INTRODUCTION

ARTS EDUCATION :: INTRO :: PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Critical Elements

Comprehensive programs in each of the four arts disciplines can make a difference because they speak powerfully to two fundamental issues that pervade all of education--quality and accountability. They help ensure that the study of the arts is disciplined and well-focused, and that arts instruction has a point of reference for assessing its results.

The following concepts are critical to consider when implementing an arts education program.

• Arts education is not a hit-or-miss effort but a sequenced, comprehensive learning across four arts disciplines, each including its own skills, knowledge, and techniques. This offers the student a means of communication and modes of thought and action. Each discipline also provides rich and complex points of view on the world and human experience. It offers analytical and theoretical perspectives, a distinct history, varied interpretations, as well as innumerable connections to all human activity.
  
  All basic subjects, including the arts, require more than mere "exposure." It needs focused time for sequential study, practice, and reflection. While valuable, a once-a-month visit from an arts specialist, visits to or from professional artists, or arts courses for the specially motivated do not qualify as basic or adequate instruction. They certainly cannot prepare all students in a comprehensive way. When children move beyond the "exposure" level toward proficiency in an arts discipline, the basic processes of creating, performing, producing, thinking, perceiving, and responding in one context are utilized in other curriculum areas. The child who learns reading through one or more areas of the arts will also improve in reading in other subject areas. Just so, the child who learns to see with an artist's eye, hear with the musician's ear, dramatize the playwright's vision, or tell a story with the body's movement has acquired a tool that can enrich and enliven all learning, whether in an arts discipline, other subject areas or beyond.
• Instruction in the arts must occur through a hands-on orientation (i.e., students should be continually involved in the work, practice, and study required for effective and creative engagement in all disciplines.) The arts encompass an expressive, therapeutic approach to learning whereby psychological/physiological needs of the whole child are met. Content and process are emphasized for each child since he or she is viewed as a unique individual.
• Students should learn about the diverse cultural and historical heritages of the arts. Our culture is a rich mix of people and perspectives, drawn from many cultures, traditions, and backgrounds. That diversity provides students with a distinctive learning advantage: they can juxtapose unique elements of their individual cultural traditions with elements that have been embraced, incorporated, and transformed into a shared culture. In the process, they learn that diverse heritages are accessible to all. Our cultural diversity is a vast resource for any arts discipline, and should be used to help students understand themselves and others. The different art forms provide a variety of lenses for examining the cultures and artistic contributions of our nation and others around the world.

Significance to Education

Students should learn that each art form has its own characteristics and makes its own distinctive contributions; that it has its own history and heroes. Students need to learn the profound connections that bind the arts to one another and to other curriculum areas, as well as the connections between particular artistic styles and the historical development of the worlds' cultures. Students also need to understand that art is a powerful force in the everyday life of people around the world, who design and make many of the objects they use and enjoy.

It is therefore essential that those who construct any of the arts curricula attend to issues of ethnicity, national custom, tradition, and gender, as well as to the artistic elements and aesthetic responses that transcend and universalize such particulars. The polyrhythmic choreography of Native American dancing, the incomparable vocal artistry of a Jessye Norman, and the intricate calligraphy of Japanese and Arabic artists are, after all, more than simply cultural artifacts; they are part of the world's treasure house of expression and understanding. As such, they belong to every human being and should be used to develop basic knowledge and skills in the various arts disciplines.

Content Integration

Arts education should promote interdisciplinary study; and integration among and across the arts and other disciplines. Those connections are of two kinds and should not be confused.

Correlations, the first kind, show specific similarities or differences. A simple example is the correlation between music and mathematics. Clearly evident in the structure of both are such elements as counting, intervals, and consistent numerical values. More complex examples could involve studies based on such areas as aesthetics, sociology, or historic periods, in which texts, interpretations, and analyses of two or more art forms are compared and contrasted.

The other kind, Integration, is different from correlation. Instead of placing different subjects side by side to compare or contrast them, integration uses the resources of two or more disciplines in ways that are mutually reinforcing, often demonstrating an underlying unity. A simple example of integration within the arts is using combinations of visual effects and words to create a dramatic mood. At a more complex level involving the study of history, other examples of integration might be how American theatre in the period 1900-1975 reflected shifts in the American social consciousness, or how the sacred and secular music of African-Americans contributed to the civil rights movement.

