Please allow me space to express my observations regarding a few issues pertaining to the teaching of visual art, through your widely read newspaper.  

My first observation is the issue of pointillism as a shading technique. I disagree absolutely. A few colleagues with whom I have discussed the issue argued that they have read books that described "pointillism" as a shading technique. I have also read one or two such books but I am not convinced. I rely on the following facts for my stance.  

A school of painting which began in France in the late 19th Century called the impressionist school experimented widely with painting which consisted entirely of small separate dots of color so that they intermingle but do not actually over lap and modify (change) each other.

The visual effect from a distance is as though two colors had been mixed before application. This system was called "pointillism" and the impressionist school's most popular advocates were:

George Seurat, Edgar Degar, Claude Monet and August Renoir. What is being called "pointillism" is actually "stipple" the application of dots to create tonal value effect to a drawn object so as to make it look solid, three dimensional and real.

The second is the issue of intermediate colors. Again some books describe intermediate colors as products of a mixture of Primary color and Secondary color. The Color Wheel disputes this and shows intermediate colors as products of a primary color mixed with a neighboring secondary color. The color wheel enhances a better understanding of both fact and concept about how intermediate colors are formed or obtained.

The first thing we find in the color wheel is the triangular diagram (The Primary Triad) showing the three primary colors Red, Yellow and Blue. Second is the secondary triad showing the secondary colors: Orange, Green and Violet. Orange is placed between Red and Yellow to indicate that when the two primaries are mixed in equal amounts they will neutralize each other and from orange, a secondary color. Violet and Green Orange likewise.

Third is the placement of six intermediate colors placed between a primary color and a neighboring secondary color. Red Orange between Red and Orange, Yellow orange  between Orange and Yellow , Yellow Green between Yellow and Green, Blue Green between Green and Blue, Blue Violet between Violet and Blue and Red Violet between Violet and Red.  
 
Other Categories of color in the color wheel include analogous colors (Colors seen next to each other in the Color Wheel and complementary colors ( color seen not opposite but directly opposite each other ) E.g. Yellow and Violet, Blue and Orange, Red and Green warm colors (colors with element of Red in them) E.g. Orange, Yellow Orange and cool colors (colors with blue in them) E.g. Blue Violet.