Chapter 9: Confessions of a Former Painter-By-The-Numbers

Peter M. Taubman (2009) captured my imagination in the initial paragraph of his book, Teaching by Numbers. I had not expected this reaction, but, then, I had not anticipated his metaphoric frame. Of all things, he constructed his framing from his memory of the 1950s’ pop-culture phenomenon of creating copies of artistic masterpieces by use of “paint-by-the-numbers” kits.

I bought into that craze in the fall, 1951. Unmarried and principal of the small town’s only elementary school, I lived in a rented bedroom in a quiet house in Burleson, Texas. Nothing in that room marked it as my own. On a whim one day early in the school year, I purchased a “paint-by-the-numbers” kit, determined that I would add a personally painted picture, a duplicate of a masterpiece—and in oil paints—to my room. Strikingly, I do not recall the name of the original artist or the title of his original painting.