Why teach the Arts?
Considering my own and peers’ expectations and beliefs regarding teaching the arts I came across Elly’s post which not only lists ten significant reasons describing why teaching the Arts is important (check these out) but furthermore introduced me to some intriguing articles regarding this topic. When reading the words of Elliot W. Eisner, presented at a John Dewey lecture in 2002, he described his idea of a new culture of schooling being as follows:
I am talking about a culture of schooling in which more importance is placed on exploration than on discovery, more value is assigned to surprise than to control, more attention is devoted to what is distinctive than to what is standard, more interest is related to what is metaphorical than to what is literal. It is an educational culture that has a greater focus on becoming than on being, places more value on the imaginative than on the factual, assigns greater priority to valuing than to measuring, and regards the quality of the journey as more educationally significant than the speed at which the destination is reached. I am talking about a new vision of what education might become and what schools are for (Eisner, 2002).
This ideal fascinates me. Imagine a school that celebrated students’ specific distinctions rather than a generalised standard and gave higher regard to the journey taken than how quickly students reach that standard. As a teacher I would love to create a classroom that does all of these things and more, this especially evident after scoring highest in the ‘nurturing’ category of the Teaching Perspectives Inventory. However, with pressures of standardised testing, priorities for specific subject areas (these priorities, in my opinion, rarely including The Arts) and generic assessments and curriculums I struggle to believe this culture of a school currently exists.
Perhaps starting small could be the answer. Even though standards need to be met, as a teacher I will celebrate each student for their individual distinctions and creativities. Although the expectation is that specific destinations are reached, I will endeavour to make the journey as enriching as possible for each and every student. In the current system there are substantial factors that are expected to be met but if more focus is placed on the above ideals by an increasing number of teachers perhaps we can shift current focuses to create a more enriching experience in our schools.
I will finish with another quote highlighted in Elly’s post that also rang true to me:
When you think about the purposes of education, there are three…
We’re preparing kids for jobs.
We’re preparing them to be citizens...
And we’re teaching them to be human beings who can enjoy the deeper forms of beauty...
The third is as important as the other two (Horne, n.d.).
References:
Eisner, Elliot W. (2002) What can eduction learn from the arts about the practice of education?. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_and_the_practice_of_education.htm
Horne, T. in Smith, F. (2009). Why Arts Education is Crucial, and Who’s Doing it Best. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development
