25th Anniversary Issue || Art Education/The Silent Seventies?

National Art Education Association

Art Education/The Silent Seventies?Author(s): Charles M. DornSource: Art Education, Vol. 25, No. 1, 25th Anniversary Issue (Jan., 1972), pp. 22-28Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191701 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:38

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 62.122.79.78 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:38:07 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191701?origin=JSTOR-pdf

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


ART EDUCATION/THE E

22



ZILENT SEVENTIES? harles M. Dorn

Contained in the legacy left me by Ralph Beelke were two items; one, a half- filled bottle of aspirin, was quickly con- sumed, and the other, a somewhat more lasting gift, was an article by the late Manual Barkan entitled, "Transition in Art Education-Changing Conceptions of Curriculum Content and Teaching," scheduled for the October 1962 edition of Art Education. Because in those days the NAEA could only afford three employees, the executive secretary's position demanded that in addition to other duties he edit, layout, pasteup, and proof all nine issues of the journal. While in retrospect there is little doubt in my mind that I performed all these tasks with equal clumsiness, the process which required three to five separate editing and proofing operations did much to indelibly imprint the content of those early articles firmly on my mind. The fact that the job required me to pay attention to every detail was not, however, what made me feel for sure that what Manny Barkan was referring to was a coming revolution in the teaching of art in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. What did impress me was the fact that a man of Barkan's stature was willing to take on the sacred cows of a well entrenched and somewhat self-satisfied profession, and that the statement was presented at the 1962 Western Arts Conference on the theme of "Transition," which gave evidence that other leaders in the field also felt the sixties would be a decade of change in curriculum content and teaching.

Indeed, the prevailing mood of the activities engaged in by art associations, government agencies, and professionals during the sixties seemed to substantiate Barkan's prediction that, "... the next decade will bring some truly fundamental changes in the theory and practice of art education, changes which will be compar- able only to those overwhelming transfor- mations that took place within our profession during the late nineteen twenties and early thirties."2

In the "Transition" article Barkan assailed three notions about the teaching of art which had dominated the thinking and practice of the profession since the thirties. The assumptions Barkan questioned were: 1) the education of the "whole" child, 2) the rejection of critical and historical modes in art teaching, and 3) the belief that creative self-expression was the principal goal of the art experience. Referring to Jerome Bruner's pronouncements Barkan assailed the then current slogans of: "Art as free expression;" "everyone can learn to express;" "spontaneity is the key;" and "art experiences are developmentally valuable." Barkan, rephrasing Bruner's dictum that "the school boy learning physics is a physicist and jt is easier for him to learn physics behaving like a physicist," proposed instead that "the schoolboy learning art is an artist, and it is easier for him to learn art behaving like an artist than doing something else."

Judging from the professional activities which followed in the mid and late sixties, Barkan's statements seemed, indeed, to prophesy that the art education field would whole heartedly embrace the "art

as discip professik a consist of a plar tion moo this perin drawing impact c probable seventies such a re and in it stantial. like a m( particula tion Dev vided th( movemei Hoffa's I Analysis in Art E4 not been readers a reference ticularly Governr Hoffa's s is at its I not the i overshad documer been tot; Hoffa, in guine coi



line" point of view. Indeed, the )nal events of the period revealed :ency which had all the earmarks ined and well organized art educa- tement. A brief examination of od would, I think, be useful in some generalizations about the tf the sixties and what may be the directions of art education in the . Obviously, in the space allotted,

view will be somewhat superficial s conclusions somewhat circum- However, to the reader who would )re thorough documentation, rly of the U.S. Office of Educa- elopmental Activities which pro-

impetus to the "Art as Discipline" nt, I would refer you to Harlan 'ecent summary entitled, An of Recent Research Conferences iucation.4 Parenthetically, it has i my observation that Art Education Lre always moved to check out a

in the middle of an article, par- when the author referes to a lent report; however, in this case ialty prose (which is always good) test, and I am convinced that had ssuance of the Pentagon Papers owed the publication of this it, my reference here would have llly unnecessary. In the report ideed, notes his admittedly san- icern that in spite of all the furor,

conferences, official statements, and good intentions of the period, "in the end there was silence."4

