in Rome,
through the encouragement of Richard
Washburn Child, American Ambas¬
sador to Italy; Frank 1'. Fairbanks,
art director of the American Academy
in Rome and the members of Un-
American colony in the Eeternal City.
There she developed “Finger Paint¬
ing” which she had originated in the
hills of North Carolina. Now Finger
Painting is recognized throughout the
Occidental world as a masterpiece of
psychological education for children,
and two weeks ago, before hundreds
of North Carolinians, meeting in Ra¬
leigh at the annual session of the
North Carolina State Art Society,
Miss Shaw lectured on basic art,
demonstrating finger-painting and dis¬
cussing its application for education.
Ruth Faison Shaw was born in
Kcuansville, down in Duplin County;
the daughter of the Rev. William
Mitchell Shaw and Alberta Faison
Shaw, daughter of Thomas Ivey
Faison. The name of Shaw has re¬
sounded through the mountain coun¬
try, through the schools of North
Carolina for generations. Educated in
private schools established bv her fa¬
ther in the towns in which he preached,
Miss Shaw began her own work ns a
teacher at the mature age of sixteen.
Tho years of her 'teens and early
twenties were passed in teaching in
schools in the North Carolina moun¬
tains, further studying in Baltimore,
and later in teaching in the larger
schools of the cities of North Carolina
and New York. It was at about this
time* that Miss Shaw began her work
on the psychology of children in Clif¬
ton Springs, New York.
When the United States entered the
World War, Miss Shaw returned to
North Carolina where she spent the
summer of 1917 ill war work at South-
port. Temporarily restrained from
service abroad because of the presence
— Photo bj BarroD Cell'll. New York
MISS RUTH FAISON SHAW
Discoverer of Finger-Fainting, and
internationally known educator
- ★ -
of dozens of blood relatives in the
American Expeditionary Forces, Miss
Shaw returned to her work as a
teacher, but did not givo up her war
work entirely. Just after the signing
of the Armistice, she managed to reach
Europe as a worker for the Y. M.
C. A., spending about six mouths be¬
tween London, Paris, Verdun, the
Argonne and Romagne.
She was then called back to the
United States and for a year acted as
assistant to the North Carolina Good
Roads Commission. But in June,
1920, she returned to Europe once
more, traveling through the principal
capitals, meeting important psychol¬
ogists and educators, continuing to de¬
velop her own educational ideas. In
the course of her study she formulated
an educational system which brought
about tho practical use of finger paint,
early in 1931. Through the medium
of Shaw Finger Paint her fame spread
rapidly throughout western Europe.
★
She was invited to lecture at the
Sorhonne in Paris, in Nice and finally
in the spring of this year was n-kod
to return to her own native land to
lecture at the Dalton School in New
York.
The use of Finger-Paint to expros-
the pictorial thoughts of both children
and adults using the medium has at¬
tracted the attention of educators on
both sides of the Atlantic and a list
of those interested would include the
names of writers, artists, teachers,
business and professional men and
women and their children, known to
every one.
What is Finger- Pa in ting?
This new medium of child educa¬
tion was created to fill a long-felt need
for an aid to the child in self-expres¬
sion. The handicap of adult tools has
been deliberately removed. For such
tools there has been substituted the
child’s natural play-material :
The fingers and hands,
Water,
Mud color, or “Finger-Paint."
The child dips his fingers into tho
“paint” and makes paintings of his
own design, using nothing but his fin¬
gers and hands in doing so. Truly
beautiful effects are created.
Miss Shaw’s basic thought in her
educational work is that there should
be a spirit of guidance, tolerance, un¬
derstanding, sympathy and freedom in
the relationship of the student and the
teacher. The teacher should In- an in¬
tellectual leader of the child, respon¬
sible for the child’s mental, moral and
physical growth. The purpose of
teaching, of “education,” as Mis.
Shaw sees it, is not merely tho ac¬
quisition of knowledge, but rather, to
equip the student with the means nec¬
essary to accomplish a normal mental
growth. Finger-Painting gives the
child the ability to create from with¬
in, the ability to receive from others,
and thirdly, and probably most im¬
portant, gives the child the bridge of
adaptability, without which one is
hampered throughout life.
It is easily understandable, then,
why Miss Shaw's philosophy of edn-
( Continued on }Hige twenty-hvn)
