Should we keep fine arts in public schools?
has...@my-dejanews.com
Should we keep fine arts in public schools? I would have to say yes. I
couldn't imagine not having music and art as a part of my education. I loved
being a part of the band in high school and singing class in grade school.
It really upsets me that because of funding, the first teachers to go are the
fine arts teachers. I believe that fine arts are important to the development
of children and that they should be a part of the classroom as well as
specials. With the fine art teachers being let go, children who would
otherwise find a love for art and music are not able to explore that domain
of education. I am a future educator and plan to make music and art a large
part of my classroom. It is hard to imagine not having these things in our
lives because this stuff is all around us. We need to allow children to
explore and have an outlet for tension and other things that come with
singing, playing an instrument, and expressing themselves through art.
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Donna Metler
budget cuts) I can agree with most of the above. However, I have to take
exception to any suggestion that music and art are there as fun
activities to release tension. While they can serve that purpose, they
have very definite skills and standards that are being taught. It has
been my experience that when classroom teachers and administrators start
thinking of fine arts as a "good thing to have" they become the first
thing on the chopping block-teachers would rather give up arts in the
school than each take 2 more students in their classroom, for example.
In addition, when the idea of "Arts are fun-not work" gets to the
children, it makes classroom management more difficult for the fine arts
teacher. At the extreme is the situation of the classroom teacher who
uses fine arts as a reward for behavior or completion of work. Not only
will many arts lessons not work with only a few students, and not only
will the lesson have to be re-taught the next week, boring the students
who got to do it the first time, but all the students who were pulled
out learned that music or art were less important than finishing work or
being punished. When they next come to music, they are hardly attentive
students! (Worse than that was a teacher who let students skip music at
their discretion-I hope this was an isolated occurance).
I'm glad to hear that you had positive experiences with music, but quite
frankly, if I believed that the only thing I was teaching in music is
relief of tension and positive expression, I'd go back to the general ed
classroom. There is so, so much more that can be learned in a good fine
arts program, and so much benefit that can be derived from it. It is a
shame that in most public schools the arts are seen only as a baby
sitting service to allow planning time.
Hobdbcgv
If fine arts allow the student to develop that part of their experience which
includes that broader thought found beyond Aristotilian logic, I'm all for it.
If it's a craft class that requires order and compliance to some lower
level regimen, scrap it. The students will be cruelly mislead.
Unlike math and science, which can be taught by anyone slightly familiar with
the concepts while using logic and a teaching guide, the fine arts and sports
can only be taught well if the teacher has experienced and used the thinking
required for those activities.... if you've never been there, how can you lead
another to the site?
Besides, math and science can be controlled and measured. How does the
administrator interested in control reach into an art classroom without turning
it into band lessons or craft class?
The world is cluttered with coaches who are clueless on how to form a team
but teach rules and discipline and technique, and music teachers who are forced
to teach the composer rather than the music. Basketball is now "streetball"
codified, and art is craft and culture glorified. Three moves and an athlete,
and rhythm sticks electrified.
Teach fine arts? You would need to show an artist's long and hard work,
the artist's many tries and failures as they gradually improved their technical
skills, a dedication to an idea and a being in touch with their own emotions
and a need to communicate what they feel to another using a physical meduim.
Think you'll get "find your emotion and put it on canvas" or "try and fail a
thousand times to get one minor success" by the school board?
Such fundamental human experiences are too controversial (and probably too
deep) for most principals and school boards. (Not to mention what the
administration will say when they find you have been telling youth to find
their emotions and see hypocrisy and conflict around them, and put it together
in a way to present to others feel what they feel.)
You are asking that students learn appreciation for human accomplishment
and dedication and risk, and a touching of emotion. Most people will never
understand what you are saying, let alone give up their pleasure of the moment
or quick dollar return. Conservatives, our wanna-be warrior caste, espouse
dedication and risk and hard work, but not near an emotion (outside of sports).
Yes. teach the fine arts, choose your school well, and recognize that
success really is reaching one in a hundred students.. not because they are
bored or not interested, but because some cultures value that kind of thought
used in fine arts, and other cultures don't and never will, and only a few
people will ever know the kind of thought required to meld technical with
emotional... but it's worth it to teach fine arts, for those few that are
reached give our society its soul.
......................And be able to avoid the trap of confusing primitive
pleasing craft with deliberate art.