In considering Barkan's particular influence in art education in the sixties it wobid probably be an overstatement to say that he personally was the adjudged leader, though it would be certainly fair to acknowledge that more than any other single professional his presence and his strong professional convictions were central and highly influential in the pronouncements of that period. I think it is also appropriate to note that Barkan himself never sought to champion popular points of view, but rather used his position as one of the field's most able professionals, to pursue with determination those directions he felt most relevant to the interests of the profession. It was through such efforts that Barkan's influence was present in nearly all the important professional endeavors of the sixties and central to the Aesthetic Education Project which was its culminating activity.

Although some observers of the sixties may take issue with me, it is my observation that three principal developmental activities encouraged most of the activity which occurred in the field. These activities included: Howard Conant's 1964 N.Y.U. Seminar in Elementary and Secondary School Education in the Visual Arts,3 Mattil's 1965 Seminar in Art Education for Research and Curriculum Development,5 and Barkan's Aesthetic Education Project,1 which occurred near the close of the decade. That other developmental activities, in-

cluding those sponsored by the NAEA, were also influential during the period is not to be denied; but in my opinion these activities were more on the order of dis-

seminating and reinforcing the movement rather than being central to its development.

In the Conant N.Y.U. Conference a number of issues were raised, but central was Barkan's 1962 pronouncement of the schoolboy learning art as an artist. Conant's own professional concerns which he

frequently voiced at meetings and in articles in the late fifties, that we needed to put the "art" back in art education, made it particularly appropriate that he and others influential in the now dormant Committee on Art Education take a leadership role in this conference which brought major artists, art educators, and scientific disciplinarians into a week-long dialogue. Pushed hard by the "new" math and "new" physics types from the President's Commission on Science and Technology, the conference urged public confessions from both the art educators and the artists that the ills of art education could be remedied by putting abstract expressionist painters in the schools. That the artists, which included such biggies as Frankenthaler, Motherwell, Osbourne, and Bucky Fuller, were not as convinced as the physicists that artists were either very much interested in or committed to formal educational pursuits was, I am certain, a serious disappoint- ment to the management. For the art

educator conferenl that the ' art educa notions a art educa solving tl professio woundst "art cenl so compl on Art E "Art as [ within tf now so n view thai its existe

Mattil which oc as a prin( artists an included disciplin( pologists specialist however, a Basis fc principal researche Penn Stai and Ohio in the de' While the planned, and devel contribut the psych first time



educators, both soft and hard liners, the conference was a moment of reconciliation that the "art" was, indeed, already back in art education and that overly simplistic notions about the artist as the salvation of

t. art education ultimately had no utility in solving the persistent problems of the profession. The healing of the philosophical wounds between the "child centered" and

s "art centered" proponents were, indeed, so complete that the National Committee on Art Education, long an advocate of the "Art as Discipline" approach, decided

it within the year that its "rival group" was now so much committed to their point of view that there was no longer any need for its existence.

s, Mattil's 1965 Penn State Seminar, which occurred one year later, also included as a principal activity dialogues between artists and art educators; but in addition included also academicians from other disciplines, including art historians, anthro- pologists, psychologists, and learning specialists. The Penn State Conference did, however, in addition focus on Research as a Basis for Curriculum Development. The principal inputs came from art education researchers and curriculum specialists from Penn State, the University of Chicago, and Ohio State, who jointly played a part in the development of the conference. While the outcomes of the seminar did, as planned, encourage a number of research and development proposals, its unique contribution came from the presence of the psychometricians who raised for the first time the question of accountability in

art education. That the question of accountability, that is, a need for "hard" data in support of art education programs, should become a part of the deliberations is not particularly surprising when one considers that the seminar occurred in a post-sputnik educational atmosphere, and that a new wellspring of Federal funds were now waiting to be tapped by experimental researchers in the field of art education. The period immediately following the Penn State Conference witnessed the most profilic outpouring of research proposals in the history of the profession. Studies in Art Education, NAEA's "Research" magazine, increased its ciruclation from 350 copies twice yearly to 2,500 copies three times yearly; and a virtual army of arts specialists formed the Office of Educa- tion (OE) "Pentagon" at 400 Maryland Avenue.

