Art instruction
currently has a peripheral role in the educational system, a prize for good
behavior, or a reward for the talented few.
Excuses run from a need to “return-to-the-basics” to a lack of supplies. Before we can get into the topic at hand, computers
and art instruction, we must first consider some of the reasons people give for
not providing intense art instruction in their classrooms.
As
for the return-to-basics excuse, I can think of no language more basic than
art, visual or
musical. We humans are
confronted daily by pictures, color, movements, and sounds that influence
the way we think, feel, and behave every hour of the day. Television, book covers, movies, CDs, radio,
video games, nursery
rhymes, and interior décor are but a few of the ways the arts are expressed in
our lives. Without
training in how these elements function, a person is just swept along, unable
to define the reasons he is so swayed, unable to be the one who sways. I urge you to look at Jason Ohler’s article
in Educational Leadership, “Art Becomes the Fourth R” (October
2000).
We
need to rethink the importance we give to certain fields over others,
particularly at the high school level.
Personally, I feel we should do away with the Core Curriculum with
limited Electives, and allow students to do as at the college level, have a
major. Students truly interested in art
would be allowed to study it intensely at the place they spend so much of their
time. The same would go for other fields.
For such a plan to work, however, advisors counselors would have to know
each student individually to help plan a year’s worth of course work, the
student would have to be allowed to try out several majors, and colleges would
have to look beyond the present requirements of four years this, three years
that. I have a suspicion that if the
students had more say in what they learned, and cared about their field, their
performance may actually reflect their intelligence.