You will have to defend yourself as elitist..until you hold a New Guinean
mask next to a Michaelangelo and have them see the embarrasing difference in
planning and development and deliberate creation of emotion replete with
creation at every step, vs a nice quick carved rendition by an observant
native.
And BTW, be ready for the ultimate attack on the arts - because you know
the thought of the arts, you will probably be labelled gay and effeminate -
from both sides of the aisle - only gay people can be sensitive, and only gay
people teach fine arts.....like Charlemagne, and Tuscans, and the Medici, and
the Mongolian Khans, and the Moors, and most of the French and English Kings -
poets and kings who knew that power is released by finding the thought of the
arts, and they surrounded themselves with those who could and practiced until
they, too were able to use that thought to conquer and to hold and to be
greater..
Teach fine arts, and teach it well, but remember that our society does not
like to hear that there will be many failures before a success, so art
frightens them, and thus art is scrapped in favor of craft, and success
redefined, and then all is well in ostrichland
........with apologies to the ostrich. :-)
a few thoughts
Pk2222
Donna Metler wrote:
>There is so, so much more that can be learned in a good fine
>arts program, and so much benefit that can be derived from it. It is a
>shame that in most public schools the arts are seen only as a baby
>sitting service to allow planning time.
Set this up against the Daviess County, KY new curriculum that says that music
instruction is vital to mathematical development and enhances the overall
learning potential of kids and hope that it spreads!
pk
Pat Kelley
Gryphon Communications, Inc.
Chicago, IL 60630
pk2...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/pk2222/pk.html
has...@my-dejanews.com
s a music teacher (who is currently looking for a new school because of
> budget cuts) I can agree with most of the above. However, I have to take
> exception to any suggestion that music and art are there as fun
> activities to release tension. While they can serve that purpose, they
> have very definite skills and standards that are being taught. It has
> been my experience that when classroom teachers and administrators start
> thinking of fine arts as a "good thing to have" they become the first
> thing on the chopping block-teachers would rather give up arts in the
> school than each take 2 more students in their classroom, for example.
> In addition, when the idea of "Arts are fun-not work" gets to the
> children, it makes classroom management more difficult for the fine arts
> teacher. At the extreme is the situation of the classroom teacher who
> uses fine arts as a reward for behavior or completion of work. Not only
> will many arts lessons not work with only a few students, and not only
> will the lesson have to be re-taught the next week, boring the students
> who got to do it the first time, but all the students who were pulled
> out learned that music or art were less important than finishing work or
> being punished. When they next come to music, they are hardly attentive
> students! (Worse than that was a teacher who let students skip music at
> their discretion-I hope this was an isolated occurance).
I agree with you to some extent. It all depends on how the teacher
approaches music in the classroom and how the music teacher approaches it. I
think music is for pleasure and teachers use it in the classroom to set the
mood and in some senses reward the students for a job well done. I worked
with a kindergarten teacher who played the piano all the time, and put on
music while the children were playing. The children would always ask for it
to be on while they were playing. Yes, she was using it as a reward but the
children also liked it and wanted it to be on. I think that music class and
listening to music are two different things. I use music as a reward at the
end of my day because some days are hard and the music cheers me up. I don't
think it is wrong to think tha way. Music teachers should have the same
skills a teacher has in the classroom because the problem you were describing
above happens in all domains of the classroom, not just in the music domain.
It happens with math, it happens with science, and it happens with reading.
I don't think the problem is just with the general education teacher. That
is where some communication comes in handy--it is important for the music
teacher to talk to the general ed. teacher because they know the kids.
>
> I'm glad to hear that you had positive experiences with music, but quite
> frankly, if I believed that the only thing I was teaching in music is
> relief of tension and positive expression, I'd go back to the general ed
> classroom. There is so, so much more that can be learned in a good fine
> arts program, and so much benefit that can be derived from it. It is a
> shame that in most public schools the arts are seen only as a baby
> sitting service to allow planning time.
>
I am not a music teacher and don't know all of the technical things about it.
I personally use it to relieve tension and I know that there is a lot more
to it then that. I participated in band for 8 years and I learned a lot of
skills that I may not otherwise. I am not being educated to teach these
skills, I am the general education teacher and use music in my classroom for
the children in hopes that they will learn to appreciate it.