The third m6st influential activity which occureed at the close of the decade which I earlier referred to as the culminating activity was the OE sponsored, Aesthetic Education Project initiated and guided by Manual Barkan. The project came into being both through Barkan's interest in the possibilities of a common aesthetic base existing among the various arts disciplines and Cathy Bloom's long-standing concern for the arts in general education. Bloom, now in charge of the J DR III Fund Projects in the Arts in General Education, developed such concerns as a beginning art

educator in Owatonna, Minnesota (site of the Owatonna's "Art is Everyday Life" effort) and continued them in her work in Cleveland with Thomas Munro and later with the Junior League of New York. The Bloom-Barkan team was a natural and mutually desirable combination which led the project through two years of scholarly discussions involving aestheticians, critics, scholars, and educators in art, drama, and music in a search for a unifying aesthetic base which might encourage an interdisci- plinary approach to the curriculum development. Very little of the project's efforts are, however, generally known by the rank and file members of the arts teaching profession, probably because the project assumed a "low profile" and the dissemi- nated results were in the form of a rather thick and intellectually self-conscious government document which reported only the scholarly deliberations. Why the project assumed such a low profile is subject to speculation-one such speculation is that the scholars in pursuit of a set of unifying and commonly acceptable aesthetic premises came to the rather unacceptable conclusion that these unifying premises were more on the order of modes of behaving not exclusively limited to the fine arts. Such notions which are currently supported in the recent research of Irvin Child of Yale tend to be more supportive of wholeistic rather than disciplinary values in the field. While we may speculate that as a result, the disciplinarians lost heart, in fairness to the project some of these differences might have been adjudicated if it

25

I I



were not for Manny's unexpected illness and Cathy Bloom's impending departure from the Office of Education.

While the Aesthetic Education Project may, indeed, have assumed a low profile, the results at least influenced the philosophical groundwork for the JDR Ill's and CEMREL's "Arts In General Education Project," which is now being conducted in University City, Missouri. The results of the University City Project, headed by Stan Madeja, are now being tested in a number of state departments, including the pres- tigious D.P.I. in Pennsylvania. What is particularly noteworthy in the University City Project were the efforts made to test the utility of the related arts approach in actual classroom situations, which is probably the toughest assignment any project has ever had. It goes without saying that it is one thing to philosophize about art education and another to make a philosophy function in actual classroom situations.

The findings of these three particular Federal activities were widely publicized and examined by art educators through the NAEA national, regional and state art education conferences and publications. Judging from the articles in NAEA's Art Education-and Studies in Art Education during this period, the profession seemed to have reached the consensus that Barkan was correct in his '62 pronouncement that art was, indeed, a discipline. It was, for example, during this period that Elliot Eisner, of Stanford, presented the "Holy Trinity" model of the child as artist, critic, and performer; and also developed his art information research which received so much national attention through its publication in the New York Times. Other prominent art educators including Lanier, McFee, Ecker, Beittel, and others were also vocal in their support of the art as a discipline approach. NAEA was also ex- tremely active in providing a forum for professional development through its OE funded conferences in educational media and curriculum development and its insti- tutes for the training of teachers in the formulation of behavioral objectives. By the late sixties it appeared that Barkan's

predicted revolution was, in fact, a reality. Art educators, at least as judged by their literature, seemed unanimously convinced that art was a discipline with a definite content and a set of teachable behaviors which could be inferred through the models provided by the artist, critic, and historian.

