objectives of teaching art

National Art Education Association

Objectives of Teaching ArtAuthor(s): Vincent LanierSource: Art Education, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Mar., 1972), pp. 15-19Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191679 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 04:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.147 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:33:53 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=naea

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191679?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Obe Ives oF tejochino

fiT Vincent Lanier

Throughout its brief history, the study of the teaching of art and its practice in the schools has been plagued by persis- tent and disabling confusions. Not the least of these confusions has been the lack of a concise and reasonable rationale to support the desirability of art activities as part of the formal education of the young. Confusion as to the ends of art education has surpassed confusion as to means. Indeed, though curriculum has changed little over the years, con- ceptions of benfits to be derived from that curriculum have shifted with seem- ing recklessness.

An objective-or goal or end or out- come-of an activity describes the value inherent in that activity and the benefit to be derived from doing it. The state- ment of an objective in an educational context serves as justification for some instructional procedure by stipulating the value to be gained from that procedure by the learner. Traditionally, and in theory, objectives or concepts of values, structure curriculum. This is to say that objectives are determined first and that activities are then selected to insure that the values sought can be obtained by the learner. Even a cursory examination of the history of art education will demonstrate that exactly the reverse of this process has, in fact, been characteristic of our field. Over the years a relatively stable curriculum has been justified by a considerable number of diverse and sometimes even con- tradictory concepts of value.

It is, of course, not difficult to provide possible explanations for this confusion. A very reasonable explanation and perhaps the most plausible one derives from the motivational and educational background of those who teach art and art education. Almost invariably the art teacher starts as a young person with a strong interest in the practice of the studio arts. This interest, buttressed by several years and many credit hours

of studio activity, frequently becomes the over-riding concern of the art teacher throughout his professional life- time, either in terms of his own studio production or that of his pupils. Thus, for most people in the field, the curriculum of the art class is not to be ques- tioned. Studio production and its sup- porting learnings constitute the main- stay if not the totality of the curriculum. However, justifications for these activities can and do shift, usually as the result of the pressures of social conditions.

While a thorough review of the history of concepts of value in art education would be too lengthy and perhaps inappropriate for this chapter, it might be useful to note some highlights of that history. As far as we can tell, the earliest ideas about the value of art as an educational activity were brought to colonial America from Europe and consisted of: (1) those benefits which promote the training of the professional artist and (2) exposure to genteel accomplishments such as embroidery and painting on china for the daughters of the wealthy. As industrialization grew, particularly in New England, additional concepts of value developed such as: (3) inculcating standards of good taste among potential consumers of manu- factured goods and (4) promoting art skills among those who might later use those art skills in industry.

As the nineteenth century progressed, new ideas of value emerged. With the Philadelphia and Chicago Expositions in 1876 and 1893 and the growth of a cultural emphasis, albeit primarily re- flective of European cultural achieve- ments, the concept of art activity to develop "an appreciation of the beautiful" began to appear in educational literature. In fact, the Committee on Drawing of the National Education Association published a report in 1899 which listed as an aim of art education:

"to develop the creative impulse "

At the turn of the century pioneers such as Arthur Wesley Dow saw "creative power as a divine gift, the natural endowment of every human soul, show- ing itself at first in the form that we call appreciation." He suggested educa- ting the "whole people" for appreciation, and developed exercises in design to achieve this goal. This was the era of ornamental designs, decorative bor-, ders and "scientific" content such as color charts and value scales.

During most of this time manual training or industrial arts, available in some schools as early as 1866, shared the public identification along with art education. The goals of this eventually separate discipline were practice for skill development with tools and con- structive satisfaction.

By the 1920's the child-centered movement in general education, Ex- pressionism in painting, and a number of other social forces began to focus attention in the field of self-expression and originality. Franz Cizek and others influenced American educators to what constituted a new concept of value. Cizek wrote: "Great creative energy exists in every child. This must find an outlet in expression or repression will result. Children should be allowed to draw what they wish, that they see in their mind's eye, not that which others think they ought to draw." Perhaps the most fully developed exposition of this revolutionary idea can be found in the writings of Hughes Mearns.

In the '30's the Owatonna Art Edu- cation project sponsored by the Univer- sity of Minnesota added another concept of value to the field. Under a banner labeled "Art, A Way of Life," the project stressed that there is no differentia- tion between the fine and the useful arts, the relationship of art to every aspect of living, and the development, in the realm of value, of aesthetic discrimination as it affects everyday living.

