Drawing...you gotta have it

While I'm putting up things I don't want to forget (and about which I would welcome conversation...) I wanted to post this piece by Anita Taylor from the Guardian online ('Why drawing needs to be a curriculum essential').

Taylor writes:

Drawing remains a central and pivotal activity to the work of many artists and designers – a touchstone and tool of creative exploration that informs visual discovery. It fundamentally enables the visualisation and development of perceptions and ideas. With a history as long and intensive as the history of our culture, the act of drawing remains a fundamental means to translate, document, record and analyse the worlds we inhabit. The role of drawing in education remains critical, and not just to the creative disciplines in art and design for which it is foundational.

...and she doesn't do such a great job of supporting that claim, falling into the common trap of being very specific about the art and design applications of drawing while being too general about the rest of the world's uses of it:

Alongside a need for drawing skills for those entering employment identified by a range of industries in the creative sectors – animation, architecture, design, fashion, film, theatre, performance and the communication industries – drawing is also widely used within a range of other professions as a means to develop, document, explore, explain, interrogate and plan. This includes the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine and sport.

I am trying to get a conversation that I hope will lead to a major overhaul of the drawing courses in Tyler's Foundation program underway soon. How can we make classes that fulfill the needs to 'develop, document, explore, explain, interrogate and plan' and what - exactly -  are those out in the world these days?

To me, a conversation about drawing as visualization and invention is long-overdue. What do you think we need to talk about when we talk about drawing?