The Case for Art Education

Scott Peters · Sep 3, 2007

Great article. I sent it to many art teachers I know and friends.

Biggest problem I see today is that we don't teach kids how to think....on their own...

Dave Wooten · Sep 3, 2007

John Phillip Sousa

"reading, writing and 'rithmatic,

learned to the tune of the hickory stick"

Core subjects. Gratification of the immediacy of a national test score...critical thinking be damned... When administrators cut budgets, these are the subjects essential to Basic Ed. Protecting these can justify cutting all others.....Unless there is a huge public outcry, and that has historically been the salvation of many school music and arts programs...

It is impossible to explain or justify to the ignorant the importance of an understanding and knowledge of a Vivaldi, Chopin, Ravel, Picasso, King Oliver, Titian, Christopher Wren, E. Satie, John Phillip Sousa, or Frans Hals, etc. They won t get it, unless, they played tuba in Jr. High or were one of the blessed ones fortunate enough to come through a school program with a good offering of music and fine arts.

This would not be such an epidemic it there were more sousaphone players in the administrative pool. Save American education...get your kid a horn, viola or cello, enroll them in the Jr. Ballet and let them color and paint on their bedroom walls.

dslater · Sep 3, 2007

SuzanneR said:
Oddly enough, our housing market has dropped of late, but for some reason... our property taxes have not fallen as well. Go figure.

QUOTE]

Yes - well that's because the town needs to get around to re-appraising the properties - which they probably won't do - when was the last time you saw a government reduce it's income.

MattKing · Sep 3, 2007

dslater said:
SuzanneR said:

Oddly enough, our housing market has dropped of late, but for some reason... our property taxes have not fallen as well. Go figure.

QUOTE]

Yes - well that's because the town needs to get around to re-appraising the properties - which they probably won't do - when was the last time you saw a government reduce it's income.

Click to expand...

In our province, every property is appraised at least every two years, and in most cases annually. There is a central system incorporated into the property title registration system. Appraised values are calculated (based almost entirely on market information - almost no properties are physically inspected), city/municipal budgets are determined, and the requisite mill rates are calculated.

There is also a province wide system that allows senior citizens to defer their taxes, but as this is in essence borrowing money from the province against the property (albeit with interest rates that are favourable) many seniors are unwilling to do so.

There are means available for dealing with this problem, but it requires political will, and community effort.

Matt

markbb · Sep 4, 2007

The equivalent property tax in the UK is known as the Council tax, and it isbased on a notional value of one's home. Apart from new houses, I doubt if any have been re-appraised in the past decade! However, there is assistance for those on a low income (regardless of age) and further reductions for single occupancy.
Despite this, in real terms the tax has outstripped rises in pensions and has caused a certain amount of furore. Personally, I don't understand the mentality of someone living in a £500,000 house complaining that they can't a afford a £1000 bill, why don't the elderly realise the capital in their house and downgrade?

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Sep 4, 2007

I'm not overly surprised by the conclusions of the article, that's pretty much the kind of skills you'd expect, but there is one important irony: the authors begin the article by showing how the arts are under threat by all sorts of performance-oriented evaluations. Yet in the end, they show that they are also a help to performance: better creative thinking, problem solving, etc etc.

Where is "transmission of culture" in there? :confused:

By arguing for problem-solving and such abilities, the authors have a good defence on the battleground their opponents took them, but they nevertheless sustain the idea that the arts are only worthwhile in the same manner counting or spelling is: to be a good employee.

dslater · Sep 4, 2007

markbb said:
The equivalent property tax in the UK is known as the Council tax, and it isbased on a notional value of one's home. Apart from new houses, I doubt if any have been re-appraised in the past decade! However, there is assistance for those on a low income (regardless of age) and further reductions for single occupancy.
Despite this, in real terms the tax has outstripped rises in pensions and has caused a certain amount of furore. Personally, I don't understand the mentality of someone living in a £500,000 house complaining that they can't a afford a £1000 bill, why don't the elderly realise the capital in their house and downgrade?

Mark,
I don't know about the housing market in the UK, but in the US and especially in Mass. there has been a housing market bubble that has driven home way way up to the point doing what you suggest will put you into an undesirable home that's either too small, in a bad neighborhood, needs a lot of work, etc. These are not people living in extravagant homes. They're people living in reasonable homes in a crazy housing market.
I don't think it is tell to some elderly person living in a house they bought 30 years ago that was paid off when they retired: "sorry, the market has risen, you need to sell your home and downgrade". There should be some process such that their taxes either don't rise, or they rise at a discounted rate.