15



By 1940 the ideas of art expression as an emotional release, the art product as a means of understanding children's psychological patterns, and personality integration through art had become current. The classic early literary state- ments of art education were written during this period; courses of study in art from state departments of education and local school districts became fre- quent. These latter documents suggested -along with the ideas of value already noted-that art could be used as training for leisure time activities, as a means to develop good taste in the selection of personal adornment, and as a device for both correlating and integrating the school curriculum. Although Dewey's Art As Experience was published in 1934, the concept of art as a mode of intellectual activity, as visual problem- solving, which he advocated, was seldom stressed in the literature of art education. This period was still the era of the whole child, and our emphasis was still on emotive functioning.

There have been other imaginative and sometimes bizarre suggestions since 1940 and, of course, before that time as well. In the latter portion of the 19th century, for example, Clive Bell dealt with a conception of the significant form of art as a revelation of intuitive metaphysical truth, which still occasion- ally appears in our literature. In the '40's Sir Herbert Read saw art as a medium through which transcendental moral principles-knowledge of right and wrong-could be inculcated. More recently the ideas that art promotes inter- national understanding and world peace, nonverbal training for the communication of new scientific concepts, a means of gaining insight into general history (as in the instance of learning the history of early Egypt through a study of the Pyramids and other artifacts), and supports learnings in desirable social relationships, have been advanced. These last six ideas, however, do not now appear to have a wide appeal and therefore will not be considered here. They are listed simply as part of our history.

The major value concern of the 1950's and early 1960's was creativity, the idea that a particular type of human

behavior involving novelty of response could best be promoted by productive art activities. An idea with at least a 30- year history, creativity became so per- vasive that one no longer spoke of an artist but rather of a creative artist, and art materials and activities became creative materials and activities. A factor contributing to the prestige of this concept was the enormous amount of empirical research undertaken by art educators and psychologists in its be- half. Another concept gaining strength during this period was that art promotes visual literacy. Conceiving of the visual arts as a communications system like verbal language, this idea emphasizes sophistication and accuracy in the act of perception rather than its opposite, novelty of response. A third idea of this era and one which has lain dormant with occasional brief bursts of life throughout the history of art education is that study of art is one form of exposure to aesthetic experience which has intrinsic value and needs no further justification.

The last half of the decade of the sixties has produced two additional concepts of value, both, apparently, in response to the growing pressure of social tensions. The first is that art activities can promote a sensitivity to the physical environment, particularly the urban architectural environment, and those cues in the environment which tend to affect behavior. The second suggests that some types of visual arts, specifically the popular and the film arts, can be used as vehicles for the emotive exploration of new alternatives in human re-

lationships. Both of these are radical and highly partisan concepts of value, and have as yet received little recognition within the field.

A final historical point needs attention. Due to the influence of Skinnerian psychology and programmed instruction, there has been a growth of emphasis on the need to frame objectives in behavior- al terms. Although this emphasis has not generated any new concepts of value, it might conceivably have some impact on the importance awarded to values. How- ever, this impact is not yet observable, at least insofar as the literature of the field reveals.

While it is fairly easy to be descrip- tive with respect to concepts of value and the objectives they support, it is quite difficult to be prescriptive in the same context. This chapter has up to this point lightly explored the topogra- phy of what has been and is in this area. It is necessary, however, to attempt to present what should be as well. Perhaps the most efficient and least prejudicial way to do this is to scrutinize each idea of value as severely, though as briefly, as possible and eliminate those which do not seem substantial or significant, at least in the context of the present. The remainder then will constitute those concepts which can be recommended.

Surely the first idea noted in our review, the value of art activities in preparing professional artists, has little merit in the total field. The teaching of art does include the preparation of the artist (and the designer, if one wishes to consider him in a different category) and the search for those youngsters who appear to possess an unusual interest in the production of art. However, the number of people in this category as compared to the large mass of the school population is so small as to make this value one of minor importance. More- over, there is some truth to the old romantic notion that a man will become an artist with, without, or even in spite of his formal public-schooling. Thus, we need not orient our school art programs in the direction 6f searching for or preparing what used to be called, in an earlier era, the "talented" pupil. Whlat

16



we do need is to maintain a large enough investment of trained personnel, space, equipment, and supplies to provide adequate learning experiences for those few pupils who manifest an interest beyond adequate response to a general art class.

