Drawing as Basic Skill

These drawings from today have nothing to do with art.  The ones above are what I would call thinking on paper.  A friend texted me after she saw the water bottle drawing that I posted the other day;  she said she wanted one but with the animal facing inward.  Puzzled, I wrote back and asked if she wanted a water bottle, and if so, to tell me materials, etc.  But she told me that she had thought the water bottle holder was a small dog carrier, sort of like a newborn baby front carrier.  I looked back at my drawing and immediately saw what she was seeing-- and it DID suggest a pet carrier (and I then noticed that the whole design was based on the principle of one of those rubbery plastic little kid swings).  With a few modifications, I was able to design the pet carrier in a way I would never have thought of had I started out to design one.  I love how my friend's creative leap sparked the whole design.  

After texting back and forth with my friend and sending her a photo of the sketches, I put those aside until later, when she is able to send me measurements so I can make a mock-up.  Meanwhile, I needed to go buy replacements for three of our pathetic ancient lampshades.  I didn't feel like carrying the lampshades with me to the store, so I made careful drawings of the important details.  I could have snapped a phone picture, but photographs aren't as useful for communicating mechanical details as line drawings are.  I've illustrated lots of sets of directions, and line drawings always do it best :  the abstract possibilities of pen are great for leaving out the extraneous and focusing on the essential details.

For the above reasons I believe drawing should be taught to everyone, as it used to be, as a basic life skill like writing and reading, rather than being set aside as a subset of Art that only the Talented are capable of learning.