Gary P. Steuer: Arts in Education Week took place last month, and since then arts education has been on my mind and in the air. A recent blog post by Alan Yaffe - here -- that contended arts education advocacy should be focused more on art-making than art-viewing got me thinking. It is true, much energy goes into trying to get K-12 students to attend arts events, and that's wonderful and much-needed. We try to organize class trips, and bemoan the increasing challenges of getting access to buses, to getting the OK to leave school for an arts experience when the pressures of sticking to curriculum and "teaching to the test" are ever-present. And arts groups do all they can to provide "enrichment", to facilitate those out-of-school experiences and to also bring teaching artists or arts education programs into schools.
9 comments:
I think this article addresses a real problem not only with the lack of skilled art teachers in school, but also with the lack of variety in the arts that is taught in schools (mainly visual art and media). This was very true in the public school that I attended. We had numerous visual arts classes and a great music department, but dance, theater, spoken word and media arts were forgotten. It's true that it is a good thing that arts are being taught in the first place, but to not have a complete education in a topic and simply leave out other areas within the subject is detrimental. It would be similar to only teaching cultural history and ignoring political and areas of history.
I fully agree with this article. Teachers cant just talk about how much they appreciate (or how much you should (appreciate) the art, the actually need to teach it. Especially in colleges when students are paying for their education. I heard from my cousins they didn't learn a thing from being in college. It's very important to know about the art as a whole. People should know the history, the "how to" of the art and even the political views of the art. This is just upsetting to hear and the experience. In my years of the arts I see teachers come and go and are never remembered because of the lack of logic for specific art.
Yes yes yes! We need more art teachers! The teachers I will always remember from elementary, middle, and high school were the ones that taught me studio art and theater. Perhaps it was the subject material, or maybe these kinds of teachers were cut from a different cloth, but whatever the reason, these teachers stuck with me and inspired me to pursue my passions at place like CMU. However, we need to make sure these teachers are properly trained and are covering not just the art. For instance, drawing isn't just about lines on a page, it's about what each one contributes. It's about how centuries and centuries of drawing have led you here. The history and culture of art is almost as important as the medium itself.
This article brings up a lot of good points. Arts education is very important and often over looked. Children need to learn about art and should be given the opportunity to develop their skills while they are in school. There should not be a need to take outside art classes and pay a lot of money when the same skills can be taught in schools with the proper equipment and teachers. Art teachers need to be able to teach students the skills required to create art and not just about the appreciation of art. There also needs to be a wider variety of art mediums taught in school. The typical types are ceramics, drawing, and painting, but other forms of art like theatre should be taught.
Arts teachers are just important. They are always the students favorite teachers, What I feel is so important about these teachers is that they inspire creativity in students. They understand that grades are important, but rather see their students explore their creative minds and create art than worry about grades. They are also very easy to talk to because they aren't scary like "real" teachers are (math, english, history). More art teachers I think will also help inspire more students to go into a carrier into the arts. This important because I sense that students are bring pushed to study science and math instead of art. At the end of the day, art teachers are important.
This article identifies very effectively one of the issues with the under-developed arts programs that currently exist in most schools. Exposure to art is valuable and important, but it is not enough for children to passively experience art. They need to have the opportunity to take classes in which they engage with lessons and projects and learn from skilled instructors. The value of art classes is two-fold: when students go through the process of learning about and creating art themselves, it empowers them much more than any number of museum visits and performances ever could. It also gives them the opportunity to learn from a skilled teacher who can mentor and encourage their growth as an artist. I love the idea of higher education art students and recent graduates teaching art classes in public schools, it’s a great way to get them involved in an important community effort, and a good chance for the kids to learn from young, enthusiastic and inspiring artists.
I wholeheartedly agree that arts education in schools should focus on learning to create art than learning to appreciate it. At the same time, society seems to have spoken, through whom people vote for and where they donate, that the education in the arts aren't something they want to fund. If this is the situation, then it doesn't matter what should be a priority, or who should bear the cost of art teacher salaries, it's about the fact that the arts are seen as an enrichment and a frill, and people who want to tighten their belts cut those things first. Even here at CMU, departmental funding is changing, with our new president preferring to support more STEM-type disciplines than the Drama department.
If we truly want to increase arts education, we have to do one of two things, change the visual and find data to support the arts as a fundamental discipline in any well-rounded education, or find supplemental ways to support the making of art. I think an Arts Teacher for America type program would be great at providing personnel to schools without relying exclusively on internal funding. If we go about trying to increase arts education funding by trying to hold it on the same level of necessity as biology or algebra, we are going to lose, because curing cancer and saving the environment is actually a more fundamental human need than learning how to paint, draw or put on a play.
I came from a public elementary school where there was only one art teacher, one music teacher, and one 4th-grade teacher who ran the drama club after school. However, thanks to these three people, I decided at a young age that I wanted to be in the arts when I grew up. We are in a desperate need for more art teachers in schools, especially in public, non-magnet, and non-specialized schools- the ability to access participation in art needs to be available to every child, no matter what school they go to. I also wholeheartedly agree that the root of the problem lies within unfair funding in the education system. If the education system has enough money to support STEM subjects (which should be just as supported as the arts), then certainly there should be an equal amount of monetary support for arts programs without needing to depend more and more on funding from outside organizations that don't even have the ability to solve the root of the problem.
Some of the comments I read above were similar to experiences I have had. People are always talking about how much they "like" or "appreciate" art, but there are less who are willing to actually teach children the fundamentals of art. It's not enough to keep saying it, we have to do it. Particularly at elementary through high school levels, teachers in the arts are also often less respected than teachers in other subjects. Somehow people have grown to believe that art topics require less knowledge than math or science topics. I hope education can move toward a more well rounded approach, where all disciplines are respected as equally important for people to be able to learn about the world around them.
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