This negative assessment of what is a virtual commitment by many art teachers, the search for the "gifted" or highly motivated pupil, will, no doubt, be offensive to some. Perhaps others will argue that everyone can be an artist, particularly now that art has become "doing your own thing" and the sole criterion of acceptability for that thing is novelty. This is a pointless argument since it avoids both social and intellectual responsibility. If one can be satisfied by a concept of public education which is entirely subjective, non- rational (if not anti-rational), and in- dividualistic, then this idea is enticing. If all things made by all men are works of art and of equal aesthetic merit, then the preparation of the artist becomes the pre-eminent concern of art education, and every child can be seen as an artist. Once we introduce artistic criteria, however, (whatever those criteria may be) all we have left is the rather foolish position that all people are artists but that some people are more artist than others. At that point one might as well say that some people are artists and others are not, that few of us are artists (assuming the idea of what an artist is has any integrity at all), and that the search for and training of the artist is a very minimal portion of the obligation of those who teach art in the schools.

The second idea listed, that of pro- viding genteel accomplishments for the offspring of the wealthy, had been forced into hiding during our past hun- dred years of egalitarian fantasy. Only recently has it been brought to our attention (and forcibly) that we have been practicing precisely what we have been preaching against: preferential education. Vocational education for the children of the poor; special classes in art as well as other subjects for the college-bound children of the affluent, better prepared teachers and adequate equipment and supplies for schools in "good" neighborhoods; often the reverse

for slum schools, disdain if not hostility for the language, music, clothes, and other arts of the poor; often uncritical adulation for the middle-class "in" arts, these are but some of the indices of our unknowing loyalty to an aristocratic educational ethic. Again it seems obvious that we cannot accept this second value as the basis for an objective in art education, neither one that we profess nor one that unconsciously motivates our actions.

The third idea of value, that of teaching for tasteful selection of consumer goods, sounds archaic and is, in fact, outmoded. It does, however, contribute ultimately to the concept of visual literacy which will be examined later. The concept of developing art skills for those who might later use those skills in industry is very close to the idea of preparing artists discussed above and suffers from the same defects. The fifth value, appreciating the beautiful, is a precursor to the more contemporary notion of teaching for aesthetic experience, while the idea of developing the creative impulse or creative power as Dow, Cizek, and Mearns spoke of it has grown into the concept of general creativity and can be explored with it. The seventh idea of teaching for aesthetic discrimination as it affects everyday living also leads to our current concept of visual literacy and will be assessed later.

The tandem ideas of art expression as emotional release and the art product as a means of psychological diagnosis re- flect their period or origin, the decade of the 1940's. Now that we are im- mersed in a sociological emphasis rather than one that is psychological, these ideas appear "out of joint" though not fallacious-and indeed they are out of joint with the thinking of the times. Surely there are so many other human behaviors which can serve as emotional release and as data for diagnosis that it seems inadequate if not futile to justify the teaching of art with these reasons. The tenth concept of value, that of personality integration through art, also has an antiquated flavor. An ill-con- ceived idea based on a naive vision of personality as having discrete aspects (intellectual, emotional, social, and physical) which need to be educated into an harmonious whole, this concept

has virtually disappeared from the literature in the field.

Three additional minor values of this period, art as a leisure-time activity, as the development of good taste in personal adornment, and as a device for correlating school curricula, appear also to have moved into obscurity in the in- tervening years, though the idea of leisure-time importance recurs occasion- ally in the present era of increasing automation.

A most significant value attributed to the experience of art and one that is still, though less each year, a part of our prescriptive vocabulary is creativity. As in the case of many popularized terms, both the word and the concept have been so heavily abused by incessant and often inappropriate use as to be virtually fruitless in any intellectual context. Indeed its very popularity- particularly along Madison Avenue- should cast some suspicion on its merit. There are, however, grave intrinsic problems in the concept of creativity as well. Despite the dozens of research studies and mountains of eloquent (and sometimes incoherent) prose, there is no satisfactory definition of either creative behavior or the creative product.

The most frequently cited primary characteristic of creativity is originality. In fact, without originality as a necessary component, the idea of creativity is meaningless. But originality itself is of necessity a relative term. How novel must an act or product be to be judged creative? Common sense suggests the products of an Einstein, or Freud or Beethoven, or in the area of the visual arts, a Leonardo, C6zanne or Picasso. If this is the calibre of creative act implied, how much sense does it make to assert that all men, including children, are capable of or can be educated to such production? If this were true, we would have to develop another category for those who were unusually or signifi- cantly creative, perhaps calling that category "super-creative."

If, on the other hand, the kind of originality we speak of in creativity is simply that act or product which is new to the individual, even though like acts or products are common in history, we

17



have another kind of problem. It can be said that this kind of originality, this novelty for the individual, has always been a basic characteristic of what we have called art. There is no need to elaborate a complex theoretical structure to defend the act of art from what has always been called non-art or poor art. The coloring book or numbered painting kit need not be rejected because it is a non-creative process, but because it is not an art activity at all; it simply does not permit the individual to engage in all of the process of making art, as that process has been described and accepted.

