Applauding the Arts, Part 2
How did we get here?

The arts have never existed in a vacuum. The capacity of a cave painting, a folk song, or a public sculpture to reflect the context of the times is what gives art lasting cultural value.

In education, the arts have come in and out of vogue during different eras, reflecting shifts in values and philosophies. In the early 19th century, common schools used music to teach basic skills and transmit values deemed important to a democratic society. With the arrival of the Industrial Age, arts education came to be seen in a new way-as helpful to producing skilled workers. Drafting classes and drawing exercises were added to the curriculum as a way of keeping American industry competitive. By the late 19th century, the fine arts were considered "a frill, suited for an elite," according to Harvard's Howard Gardner, whose pioneering research on multiple intelligences has helped shape current thinking about the role of the arts in education.

The new century brought another paradigm shift. John Dewey and other Progressives embraced the arts as outlets for creativity and play, which would naturally foster child development. According to Gardner, the curriculum shifted again to accommodate this view of the child-as-artist. "Those works that were deemed 'expressive,' 'creative,' or 'powerful' came to be cherished more than those that were 'merely' technically competent," he reports in Evaluating and Assessing the Visual Arts in Education.

Most adults educated during the first half of this century had some exposure to music and visual arts, although seldom in a comprehensive way. In Learning in and through Art: A Guide to Discipline-Based Art Education, Stephen Mark Dobbs relates, the art lesson used to be "relief from the pressure of the academic curriculum. It was 'tenderhearted' rather than 'hardheaded,' dealing with emotions and affect, which was considered extraneous to the real purposes of schooling. Art appeared to give students the opportunity to relax and not have to use their minds."

Sputnik launched another turning point. The Space Race pushed science and math to the top of the academic pecking order. When school boards looked for extras to sacrifice for the sake of beefing up more rigorous programs, Gardner says, "the arts were among the first to go."

More recent decades have seen a "hit-and-run approach" to teaching the arts, according to Richard Deasy of the Arts Education Partnership. Rather than a national consensus, local circumstances and the passions of individual teachers have dictated how much, and what kind, of arts education students receive.

When the 1980s brought another push for school improvement, the arts were initially overlooked. The landmark A Nation at Risk study, released in 1983, made no mention of the arts. In 1989, then-President Bush and governors of all 50 states agreed on National Education Goals, which called for students to demonstrate competency in "challenging subject matter," namely, math, science, reading, writing, and geography. Again, the arts were ignored.

But by the early 1990s, the pendulum was poised to swing again. A strong push came from the arts and education communities, from business leaders concerned about having creative problem solvers for the Information Age, and from researchers with new insights into how children learn. This time, however, the goal was not to bring the arts back into vogue for the short term, but to create a permanent place for arts education within the basic curriculum. With the passage of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act in 1994, new national goals were written into law, naming the arts as a core academic subject-as important as English, mathematics, history, civics and government, geography, science, and foreign language. The Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 states: "Congress finds that the arts are forms of understanding and ways of knowing that are fundamentally important to education."

"Whatever you do, encourage the public to support art programs in schools, facilitate art festivals in the countryside, and establish the image of a nation that loves and respects the arts, for that is one of the hallmarks of a first-rate civilization."
-James Michener, This Noble Land: My Vision for America

This document's URL is:

Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics

© 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory

Date of Last Update: 9/28/01
Email Webmaster
Tel. 503.275.9500