Art Education [EN]

educartion

Arts as a way of knowing

This essay will discuss the importance of Art Education as a curriculum component in the broad picture of schooling. Referring to the works of artists and educators, I will draw attention to the relevance of the Arts in the formal educational process, as a mean of social transformation, a way to improve student's perception of reality, critical thinking regarding society, and moreover, a way to improve their own life quality. For that, we must take into account how broad the concept of both Arts and Education is in the schooling context. This essay will also consider challenges art education faces, in terms of socioeconomic issues, since the Arts in general seem to be put aside. Furthermore, and most importantly, we have to address how these problems can be solved by emphasizing positive aspects opposed to its costs.

Education plays a vital role in every person's life, however it is something that is frequently mistaken with what we know as “schooling”. Mark Twain once said “Never let your schooling interfere with your education” (Fowler 122). There are fundamental differences between these two concepts. Whereas schooling is a process constrained to a certain period of time, usually structured by a curriculum within an educational system, education is a lifetime lasting process in which the individual engages since they are able to assimilate knowledge of any sort, and the concept extends to the rest of their life, where learning becomes an everyday ritual, through the individual's life experience (practical, empirical) and with formal education – schooling – (academic, pragmatic). As we will see further in the the essay, education is supposed to be a liberating process, as opposed to schooling that usually limits our ways of thinking, framing reality in pre-established molds.

Now, the Arts consist in one part of this lifelong process called education. Learning about the Arts has to do with one's perception and understanding of reality as a whole, but more specifically an involvement with the creation of other's artworks, finding ways to view the world through the optics of artist's vision. Art is a subject that expands the student's perception of reality in an extra-sensorial manner, increasing their abilities to recognize features of the universe surrounding them, as well as contributing to their critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills. But not only that, Art is also a path to self awareness, a way for the individual to express his/her inner self in a manner that he/she will learn about themselves through self-recognition in the process of making a work of art. Art enables us to reflect the outer as well as the inner universe.

Like Mark Twain, Ken Robinson argues that schooling usually kills creativity. According to his thoughts, we tend to influence children in the way we should consider things in the real world, explaining how things work in the same way we tell them how they are. By defining reality through our own terms, we are also preventing children to depict reality independently, infecting them with our prejudices, preconceptions and paradigms. That sadly happens rather often, and, not only educators, but family and entire communities are responsible for it. As said in his lecture for TED Talks1, Robinson believes that all children are born with an extraordinary imaginative potential, however, society in general, and more specifically family and school are responsible for crushing the child's creativity further development. Robinson claims that “Creativity is just as important as literacy” (Robinson 42), he stresses how much we need to invest such a gift in this idea, changing our teaching habits and posture toward children that are in their stage of development. We should always stimulate their creativity, and never hold them back. Developing and investing in art education is crucial to achieve this goal.

Furthermore, I believe that we need to think of School as a vehicle for revolutionary stimulation; a way to free children from society's paradigms. Still following some of Robinson's ideas, we need to pay attention to the potential children have to offer with their innate creativity, nurture it, and further develop it into creative problem solving skills. A whole new attitude must be adopted by educators who are responsible for not only the pupil's mind development, but for the formation of cultural awareness about society. We cannot let go of the the human creative potential, because that is what we are relying on in the future, as a way to solve problems and deal with issues that seem to be getting more and more complex as time goes. Albert Einstein once claimed that “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew”, and that's where our creativity comes. In terms of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, art education works as a way of liberating the mind of all involved in the system, opening the doors for expression and effective communication (Freire 16).

Another aspect that some people consider when speaking of improving conditions for art education will provide students with an aesthetic sense and craft skills that may help improve the quality and therefore the price of products of that society. Anyhow, despite the economical benefit from the development of art education, there is something more valuable, and does not have anything to do with economics, whatsoever. Art provides the individual with craft skills as well as creative ones. Taking those attributes into consideration, arts guide the way our world is built both physical and conceptually. An individual with artistic skills is able to think in a much more independent way, incorporating experiences of life in the most idiosyncratic forms.

There is also the debate of whether Art enforces either individualism or collectivism by encouraging self-consciousness through expressive means, and at the same time, by making the individual more aware of its surroundings, including society as the context to which the individual belongs. In the negative aspects of both of these, we get to the paradigm of deciding whether we want our new generations to become more individualistic. On one hand, with individualism tendencies, students would develop a sense of independence from the rest of society, with the risks of people becoming increasingly selfish, and dealing with social ascendence in the most egocentric ways; perpetuating a vicious cycle of social differences and lack of opportunities for the impaired and the less favored economically. Or, on the other hand, Arts might also over-develop the sense of collectivism among students to the extent people become more dependent on the system to sustain them and provide them with means of a living such as employment, housing and basic supplies. Art raises many new perspectives over reality, and has the ultimate power of modifying it.

In addition to this conundrum, living in the Era of Information, our society is facing various changes in the way we view things, and clearly school is not the only place you can learn subjects. With the advent of the internet, knowledge became such an accessible and common resource that school is a matter of boredom for most youth who became accustomed to quick responses and used to a very dynamical way of learning through multi-media rather than the traditional teaching methods found in schools. Art helps in one's education process by improving one's potential to learn and understand reality in a different perspective, through the aesthetic optics. Also in regards to these major changes in the informational world, the critical sense exercise provided by artistic education becomes a way of thinking for the student to realize how things in space are different in relation to each other. Critical thinking is, after all, extremely important in a world where reliable and fallacious information is available in the same virtual space. Developing one's abilities to assimilate large amounts of multi-media information is largely beneficial from the educational perspective. Once again, art education proves itself crucial for contemporary issues.

Although we know the amount of human resource and infra-structure needed to support the demands of quality artistic education, there are more than enough reasons why to invest in such matter. As an interdisciplinary subject, thought provocative and perception stimulative, arts is a subject that makes students more versatile citizens in society, more suitable for creative problem solving, and therefore more capable workers. Education is by far the strongest force of social change. One can only dream of making society different if one has access to change its educational system. In order to improve the way arts education is regarded in society as well as making it a functional part, the educational system needs a lot more focus on the Arts as a subject and as an interdisciplinary element.

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Work Cited:

FOWLER, Charles. Strong Arts, Strong Schools : The promising Potential and Shortsighted Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling. Oxford, New York 1996. Print

FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogia do Oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Rio de Janeiro. Paz e Terra, 2005. Print.

ROBINSON, Ken. All Out Future : Creativity, Culture and Education. London, NACCCE Report, 1998. On-line PDF File