A further problem raised by this concept stems from its involvement with only productive activities. No one speaks of "creative" art appreciation, and if one were to so speak, what would that mean? Is the totality of our concern then to be towards the production of art, without any thought as to how one responds to what is already produced? This is, of course, precisely what occurs in our art classrooms, for the most part, and it is this attitude that has been attacked by a recently growing stress on historical and critical activities. Again, it should be noted that like so many other concepts of value in art education, creativity justifies the existing curriculum. Perhaps the peculiar potency of this idea, a fragile idea at best, is a result of its plausibility as justification. Creativity as an objective allows the art teacher to continue to do what he wants to do, to preside at or perform the production of art.

As the argument presented above indicates, this writer at least cannot support creativity as a worthwhile objective for the teaching of art. Even without mention of the once popular corrolary idea that creative behavior in art trans- fers to other areas of behavior-an idea fraught with even graver perils than the concept of creativity itself-this concept of value in art appears to be barren and pointless for art education. Its declining vigor in the literature can testify to the wisdom of this prescription.

The next idea of note among our tax- onomical candidates is the concept of

visual literacy. Historically this idea inherits much of the force and credibil- ity of art as visual problem-solving, art as the tasteful selection of consumer goods or items of personal adornment, and art as discrimination in everyday living. As was noted above, this idea conceives of the visual arts as a communications system similar to verbal language. The desired literacy then is the ability to obtain the message encased in visual forms with accuracy and some speed.

The most obvious one of the many problems raised by this idea is that the dissimilarities between the visual arts and verbal languages as communication are far greater than the similarities. As a message system in which information is transmitted from sender to receiver (which is the only proper use of the term communication), visual phenomena are notoriously inefficient. This may ex- plain, at least in part, why early picture writing developed into the more abstract forms of alphabetical symbols. To ex- press a complex thought in visual terms alone and be certain of some likelihood of transmitting this thought to another is not only foolhardy but never done. Even emotions cannot be accurately transmitted by visual forms as any abstract expressionist painting will demonstrate.

This is not to say that the viewer cannot extract both ideas and emotions from works of visual art or that works of art have no "content" or message. Certainly, as a result of the transaction between art work and viewer, both thoughts and feelings can be products of the art experience. The question raised is only to the degree of necessary similarity between the meanings in the viewer's response and those the artist has inserted in the work of art, which must be very high in order for communication to have occurred.

A second problem with visual literacy as a value concept arises from the almost mechanistic way in which it has been equated with perceptual compe- tence. Yet while an illiterate is one who cannot perform the skills of reading, a literate man is one who has a wealth of prior reading experience with which to associate what he reads. If visual literacy is expanded to mean a wide background

of conceptual information, a cultural if not historical base from which a range of cognitive and emotive meanings can be focused on and related to the work of art, the idea assumes some vigor as a goal. This is rarely the case, however, in a field that has been overly preoccu- pied with the machinery of the perceptual operation, with no thought for the content of what is perceived or of the perceiver's past experience.

This problem is, in part, particularly appropriate to our McLuhanistic era in which the concern for medium, form, process, mechanism, has so far out- weighed any recognition of the role of message as to distort our understanding of human behavior. The influence of motivation, which is primarily a function of content, upon the act of perception should not be ignored. In view of this factor, then, it may well prove that our young people are far less visually illiterate than we suspect. Certainly the world in which they live provides an unending bombardment of visual images which they seem to negotiate with sophistica- ted ease. Perhaps, after all, we have been testing them with the wrong images.

What this brief analysis suggests is that visual literacy as a concept of value be subsumed under a broader idea which will attend to the need for a wide range of knowledge of the visual arts (and other aspects of culture) as well as a purely structural perceptual acuity. To provide this larger conception, we can turn to the idea of the intrinsic value of the study of art as one form of aesthetic experience. Granting this position, one can then recommend as a value of the study of art and an objective for art education, an affection for and understanding of the parameters and nature of visual aesthetic experience. The human end products of our efforts as art teachers should be people who recognize the character and the importance of the visual arts they already enjoy, are eager to and able to search out new art experiences, and are capable of seeing the relationships between the arts of past and present and the wealth of meanings available to them. What

18



the schools should produce is the dil- letante, if we can avoid the pejorative meanings of the term, the "cultured" citizen who is receptive to and knowl- edgable about all the arts accessible to him. The reader should be reminded that this is precisely what we have in the mass-media bred adolescents of today, at least insofar as the popular arts are concerned. It is up to the schools to expand their aesthetic horizons.