Dave Wooten · Sep 4, 2007

Las Vegas has put a Cap on property taxes. This is a good thing. Land values have risen so much if appraised by new valuation and sales comps, people would not be able to stay in their homes. The answer for some of course is to sell out and "get out of Dodge".

In my not so humble opinion here the problem is more with the state legislature cowing down to the gaming industry and not taxing that industry enough. Therefore we have some of the lowest paid teachers in the nation and have not even been able to replace those retiring let alone fill the new classsrooms...10 new schools were opened this fall semester!

isaacc7 · Sep 5, 2007

Maybe I'm too late as this has drifted off topic, but this is my humble attempt to explain what I got out of my "art" education. It is a product of all of the Photo/film/studio art/writing/theory classes I took while getting my B.F.A. and afterwards.
http://www.isaharr.com/AE/shortst/page12.html

Maybe a bit pretentious, but I think that it explains what I think the "Value" of an art education is...

Isaac

jstraw · Sep 5, 2007

I think the topic is arts education in elementary and secondary ed, not higher ed. The two may or may not be apples and oranges.

By the way, I think that's a really fine story...and in the end, an endorsement of higher art education, not the indictment I was expecting.

bjorke · Sep 5, 2007

Today Alec Soth has reprinted a May article from Art in America that includes this APUG-like snip:

Howard Singerman said:
"Deskilling" is not just a problem, it is also a critical category, one that survey students can see a lot of in the recent two-volume textbook Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism by October editors Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Deskilling, writes Buchloh, is "a concept of considerable importance in describing numerous artistic endeavors throughout the twentieth century with relative precision. All of these are linked in their persistent effort to eliminate artisanal competence and other forms of manual virtuosity from the horizon of both artist competence and aesthetic valuation."

http://alecsoth.com/blog/misc/artschools.html

KB
(CalArts '84 -- before its "makeover as an academy producing laundry lists of theoretical tropes in lieu of objects" )

Jon King · Sep 5, 2007

dslater said:
But those seniors are not being priced out because the town needs to raise money for the school - they're being priced out because the housing market bubble has increased the value of their homes so much. Indeed, with the rise in home values, there should be more money available for schools - so the question is, where is all this money going?

With the property tax, as the home valuations go up, the tax rate drops. That assumes that the towns or schools can control spending. It's the budgets that drive the taxes, not the property values.

dslater · Sep 5, 2007

Jon King said:
With the property tax, as the home valuations go up, the tax rate drops. That assumes that the towns or schools can control spending. It's the budgets that drive the taxes, not the property values.

That's what it shoudl do, but I'll believe it when I see it. The housing market rose so fast and steeply, that tax rates couldn't drop in response quickly enough. Changing tax rates usually involves governments changing tax laws - this is hardly a quick or responsive process.

Roger Hicks · Sep 5, 2007

Art is ineducable; we've all tried.

(Sorry Art, couldn't resist).

Entirely separately, I agree with MHV. Pretending to mistrust pseudo-objective assessment criteria, then using them, is dishonest. Critical and original thinking can be taught in any and all subjects, not just the visual and allied arts: this is nothing to do with cultural transmission.

One of the nicest things anyone ever said to me was an ex-pupil, some 10 years after he'd left school. We met in the street, by chance: "'Ere, it's Mr 'Icks, innit?" When we had established that indeed, I was, and that I had taught him, he said,

"Us thought us didn't learn f*ck nothin' in your classes, but lookin' back on it, us learned f*ckin' more there than in the rest of the f*ckin' school put together."

What a compliment! I hasten to add I didn't teach him English.

gr82bart · Sep 5, 2007

Whew! I thought I need to be educated ... :-O

Regards, Art

Jon King · Sep 5, 2007

dslater said:
That's what it shoudl do, but I'll believe it when I see it. The housing market rose so fast and steeply, that tax rates couldn't drop in response quickly enough. Changing tax rates usually involves governments changing tax laws - this is hardly a quick or responsive process.

Setting tax rates in NH (I'm sure everywhere) are quite involved, but not terribly confusing once you know the tricks. I was on my town's Finance Committee for a few years - it was like learning all the magician's tricks - once you know the tricks, you can see the slight of hand clearly every time. Also, town and city tax rates are set by the state, not the towns.

I'd be happy to explain in more detail if you're interested in a pm or email, because this is way off topic.

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Sep 5, 2007

Roger Hicks said:
Entirely separately, I agree with MHV. Pretending to mistrust pseudo-objective assessment criteria, then using them, is dishonest. Critical and original thinking can be taught in any and all subjects, not just the visual and allied arts: this is nothing to do with cultural transmission.

Thank you Mister 'Icks. I'm a strong believer in the idea that schools are important vectors in the transmission of ways of living, and that this is an end rather than a means.

