Iucounu: Certainly you have you own theories and I wouldn't presume you are correct or not. What i can tell you is my own experience, not that of my child or anyone else's studies. What I know is this: I had access to all sort of coloring books before I started school, so before kindergarten here's what I learned.
- I learned that it was difficult to stay inthe lines until someone showed me a trick that i could put my index finger along the lines and "Bump" it with the crayon forcing me to staying the form. That didn't teach me that i needed to conform to someone else's idea of a picture, it taught me that there sometimes are tricks that can be used to solve a problem when you don't have the skills to be successful.
- I learned that a flat 2D image could pop out at you by adding shading, to look for places where shading would be expected (EVEN if it's not drawn in the picture. That taught me that even though there were "rules" to the picture i could challenge those and take the image beyond what was expected. It also taught me that i should look at the natural world to observe and see how things work in the real word and try to apply them to the picture.
I have a hard time with your logic that coloring books stifle creativity. Anything that exposes you to something other than you normlly would have thought of enhances creativity, not stifles it.
As much as i like to learn independantly, there are time when i wish i had someone that i could have sit with me and show me what they do. Music for example. I am a self taught hack on the guitar and I do fairly well, but i don't play enough to be able to play something by ear ( I USED to but that takes practice!) so it's great to use Youtube to watch how joe blow plays a particular piece. Would it be more creative to invent my own song? LOL Maybe, but it might suck too. I happen to think by emmulating someone else, you enhance your ability and learn to grow outside of yourself.
Back to CBT, (This is a song about CBT, Remember? - Arlo Guthrie, sortof) The fact that colleges are heading more towards CBT is really validation to me that it should be viable. I have since found that there are some 27 states that have some form of virtual high schools online. I am more convinced that CBT is the way to go if you have a child who works independantly well.