The last two concepts of value presented earlier were described as reactions to the tensions of the contemporary national scene. Both are, in fact, attempts to use the study of art to help resolve serious social problems. Though neither concept abandons recognition of aesthetic considerations, they are both focused primarily on extrinsic functions of the study of art, on the capacities of art activity to promote some form of social betterment. The first idea, environment design, emphasizes the impact of physical surroundings on one's conception of self and of society. It is best epitomized by Mayor White's com- ment about Boston's new City Hall building: "Perhaps a progressive architecture can prompt a more progressive politics." The second, film as social experimentation, stresses the value of some visual art forms as means by which young people (and old, for that matter) can explore new ways of structuring human relationships. This idea suggests that cinema in particular is an unusually potent means for confronting and in- vestigating the basic human problems of the nation and the world: war, race, poverty, sex, and drugs. Not only have some films, both American and foreign, already explored these problems and can be used for study in the classroom, but the making of motion pictures and other film media by students can provide opportunities for young people themselves to experiment in dramatic and visual form with possible ways to solve these problems.

Nor is the usage of film media equipment limited to older pupils. The pio- neer work of Louis and Joan Forsdale at Columbia University, among others,

amply demonstrates that nursery and kindergarten age children can film motion pictures with facility and educational benefit.

Needless to say, these two ideas of value are in some sense complementary to each other. Nevertheless, there is a serious question of priorities. Neither architecture nor the physical arrange- ments of urban areas cause poverty, racism, crime, or civil disorders. Socio- economic and political patterns, that is, human relationships, produce these problems, and only improvements in these patterns can solve them. To ex- pect new buildings or new cities, no matter how progressively planned, to cure white racism (named by a Federal commission as the prime cause of civil disorder), urban or rural poverty, or the widespread unrest in our universi- ties, is to put the cart before the horse. Nor do one's conception of self and society evolve primarily from one's human environment; our vision of our- selves and our world reflects how people look at us.

Therefore, it appears to this writer that only the final conception of value described above, that of using the film arts as social experimentation, is an important contemporary addition to the objectives of any program of art education. It may be that in a more beneficent future era, problems in social relationships may have eased to such a point that we may be able to study art solely because it is a part of the richness of living and concentrate on creating physical surroundings which are both aesthetically satisfying and humane. Few of us would assert that we are now living in such a time.

To summarize: Fifteen ideas of the value of art experience which can support objectives for the teaching of art have been described and assessed. It has been argued that most of these concepts of value contain confusions and contradictions both within themselves and in relation to each other. It has finally been recommended that the most vigorous and worthy objectives of any general art education program are (1) the development of citizens whose response to the whole spectrum of the visual arts is both intense and knowl- edgeable and for whom these as well

as other arts are an important part of life experience and (2) the exploration of new and better ways to live together as human beings through the use of the film arts. On the basis of these goals, the curricula of the art class can and should be changed to become a significant part of the formal schooling of our youth. Vincent Lanier is head, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, Univer- sity of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.

Bibliography For an extended description of some of the ideas presented above, see:

1. David W. Ecker, "Some Inadequate Doctrines in Art Education and A Proposed Resolution," Studies in Art Education, Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 1963, pp. 71-81. (creativity and personality integration)

2. Elliot W. Eisner, Think With Me About Creativity, Dansville, N.Y.: F. A. Owens Publishing Company, 1964, pp. 48. (creativity)

3. Vincent Lanier, "The Status of Cur- rent Objectives in Art Education," Research in Art Education, 5th Year- book, NAEA (Manuel Barkan, Ed.), 1954, pp. 114-130 and "Schismo- genesis in Contemporary Art Educa- tion," Studies in Art Education, Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 1963, pp. 10-19. (review and assessment of values in art education)

4. John S. Keel, "Art Education, 1940- 64," Art Education, 64th Yearbook, N.S.S.E., 1965, pp. 35-50. (review of values and practices in art education)

5. Vincent Lanier, "One Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures," Educational Perspectives, University of Hawaii, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 1969, pp. 5-9. (visual literacy)

6. June K. McFee, "Urbanism and Art Education in the U.S.A.," Art Edu- cation, Vol. 22, No. 6, June 1969, pp. 16-18. (environmental design)

7. Vincent Lanier, "The Teaching of Art as Social Revolution," Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. L, No. 6, February 1969, pp. 314-319. (the film arts as social experimentation)

19



objectives of teaching art

Documents