Once upon a Time in a land not so far from here it was decided by the Great and perhaps the Good who ruled there that the children who attended their schools were not as talented as artists as they should be. So after much deliberation and not a little vexation they decided that something needed to be done to improve upon the skills with pen and brush of their much beloved children.
Now the Great and maybe even the Good set up a committee to decide how to make the children at least the equal and perhaps even the better of those other children who lived in another land not far from them across the sea. Now after much tugging of beards amongst the men of the committee and whatever it is that women do when they have a knotty problem to consider a decision was made and that was that the best way to decide on how good the children were at Art was to measure how good they were at drawing hands. Now, if my readers, you are as poor as drawing as I am then you can see that the committee of the Great and Good had a point. For hands are hard to draw even when you are ten times more skilled at art than I am. So a Proclamation was sent out and teachers throughout the country set to their task with a will. Many teachers were not too skilled themselves at drawing hands and had to be sent away to learn and to practice until they could do it themselves with accuracy and precision. And once the teachers had learned to draw hands then they, of course, imparted their wisdom upon the children that they taught and art classes became solely dedicated to the ability to draw this most difficult of body parts. Some teachers, sadly in their folly, continued to encourage the children to draw and paint other subjects, a forest in the night or a portrait of their best friend or what they felt most strongly in their heart but they were soon rooted out when their pupils were tested and found to be wanting in the one skill that mattered most. Now the Great and maybe the Good clapped their much drawn hands with something that almost approached glee, though glee is perhaps too light a word to describe the satisfaction that such earnest people found in the satisfactory completion of their most well thought out plan. As surely now, all children must be good at art as they could now draw something that all agreed was difficult and if they had no time to paint the forest in the night, or a portrait of their best friend or that which they felt most strongly in their heart then was that really such a loss....... and anyway the Great and very seldom the Good had something else to change as they were busy people who had much to do. Apparently, the children of the Land were not great musicians and perhaps that could be improved upon if all children could learn to play an augmented fifth on the piano.