Michelangelo's David isn't as impressive in photographs as in person. At 17 feet, he stands head and shoulders above all at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. In front of him, we're midgets, and he's the giant. There's a lesson here that good teachers have known for long: life is a better teacher than they can ever be. Most schools take their students on field trips and outstation tours, but in the last few years, a few enterprising art teachers from Mumbai have chosen to immerse their students in art, and then leave them out to dry: by taking them outside the classroom and using geography to teach them about art history.

Outside and within
For the last three years, Nanda Das, HOD for art at Cathedral & John Connon School, in Fort, has been ferrying his students to Arts University Bournemouth in Southampton, UK, for a 12-day programme. "I want to give them exposure to college-level art," he says. "We do 2D drawing, silk-screen printing, lino, etchings; in 3D, we do model-making for architecture; film-making, photography, prosthetics. The course is divided into nearly nine branches." With a batch of about 20, students from the ninth to the 12th grades are trained under drawing masters from different art colleges, such as Slade School of Fine Art and Royal College of Art. "The majority of the students who go are very interested in art. It's not that they go just to have a vacation. Obviously, there's a conceptual change in their thought process afterwards."