Because forging these kinds of connections is one of the things the arts do best, they can and should be taught in ways that connect them to each other and to other subjects. Significantly, building connections in this way gives students the chance to understand wholes, parts, and their relationships. The high school student of world history who has learned something about the visual arts of Japan will understand the politics of the Tokugawa shoguns far better than a classmate who knows nothing of how the art of Japan reflects that country's core values. But one point is basic. Correlation, integration, and similar approaches to learning are first of all a matter of knowledge and competence within each of the arts disciplines, which must be maintained in their full integrity.

Technology

Technology is a force not only in the economy but in the arts as well. The use of technology in arts instruction is meaningful only to the degree that it contributes to competence, and that contribution comes through instruction and study. New technologies make it possible to try out a host of possibilities and solutions, and obtain information. Success should be measured by how well students achieve artistic and intellectual objectives, not alone by how adept they are in using a given arts technology. The use of technology should increase their ability to synthesize, integrate, and construct new meanings from a wealth of new resources and information so that they understand the relationships among technical means, artistic technique, and artistic goals.

Cognitive Skills

The development of problem-recognition/problem-solving, and creative and higher-order thinking skills should be taken seriously in arts education as necessary skills to be taught and learned for success in life and work.

Assessment

A comprehensive arts education program should provide a foundation for educational assessment on a student-by-student basis. One of the substantial advantages offered by this program is that it combats the uninformed idea that the arts are an "academically soft" area of study. People unfamiliar with the arts often mistakenly believe that excellence and quality are merely matters of opinion ("I know what I like"), and that one opinion is as good as another.

The arts are cognitive, they have "academic" standing. They say there is such a thing as achievement, that knowledge and skills matter, and that mere willing participation is not the same thing as education. They affirm that discipline and rigor are the road to achievement. And they state emphatically that all these things can in some way be measured--if not always on a numerical scale, then by informed critical judgment. Although certain aspects of learning in the arts can be measured adequately by traditional paper-and-pencil techniques or demonstrations, many skills and abilities can be properly assessed only by using subtle, complex, and nuanced methods and criteria that require a sophisticated understanding. Assessment measures should incorporate these subtleties, while at the same time making use of a broad range of performance tasks.

What Students Should Know and Be Able to Do in the Arts at the Completion of Secondary School

There are many routes to competence in the arts disciplines. Students may work in different arts at different times. Their study may take a variety of approaches. Their abilities may develop at different rates. Competence means the ability to use an array of knowledge and skills. Terms often used to describe these include creation, performance, production, history, culture, perception, analysis, criticism, aesthetics, technology, and appreciation. Competence demands capabilities with these elements and understanding of their interdependence; implied also is the ability to combine the content, perspectives, and techniques associated with the various elements to achieve specific artistic and analytical goals. Students work toward comprehensive competence from the very beginning, preparing in the lower grades for deeper and more rigorous work each succeeding year. As a result, the experience of the arts matures through learning and the pride of accomplishment.

Students should know and be able to do the following by the time they have completed secondary school:

• They should be able to communicate at a basic level in the four arts disciplines -- dance, music, theatre arts, and visual arts. This includes knowledge and skills in the use of the basic vocabularies, materials, tools, techniques, and intellectual methods of each arts discipline.
• They should be able to communicate proficiently in at least one art form including the ability to define and solve artistic problems with insight, reason, and technical proficiency.
• They should be able to develop and present basic analyses of works of art from structural, historical, and cultural perspectives, and from combinations of those perspectives. This includes the ability to understand and evaluate work in the various arts disciplines.
• They should have an informed acquaintance with exemplary works of art from a variety of cultures and historical periods, and a basic understanding of historical development in the arts disciplines, across the arts as a whole, and within cultures.
• They should be able to relate various types of arts knowledge and skills within and across the arts disciplines. This includes mixing and matching competencies and understandings in art-making, history and culture, and analysis in any arts-related project.

From developing these capabilities, students arrive at their own knowledge, beliefs, and values for making personal and artistic decisions. In other terms, they can arrive at a broad-based, well-grounded understanding of the nature, value, and meaning of the arts as a part of their own humanity. The following diagram suggests a course of study for arts education.

   

<< Back | Table of Contents | Next >>