Unfortunately, however, at this juncture in time, one decade after Barkan's prediction of a new revolution in curriculum content and teaching, the rank and file art educator may well be agreeing with Hoffa that "in the end there was silence." Where, one might ask, are the arts and humanities specialists whose funds and influence carried the revolution along? Where, one might ponder, are the experimental researchers who raised the accountability questions? Where are the promised tangible, package- able results of the aesthetic education program? Was the revolution only a figment of the imagination? A whim made possible by LBJ's new deal funding and the liberal visionaries of the new profession, or was it true that the real stuff and consequences of it all somehow missed coming into contact with the practicing professional who, faced with the realities of numbers, budgets, and bureaucracies, had neither the time nor the energy to listen or be involved?

If what is happening to art educators in the other 49 states is similar to what is currently happening to their colleagues in California (California is thought to be the bellwether of what's to come elsewhere), art educators in the U.S. are facing some serious difficulties. The particular difficulty in California is that the disciplinary literature of the sixties has come home to roost in California's State Department initiated art framework which incorporates the revolutionary behavioral objectives, discipline accountability, and "Holy Trinity" models for artistic behavior. What concerns many California educators is that the literature of the sixties that too few paid attention to is now the public law of the seventies that cannot be ignored. Oddly enough, the framework, while perhaps lacking in literary and philosophical consistency, stands as a sound document which indeed reflects all or most of the worthwhile values advocated

by the profession in the sixties. The Cali- fornia art educators' dilemma with the new framework was most recently identified in a survey of first year. implementation results conducted by the California school administrators' organization charged with monitoring the effort. While the report, in seeking to assess implementation efforts, does report some successful inservice and public relations efforts in a few school districts, by and large it reports that many teachers and administrators in the arts are simply bored and uninspired by any or all reference to the intellectual and/or cognitive behaviors advocated by the framework. The state's art teachers, it would appear from the implementation report, do not understand nor empathize with most of the disciplinary notions advanced. It would appear California art educators, perhaps like their counterparts in other states, simply do not accept the "Art as Discipline" concept; or if they do, they see no practical way to implement such an approach in the classroom. My guess is that the same is also holding true for those teachers who are attempting to adopt the curriculum pack- ages developed by University City, which also emphasize some of the same intellectual and disciplinary values advocated by the framework.

While the fact that gaps exist between theory and practice are not particularly new to art education, what makes this seem more serious in states like California is the existence of state-mandated educational control programs such as PPBS (Planning, Programming, and Budgetary Systems) which make adoption of the framework mandatory in all school districts. As a result, California art educators have no choice but to more carefully articulate and implement the educational goals they espouse. It would appear thus that the goals set for the revolution of art education in the sixties may well be the goals art educators must of necessity implement in the seventies. That an overwhelming number of art educators across the nation neither understand nor know how to implement the disciplinary values advocated in the past decade is perhaps the most critical

art education

26



concern art education has to face in the seventies. Somehow, the profession's ap- parent answer of silence just isn't good enough!

At this point, I am convinced that there are at least two major reasons for the present state of affairs in the profession: 1) that the disciplinary goals set in the sixties were advanced for reasons that no longer are viable or convincing to the rank and file of art educators in the seventies, and 2) that the art teacher education programs and the environment within which art is taught in public education needs as revolutionary a change as the goals of the profession under- went in the sixties. Moreover, it is simply no longer good enough to make professional pronouncements about education in the arts in our journals and conferences if such pronouncements don't lead to appropriate changes in the way our schools and colleges deal with the art education program. I am, therefore, suggesting that the seventies must of necessity be the practitioner's age -that is, a time when theory without appropriate practical applications in teaching situations simply has no utility. In such times a bootstrap commitment has to be exacted from one and all in the art teaching profession; rhetoric in our journals and conferences, no matter how ardently supported, will not do the job at hand.