Problem is that eventually too many teachers get sucked up into the idea that they should only "provide meaningful experiences" to their pupils. My girlfriend teaches English in a small regional university, and many of her students eventually go to Education after their BA degree. They are so enamoured by the stupid Dead Poet Society crap that they don't even care about teaching things properly. They all want to be friends with their students and give them meaningful life experience. Verbatim.

My French class in the last year of high school is still for me the gold standard for what the proper mixture of cultural transmission and knowledge acquisition should be. Our teacher was not trying to be our friend or anything, but when he saw a copy of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal on my desk, he would always exchange a few words with me about it. He made us read great books, asked us to think about it, we even did some fun skits for our reading reports, but he never tried to make himself "cool" or something like that. He loved literature, believed in it, knew his stuff on his fingers, but he taught it as an autonomous subject. Neither a means to enhance our performance, nor a vehicle for fulfilling a lack of self-esteem.

That makes me think that I should perhaps give him a call the next time I'm visiting my parents.

Roger Hicks · Sep 6, 2007

mhv said:
...schools are important vectors in the transmission of ways of living, and that this is an end rather than a means.

Deat Michel,

Superbly put. As were your observations about 'Dead Poets Society crap'.

The class I taught Len (the lad in the story) was 'Citizenship'. I had no more idea what it was than the kids did (14-15-year-olds), so when I went in to the class for the first time, I said, "OK, what is 'citizenship'?"

One of the heavies at the back put his hand up, and said, in a sing-song voice, "You teach us to be good little citizens."

I shook my head. "No. I teach you to think about being good little citizens."

Even the heavies were intrigued. Thinking? In school? This was something new, especially in the roughest secondary school in Bristol (it was right next door to the prison).

A few weeks later, the headmaster sent for me. "Susan Smith in 4b tells me you said it wasn't your job to teach them to be good little citizens."

Once I realized what he was talking about, I told him the above story. He said, "You're wrong. It is your job to teach them to be good little citizens."

I then pointed out that I had been hired as a teacher, not a Party commissar, and that if he didn't like it, he could fire me. Of course, he didn't, and he left me alone after that.

The point? That a class like 'Citizenship' is no use as a qualification, and indeed, had it been taught the way he wanted, it would have been no use at all. But as a transmission of culture -- the meaning (and limits) of democracy, and of education -- I flatter myself I achieved something. Len certainly thought so.

bjorke · Sep 6, 2007

mhv said:
...the arts are only worthwhile in the same manner counting or spelling is: to be a good employee.

They're hardly alone: http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000431.html

(Reminds me of creationists attempting to "prove scientifically" that Noah forgot to save unicorns on the ark and so forth -- when the whole point of their exercise is to ignore scientific evidence. They undermine their own message)

digiconvert · Sep 9, 2007

Roger Hicks said:
Deat Michel,

One of the heavies at the back put his hand up, and said, in a sing-song voice, "You teach us to be good little citizens."

I shook my head. "No. I teach you to think about being good little citizens."

I thought it was only todays kids who expected to be 'taught' - you can't teach anything but you can allow students to learn and give them the information they need to do that learning , it seems that as schools become more 'producers of employees' in a way which is even more explicit than the days of factory fodder the expectation to be taught something increases.

In response to the original article I am a Math(s) and Science teacher who also organises the vocational courses for those who want to follow Hairdressing or Mechanics post 14 but I still see the value of Art , Music and even English Literature because some of the kids who describe themselves as cr*p in my lesson are good artists or musicians and they have at least ONE success in their school day.

Cheers CJB

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Sep 20, 2007

Just another remark on the opposing conceptions of culture as luggage vs. culture as ways of living, I'd invite you all to brush up your French and read a bit into this column by La Presse's journalist Pierre Foglia this week:
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/article/20070920/CPOPINIONS05/709200489/6730/CPACTUALITES

Translation of a few important points:

"Culture is often defined as a sum. I read 12 millions book, I went 43 257 times at the museum, I studied the Enlightenment (...) But no. Culture is not the sum of these knowledge.

Instead of considering culture as a state of things, we should consider it as a moment, the moment at which we receive and participate to a discourse, where we confront words, sounds, shapes that pull us away from the quotidian and the habits of consumption, especially the consumption of culture.

Culture is an attempt to becoming adult every once in a while, shutting the mouth to the kid inside us, the one that always want to play, eat candy, and play stupid games (cues to the names of a few local TV game shows here).

Culture is not about knowing everything of the Quattrocento, it's someone that tells you about it, and the link that you do yourself with music or novels. It's the moment when you think alone."

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