Connections to the World: Visual Art in Urban Schools

Abstract

Joy is not a word we often use in conversations about education reform, particularly when we speak of reform in our urban schools. Nor do we often link reform with the synergistic relationship between excellence in academic skills and the abuity to think creatively, critically, or to problefn solve. The fact that the two preceding notions remain mutually exclusive in the minds of some educators has a direct impact on the teaching of visual arts in urban schools. Research has proven some links between academic achievement and the arts and speculated about others (Winner & Hetland, 2000). Linkage is difficult to quantify because we are dealing with the idiosyncratic nature of artistic and cognitive behavior. There is evidence, albeit mostly qualitative, that there is reason to train students to use their minds holistically by having them study subjects that exercise and develop both sides of the brain. The left side, as we know, deals with logic and language. These are the areas of development that are given most attention in school via the work done in math, language arts, and, of course, in preparation for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). The interpretive, discovery, and exploration modes of learning, addressed in right-brain activities and most frequently used in the arts, helps that development. We know instinctively that our society needs people who can think independently and creatively. We know joy is becoming less and less of a common condition among our school children. And we also know, certainly within the discipline, that students involved in the arts find joy, experience the opportunity to think and interpret, gain the abuity to express and communicate ideas, and often find success not