Michelle
priscilla forthman
Hobdcgv wrote:
>Teach the fine arts, and teach it well, but >remember that our society
does not like >to hear that there will be many failures >before a
success, so art frightens them, >and thus art is scrapped in favor of
craft, >and success redefined, and then all is >well in ostrichland
I could not agree more. I am fortunate to teach photography in the
Miami-Dade County Public Schools Magnet Arts Program. Following several
weeks of intstruction in: the history of photography, the behavior of
light, optics, photographic chemistry, using the camera, form versus
content, and meaning in photographs, I give my students their first roll
of black and white film. I tell them that they can photograph ANYTHING
they want to try. I tell them that they have thirty six "chances" on
their roll, and that I do not expect every picture to be perfect. I tell
them to take a chance on something they are not certain of. I tell them
it is ok to fail. After all, there are thirty six frames, one or two
will probably be terrific, and we will all learn from the failures. You
should see their faces light up. These students never fail to grasp the
concept immediately...they are being urged to try something new, and
they understand that "failure" is part of the game. They are exhilarated
and supercharged with energy. I support them in their quest, and I see
the joy in their every movement.
Now, I also have the priviledge of teaching a similar course at the
undergraduate level. Did I mention above, that I was teaching second
through fifth grade students?. The supposedly educated adults have a
great deal of difficulty. The idea of taking a risk, of not knowing, is
alien to them. They have lost their curiosity. They beg to be told WHAT
to take pictures OF, and generally struggle with the ideas of risk and
failure. They want to give the answers, when art is about asking
questions. The children's pictures are so much better than the adult's.
Get them young enough, and they are still able to ask questions, of the
world, of the subject, of the medium, of the process, of their teacher.
After twelve or more years of "formal" education, most of the adults I
teach have lost the ability to question anything at all. This scares me
more than I can say.
You can see some of my student's photography on my website.
Priscilla
Terrific Pictures! http://www.geocities.com/~pforthman
Hobdbcgv
Interesting point about photography. It probably is a good way/a good
medium to use to teach about many tries being adequate but not quite good
enough to be "art", and about the joy of getting that one good one after so
many well-planned tries.
I would venture an old thought on the child and the adult... it seems a lot
of the great art touches an adult as if they were still a child...sort of
pierces the adult mask and lets the childlike wonder come through. Probably
easier to see a child's view when you are still a child.
..........................
BTW, I have been fortunate enough to travel to many places not too many
humans have been, I studied photography intensely early in the travels, have
too many lenses and too many cameras, and I took hundreds of rolls worth over
20+ years. I still feel fortunate if I get even one "good one" out of 70 or so
shots - but the good ones are worth it..
...
John Leslie
Alberto Moreira <junk...@moreira.mv.com> wrote:
>
> Real music cannot be an outlet for tension, much the other way around;
> it drains us emotionally.
Alberto shows again that English is not his native language...
Music most assuredly _does_ drain us emotionally -- that's exactly
why it is an outlet for tension: like all the other emotions, the
tension gets drained out of us.
Were this coming from a lesser musician, I might believe he meant
to say that music is unrelated to tension. However, any near-professional
musician knows that tension is more than half of performance.
Even in a "sewing-machine" performance, there's the tension of the
expected note not coming _when_ we expect it, but a second or two later.
In a real performance, practically every note carries some tension
because it comes earlier or later than the "sewing-machine" time.
> Real music grows in the student a degree of discipline, of believing in
> continuously hard work, a level of attention to detail, that nothing else
> can teach.
A very good statement of _why_ music has been considered a central part
of education for the last few thousand years. (Good statements of _why_
are hard to find -- I've looked!)
> Learning music isn't at all fun,
Wrong. Learning music _is_ fun for us demented people who persist at it.
> it can in fact be rather frustrating
Absolutely true!
> and in some cases outright out of bounds to many students who don't have
> the gift.
I don't know -- certainly I've seen my share of students who _I_ think
don't have the gift, but I've also seen such students pick up a different
style (say "country music") and be successful...
> Exploration belongs elsewhere,
Exploration belongs _everywhere_ in a child's life.
> and the proper outlet for tension is recess;
Alberto and I will agree to disagree here.
> music is quite a different beast, and its learning, while deeply
> satisfying and fulfilling, requires at least as much effort as any other
> kind of learning.
Agreed.
--
John Leslie <jo...@jlc.net>
Elisabeth Anne Riba
>Donna Metler wrote:
>>There is so, so much more that can be learned in a good fine
>>arts program, and so much benefit that can be derived from it. It is a
>>shame that in most public schools the arts are seen only as a baby
>>sitting service to allow planning time.