In my view, a first step is for art education to move from what Silverman recently identified as "deficiency motives or interests in survival to what he calls abundancy motives or satisfaction-oriented goals."6 This is necessary because in spite of the presence of such formidable obstacles as PPBS, art educators will never accept a "change it or lose it" approach. Young people, including prospective teachers of art, simply won't buy the scare approach as a basis for motivating art activities in the schools; and judging from some recent pronouncements, the public won't either. This is to indicate that art educators find it easier to accept that art has a discipline rather than art is a discipline, at least as science or math is a discipline. Moreover. art educators can accept as real the notion that the practice of art is serious, while the

purpose of art may not be seriousper se. This is an admission that the process through which the artist engages himself with the images and/or forms he creates may of necessity commit him to highly intuitive and imaginative incantations which in themselves are neither rational nor necessarily serious. Such considerations are wholly consistent with what the artist knows of his relationship to visual imagery, which is not to be confused with the realities of program justifications. It is important that both the teacher and the student clearly understand such differences. Art forming as a mode is, in effect, its own justification which is quite apart from the reasons schools justify the values they believe are inherent in the art educating experience.

I believe the same differences must also be applied in judging critical and historical learnings wherein teachers and students recognize the inscrutability of the process of being sensitized to the visual experience without confusing such learnings with the cognitive study of art per se. I have never been thoroughly comfortable with the "Holy Trinity" theory which, in effect, tends to infer that students might be directed toward becoming one third historian, one third critic, and one third artist; which in my estimation would only result in the development of a professional schizoid of monumental character. Though I do not think this was the intent of the taxonomy, without establishing how much of each is required it would appear equal dosages of each would be desirable. In real life, however, historians are not artists. They, in fact, professionally agree that what they do is not art but more akin to the process of describing it. If critics, in addition, also agree (and I think they do) that they, too, are neither artists nor historians, what we may be referring to in these distinctly unique behaviors is more related to the critical and historical judgments artists employ to enhance their performance as artists. What I'm suggesting here is that art educators need not accept, even as a portion of their commitment, the education of the historian or critic. They can, however, be made to see and use those critical and historical behaviors

which are relevant to the art performances of their students.

The second step. I would advocate would be a serious overhauling of our art teacher education programs which in my view have never really shifted their emphasis from the education of the "whole" child to any viable implementation of the artistic or creative art process in art education. Art education programs which assume that their task is to merely transform college level art learnings to the "realities" of public education can only offer prospective teachers watered-down solutions for their already incomplete art understandings. While it may be fair to state that both college studio and history teachers may be equally guilty of failing to assist the prospective teacher in identifying and intellectually codifying the behaviors they have been taught, they are not, by and large, negligent in inculcating the nature and scope of the disciplines they are committed to teach. That far too many art educators see education through art as different from education in art is immediately evident. To accept such a premise is to admit that the artistic or creative process is of a different order than the educational process through which one is brought to the art experience. As a result of such educational dichotomizing, far too many art educators see no utility or necessity to accept the need to know with some level of assurance either what art is or how art qualities can be identified or encouraged in student work. It has, in fact, been my observation that most art education students do not want to accept responsi- bility for helping students to create art or make critical judgments about it. This comes about principally through the emphasis on the development of the "whole" child and upon stressing the instrumental nature of the art experience. My point is not to dispute the notion that children's art performances are indeed more like states of arriving rather than mature works, nor that art experiences are to be considered simply as ends in themselves, but rather that such experiences should help students make critical art judgments through activities which have

ION[

E

nL'

27

/



as their end in view the making of art. How, indeed, we can claim to be educating in art without being vitally concerned that teachers and students are engaged in either making art or, as Robert Motherwell once referred to it, "hanging around art," is indeed no less than amazing.

