Rethinking Visual Arts Education

Abstract

The changing priorities of schools - in particular the ascendancy of math and science - and the modernist notion of creative self-expression pushed education to the fringe of the curriculum, Mr. Walling points out. Ironically, now science - coupled with high standards, an altered world view, and new understandings about teaching and learning - is pushing education back to the heart of the curriculum. THE ARTS have long struggled to find an appropriate role in the school curriculum. It has been, and continues to be, a struggle not only of place but also of definition. The teaching of visual arts offers a lens through which to view this struggle. A brief historical perspective is useful. Before World War II the arts - namely, music, theater, dance, and the visual arts - were a livelier, more pervasive presence in the school curriculum than they became during the war years and later. School arts, and the arts writ large, flourished during the first half of the century, even through the Great Depression. In fact, many of the New Deal projects centered on the arts, ranging from the Federal Writers' Project to WPA-sponsored orchestras and public artworks, such as the heroic murals still preserved in post offices and other buildings. And these efforts prodded schools to be similarly involved in arts education. However, government support of the arts, which had helped to keep arts education strong in schools, dried up as priorities shifted during the war and in the decades that followed. Then, and particularly after the Soviet launch of the first Sputnik in 1957, the emphasis in American schools swung dramatically toward math and science. The marginalization of arts education crested in the early and mid-1970s as the aging of the boomer generation emptied classrooms and the energy crisis forced cutbacks in programs and facilities. Auditoriums were gutted and turned into cafeterias, music practice rooms were reconfigured as office spaces, and classrooms disappeared, to be replaced by art on a cart. Among arts educators the crisis was clear. Arts education would need not merely life support but new life if it were to move from the outer edge of the curriculum back to the core. Thus in the late 1970s a movement began across the arts disciplines to push, pull, and drag the arts back to the heart of schooling. For the visual arts this effort has been stimulated and informed by five influences, whose convergence argues for a rethinking of how is taught. These influences include: 1) national goals and standards, 2) discipline-based education, or DBAE, 3) postmodernism, 4) constructivist teaching, and 5) new technology. Similar influences can also be seen in the teaching of music, theater, and dance. National Goals and Standards Getting the arts into the national goals was not easy. Spurred by the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 - never mind that it was rife with errors and hyperbole - the National Governors' Association made education its focus for 1985-86, under the leadership of Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, who would later become secretary of education under President George Bush. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was the vice chairman that year. By the time of the 1988 presidential election, Alexander recalls, almost every governor was describing himself or herself as an 'education governor.' . . . George Bush announced in the midst of his campaign that he intended to be the 'Education President.'1 President Bush's enthusiasm for national goals as an education reform strategy did not fire similar enthusiasm in Congress. The legislation he sent to the House and Senate (the America 2000 bill) gained grudging approval initially, only to be filibustered in its final form by conservative Senate Republicans.2 The arts did not figure in President Bush's America 2000. They had already been relegated to the periphery of the curriculum by the time that bill was crafted and so were forgotten. …