>Set this up against the Daviess County, KY new curriculum that says that music
>instruction is vital to mathematical development and enhances the overall
>learning potential of kids and hope that it spreads!
Why do we have to justify music education as an aide to mathematics. Why
can't music be accepted on its own behalf.
I find it interesting that during the Great Depression, schools still
managed to teach art and music, yet in today's better economy, they're on
the chopping block. I also find it sad. But, it shows where our
priorities are. Who cares about well-rounded kids -- let's just make
them employable.
--
-------------------> Elisabeth Anne Riba * l...@netcom.com <-------------------
"Love wouldn't be blind if the braille weren't so damned much fun."
- Armistead Maupin, "Maybe the Moon"
Donna Metler
>
> pk2...@aol.com (Pk2222) writes:
> >Donna Metler wrote:
>
> >>There is so, so much more that can be learned in a good fine
> >>arts program, and so much benefit that can be derived from it. It is a
> >>shame that in most public schools the arts are seen only as a baby
> >>sitting service to allow planning time.
>
> >Set this up against the Daviess County, KY new curriculum that says that music
> >instruction is vital to mathematical development and enhances the overall
> >learning potential of kids and hope that it spreads!
>
> Why do we have to justify music education as an aide to mathematics. Why
> can't music be accepted on its own behalf.
>
> I find it interesting that during the Great Depression, schools still
> managed to teach art and music, yet in today's better economy, they're on
> the chopping block. I also find it sad. But, it shows where our
> priorities are. Who cares about well-rounded kids -- let's just make
> them employable.
my most recent job interviews have mentioned this, and seem to see music
as a way of teaching other content areas-but not as a content area in
it's own right. This coupled with the "Fine arts as PR for the school"
almost makes me feel like going back to the self-contained classroom. I
might get to teach more REAL music education there than as a music
specialist :-).
Hobdbcgv
arts elevated man from an "automon" into a civilized creature, a human,
because they themselves had experienced the creation of music and the other
arts in their homes.
Today, we listen to a recording or have a visual "experience", and consider
that music and art. Our leaders say, "That is music, yup, yup. The composer's
been dead for a hundred years, it must be great, yup, yup." If the stereo is
good ( a FINE sound system), then what we hear is real music.
Yes, you HEAR music, but except in a self-delusional way, you do not
experience music as an interaction with the performer, just as by seeing a
photo of a great painting you do not experience the whole of the emotion of the
painter, sharing what he felt by seeing the subtlety of his original .
The underlying trigonometric scribes on DaVinci's original canvases don't
show on photos, nor does the eerie subtle light in a Monet.
I have a superb sound system in a huge room, an excellent reproduction
system, an engineer's dream, but the finest CD on that system does not evoke
the unique cerebral response of my adequately-decent-playing teen daughter
playing a simple classical piece. She has reached the point of piano-playing
where she makes music, music not even close to that of the better pianists, but
she makes music rather than plays notes, and I know why live is unique, and
why those who supported the arts in those old days did so, and why girls
learned to play well.
That simple live playing, that expression, placates, sparks my
creativity, and clarifies my logic more than any of the recordings in my files
- from Willie Nelson to Mozart to Beatles to Swing to blues to Hendricks to
Jefferson Airplane and on... delusional? No, not according to those who have
tried live music expression in their homes.
And so to the comment... most leaders of today do not experience the
higher plane of thought, the clarity of purpose, the experience of humanness
that such experiences in the fine arts bring. And so naturally they find art "a
nice thing", but to often foppish and elitist and expendable.
It is little different than those who do not experience soccer finding it
boring, and those who do not experience the hunt find it puzzling, and those
who do not experience art find it a diversion of those less sane than they.
If our leaders no longer know can recognize how thought differs in art and
music, how can we expect them to support art and music as an avenue of human
experience and expression and uniqueness?
We can't. They support what they experience and admire.
So they will continue to support logic and order until they realize they are
near the end of the Classics Illustrated syndrome----
"my Great-great grandfather read the Illiad in Greek,
my great-grandfather read it in English,
my grandfather read it in Cliff's notes,
my father read it in Classics Illustrated,
and I saw the movie. Like, so...what's the big deal about some Greeks?"
just a thought....
Pk2222
I love music - all for itself. I believe in music - all for itself. I'm not a
"real" teacher yet, but in my religious ed classes, I teach music because it's
beautiful.
I said what I did about the music research because I thought it was interesting
- not because I thought it was a justification for teaching music.
pk
I