Educational Conflicts 2 Anyone claiming to know what art education has been all about in American schools over this past century is probably faking it. In this report we are going to talk about the issue of problems of art education in US as it was expressed by Charles M. Dorn in his article The Renewal of Excellence. During this century there were, of course, a number of important changes that did affect art education in U.S. schools. However, most, if not all, were the result of decisions made outside the school and were due more to the rapid growth and increased regulation of elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education than to any art education policy decisions. Some, but not all, of the most important twentieth-century changes include the following: More children today have access to and opportunities for the study of art in U.S. elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools than they did at the beginning of this century. Art teachers today are better trained, better educated, and have more resources at hand for deciding what children should know and be able to do than they did in 1900.
Art teachers today have less personal freedom and choice, less autonomy, and less independence in deciding what to teach and to whom it should be taught, and they experience greater pressures by state and national regulatory agencies to regulate their behavior and to set standards than they did one hundred years ago. The authors claim is basically that children today have greater access to education and study than they did a century ago is supported by statistics on art enrollments, showing that although 85-90 percent of all children have access to some study in the arts today, in the 60s just over half of the nations secondary schools even offered art, and less than 15 percent of the students in those schools were enrolled (National Education Association 1963).
The Essay on Is School Bad For Children?
Education has always been an intense topic of discussion among many cultures and different groups of people. For many years it was believed that without formal structured education, academic success couldn’t be achieved. Today that idea has been challenged and proved invalid by homeschooling, online classes and alternative learning of all sorts. In the article,”School is Bad for Children,” ...
Unfortunately, the increased opportunity for children to study art has not necessarily increased the quality of the instruction, particularly when it is offered by elementary teachers in nine twenty-five minute periods a day, to twelve hundred children a week, as a part of school reform efforts that use art a means for improving graduation rates, keeping schools drug free, raising test scores, and improving art achievement test scores, which use a one-size-fits-all philosophy. In effect, those may be helping to lower rather than raise the quality of art instruction in the nations schools. As a result, art instruction too often lacks the philosophical validity that assures consistency with the means and ends of art, and sufficient subject validity that the curriculum provides for accurate and significant representation of the products of artistic inquiry. The coming of a new millennium, however, offers us time to pause and look not at what art can do for the school curriculum but rather what art can do best which steers us professionally from focusing on how art can be used to reach other school objectives to why art study is necessary for the life of the mind.
As a result, we will have a renewed interest in excellence-which goes beyond just competence, neatness, or technique, but involves risk, invention, and investigation- and a renewed focus on judgment, which goes beyond simple correct answers to include a range of qualitative issues, wisdom, insight, handsomeness, craft, and moral choice, according to the author. Finally, Charles M. Dorn states that those who perform school regulatory functions, including state departments of education, need to reassess the role of the teacher in deciding what children ought to know and be able to do, and how they are evaluated. To do this they must go beyond viewing curriculum development as a matter of regulating teachers and accept teachers as legitimate stake holders in the assessment process. They must in addition think of differing assessment strategies for addressing various forms of knowing, recognize that human beings differ in the ways that they learn how things work, and choose ways to satisfy those curiosities.
The Essay on The Importance of Art Education for Children
Art education is an important part of healthy development for children, and through art children can find their experiences that enhance their personal development. Nowadays, childhood development connects too much to a technology world and not enough to art. Art education and art activities should be provided to children at an early stage because it helps them to find their natural talents and ...
Bibliography:
Charles M.
Dorn. The Renewal of Excellence. Arts Education Policy Review, Jan/Feb2000, Vol. 101, Issue 3, p 17..
