Year 10 student Ava Chan was incredibly shocked and disappointed when she received her artwork just three days after she had handed it in. To her dismay, an appalling 0 out of 8 was circled and bolded in red on her artwork titled ‘The Hunters In The Park’ .
The piece displays a glowy sunny day in the park with children playing in the background. The focus lies on the interaction between a teenage boy band and a bigger pigeon that is standing a few meters away from the flock, showcasing that friendship can go beyond species.
Chan stated that she was mortified that her teacher had taken her own personal grudge out of hand. “Art is supposed to be subjective. It’s okay if she doesn’t like my interpretation of The Beatles being befriending a pigeon, but she didn’t have to give me a 0 for it.”
She expressed her outrage at the incident. “I was humiliated. The teacher did that on purpose. I didn’t even do anything to her. How could she have done this??? She even told the entire class that I had gotten a 0 and to not follow my example. All of my classmates asked me what I had done. I don’t even know. She embarrassed me in front of everybody.”
Another disgruntled classmate who wished to remain anonymous revealed that she had also experienced the same concern as Chan. She vented her frustrations at her hard work being dismissed at a glance. "I worked hard. I worked 16 hours a day 8 days a week, only to be backstabbed like this by MY OWN ADVISOR. A zero? For this masterpiece? I can't believe this."
In a response to these flamey attacks, Ms W, Ava Chan’s art teacher retorted “The department comes together to grade these pieces of artwork together so that we can decide on the level of standards for each grade boundary and give students the grades they deserve fairly and without prejudice. It is not my fault that some student’s pieces of work were not up to standard. Handing in a goose throttling someone as a piece of artwork for the theme ‘nature landscape’ is simply not acceptable and threatening me will not change that fact.”
Chan snapped back at this unfair criticism with words that in essence boiled down to “you’re wrong”. In the end, she has created a petition and has sent a strongly worded email to the principal of the school, demanding that creative freedom and thinking be upheld in this international school. Other students have also raised similar concerns in the school. The petition has gained over 2000 signatures as of March 22 2021 thanks to the help of Chan’s online friends.
The principal has declined to comment on this matter.
Sign here to support Ava Chan’s petition in keeping artistic freedom in this school.
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