I, in no way, find that what artists do in making art is inimical to the best interests of art education. Art education programs which expend their energies in teaching art students to make non-art in the belief this will equip them for teaching in the public schools must assume that education in art is different from the creative processes artists, historians, and critics use in the making and attending of works of art. What, indeed, we should be doing is helping the prospective teacher to more clearly identify those art processes he has learned in the studio and art history classroom so that he can understand how these processes may be most effectively implemented at differing levels of student development. Until professional art educators in our art teacher education programs pay attention to such efforts, what art teachers do in the nation's art classrooms will continue to remain something that is less than art.

The third step I would propose has to do with the environment within which art is taught in our public schools. With respect to this problem no one really doubts that the environment within which artists and teachers learn art is different in both kind and quality from the environment in which the child in public school learns art. My experience with CEMREL's Artist in the School project has only reinforced my initial belief that artists can indeed work in public schools, and that children and youth can acquire artistic learnings as a result. What this project does clearly demonstrate is that for the artist and/or art teacher to behave as an artist in public education he must do so in differing units of time and in differing teaching arrangements than now exist in public schools. The Artist in the School project clearly demonstrates that if you use an artist in a traditional classroom

arrangement, he ceases to behave as an artist and he begins to behave as an art teacher which, in the project's terms, signifies that he stops both teaching and making art. While I recognize that most schools would be slow to accept the "open studio" approach used by the artists in the CEM REL project, many secondary schools today are moving in that direction, especially at the junior and senior grade levels. That the secondary school can no longer operate under the pink hall pass approach is already evident in many secondary schools who have now increased the freedom of advanced students to treat elective junior and senior level classes with as much freedom as the colleges do. This change is not due simply because of choice but rather that the prison-like school approach fails to retain the interest of even the brighter and more conservative student.

The open studio approach at-the high school level will not, of course, solve all the problems we face in providing the educational alternatives we know are necessary for effective learning in art. Required classes at lower school levels and the "art room as dumping ground" for school disciplinary problems mitigate against having a completely open system where learning is completely self-initiated under the guidance of inspired and exciting teachers of art. I do believe, however, such an approach could be a start toward bring- ing the secondary art classroom into a renewed relationship to the artistic process. Too, we might also, in the process, discover new and more viable ways to organizing art activities which for one reason or another do not seek clear and simple "art" ends. We know art teachers practicing and teaching art can reach the students if given the chance; it is now our job to see how we can bring this into being in our school art programs.

What is immediately evident is that these proposals offer no sure-fire or complete solution to the problems of teaching art in our schools. What, however, has been suggested are some thoughts which I

hope might encourage us as professionals to refuse to accept a decade of silence as our professional goal. What Barkan and others in the art teaching profession envisioned would be a lasting transition from the educational values of the thirties can still be achieved. What is needed is a concerted effort to adopt satisfaction oriented motivational values which accept solid artistic and aesthetic goals for the seventies, and then see that our teacher education and school art programs become places where such goals can be effectively realized.

Charles M. Dorn is chairman and professor of art, Art Department, San Fernando Valley State College, Northridge, California.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 Manuel Barkan, Laura Chapman and Evan Kern, Curriculum Development for Aesthetic Education, May, 1969, CEM REL, St. Ann, Missouri, 311 pp.

2Manuel Barkan, "Transition in Art Edu- cation," Art Education, Vol. 15, No. 7, October, 1962, 12 pp.

3Howard Conant, Seminar on Elementary and Secondary School Education in the Visual Arts, Cooperative Research Project No. V-003, New York University, New York, 1965, 234 pp.

4Harlan Hoffa, An Analysis of Recent Re- search Conferences in Art Education, Final Report Project No. 8-E-093, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D.C., 1970, p. 85.

5Edward L. Mattil, ed., A Seminar in Art Education For Research and Curriculum Development, Cooperative Research Project V-002, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 1966, 433 pp.

6 Ronald A. Silverman, "What Research Tells Us About Motivating Students for Art Activity," unpublished paper presented at the 1971 Dallas NAEA Biennial Conference.

28



Documents

25th Anniversary Issue || Art Education/The Silent Seventies?