an agenda for today for a field tomorrow

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National Art Education Association An Agenda for Today for a Field Tomorrow Author(s): Elliot W. Eisner Source: Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 5 (Sep., 1977), pp. 4-6 Published by: National Art Education Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192237 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 03:08 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 of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of 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 Art Education. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:08:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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National Art Education Association

An Agenda for Today for a Field TomorrowAuthor(s): Elliot W. EisnerSource: Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 5 (Sep., 1977), pp. 4-6Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192237 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 03:08

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 185.2.32.141 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:08:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

An Agendia for Today for a Field Tomorrow

Elliot W. Eisner

By the time you read this I will have been in office as President of the National Art Education Association for about two months. My assumption of this office takes place at a time in which art education programs are being cut back as budget constraints are felt by most of the 19,000 school districts in the United States. Partly because of the drop in elementary and secondary school enrollment and partly because of the public's reluctance to support revenue base elections, school boards face the inevitable task of reducing the amount they have to spend to support educational pro- grams within their district. In making decisions about how to save, the arts seldom fare well. Monies to be cut from school budgets cannot come from the amounts spent on heating, or lighting, or even the Xerox or mimeograph machine. They must come from that area that now commands about eighty- five percent of all expenditures. That means that it must come out of salaries. Savings must be made by shifting teaching and supervisory responsibili-

ties or by the termination of teachers. When people are cut from school

budgets, programs must be redefined. For art educators this has meant in all too many school districts a redefinition of responsibility or the elimination of positions. When tough choices have to be made about what counts within school programs, the arts do not fare well-often regardless of the quality of the art program that is provided.

I wish the situation were a happier one. Alas, it is not. In California for ex- ample, five years ago there were over four hundred art supervisors working in over 1,000 school districts in the state. Although hard data are not avail- able, I doubt that there are as many as fifty art supervisors in the state at the present time. The picture is not better in the East. New York City has all but eliminated art specialists for elemen- tary schools and even The High School of Music and Art is facing serious cutbacks according to the New York Times. In San Francisco and Minnea- polis similar conditions exist.

To describe the current picture in such terms is not to claim like Henny Penny that "The Sky Is Falling". It is

not. Yet to disregard the painful reality that many art educators are experienc- ing in their own situations is to be blind to the character of the reality that they know only too well.

These conditions provide the stage upon which the National Art Education Association must act. It is my intention as President of the Association to work with our dedicated and able Board to try to ameliorate this situation. There are at least two major tacks that can and must be taken by the Association in behalf of its membership. First, the Association must be open to the needs and the wants of the membership. Those of us in whom you have placed your trust need to know what it is that you would like us to attend to. We need to hear from you about what needs you have in your situation and what you think would be useful for the field. To ask for guidance is not to abrogate the responsibility for leadership we have accepted, but to open up the channels for two-way communication. We need to know-indeed we must know-what seems useful for the Association to do.

Does the field need specially designed materials to inform school

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board members, school administra- tors, and high school counselors about the functions of art in the education of the young? Does the field need to work with college admissions committees to expand their conception of intellectual ability so that the artistically gifted have as much a chance as the scientif- ically gifted? Do we need special workshps held during the year for leg- islators, parents, and others in arts education to examine the sources of constraint on arts education? What is it in your school or school district that would be helpful in motivating people to support art education when the budget has to be cut?

As President of the National Art Education Association for the next two years I extend to each of you who read these words a standing invitation to write to me directly at the School of Education at Stanford University or at our new National headquarters in Res- ton, Virginia, with advice, criticism, suggestions. All of us need as much helpful contributions as we can get. Thus, one tack that the Association must take is to open up the channels for two-way communication and to try to be responsive to those suggestions that are both valuable and within our power to pursue.

The second tack that the Association must take has already been initiated under the leadership of our Past Presi- dent Chuck Dorn and our Executive Director John Mahlmann. That tack deals with the development of a sense of coalition among all of those associa- tions concerned with the health of the arts in education. On that front signifi- cant progress has been made. There is at present a group that meets regularly in Washington called DAMT (dance, art, music, theater). The DAMT group consists of leadership of the four pro- fessional arts education associations, and its aim is to discuss, plan, and support activities that will strengthen the teaching of all the arts in the public and private schools of the United States. To this end the group is in contact with Federal agencies and with agencies supported by Federal funds concerned with arts education; the National Endowment for the Arts rep- resents the former, while the Alliance for Arts Education, the latter.

What is significant about this group is not the new legislation it has helped initiate, but rather the fact that for the first time contact and communication have begun to develop. There is a common realization that politically and educationally all of the arts education organizations are in the same boat, a boat whose stability and direction can be enhanced if we chart a common course for much of what we do. It is my intention to continue to contribute to the promising beginnings that Chuck and John have established.

The DAMT group and another group, the Arts Advocacy group that meets at the Kennedy Center, are significant because they represent the realization among arts educators that the funda- mental problems facing arts education in the United States are not merely local in character, but systemic. The major problems we face, the fact that art education is generally low among the educational priorities of school boards, not because school board members or members of the commu- nity place low value on art per se, but because the major rites of passage within the educational system provide little reward for competence in the arts, are problems that can be resolved only through major political efforts. The Association has a responsibility to initiate and follow through such efforts, and in this regard we need the support of our colleagues in the other arts education areas.

But we also need to formulate both as an independent association and collectively with other associations a long-range agenda that identifies the specific constraints that thwart the growth of art in American schools, what needs to be done to alter those constraints, and to form task forces to do what is within our means. The constraining effects of high school graduation requirements that fail to ask students to do any work in the arts as a condition for graduation while requir- ing that they do at least one year, and often more in the sciences, the mes- sages received by students from uni- versities that require no work in the arts for admission, the impact of the Scho- lastic Aptitude Test that assesses abil- ity in written expression and mathem- atical reasoning while disregarding the kinds of abilities and forms of intelli- gence with which art educators are concerned, all of these constraints and others influence the climate and the priorities of schools and hence the quality of education children and ado- lescents experience. These constraints need to be altered, not simply because of the professional self-interest of art educators but because it is in the best educational interest of the youth the schools are designed to serve.

My intention is to work towards the achievement of the goals I have inti- mated. I welcome your help-indeed I ask for it. The task is neither small nor easy. I urge you to let me hear from you in ways that are helpful for realizing the educational values that attracted us into the field of art education in thefirst place.

For elementary arts specialists, curriculum developers, and classroom teachers-a guide to putting all the arts to work in your school.

THROUGH THE ARTS TO THE AESTHETIC: THE CEMREL AESTHETIC EDUCATION CURRICULUM by Stanley S. Madeja with Sheila Onuska

A description of the innovative elementary curriculum based on all the arts-visual arts, film, theatre, literature, dance, music-with detailed case studies by specialists and classroom teachers that show how this aesthetic education curriculum can bring all the arts to all your students. The eight-year development of this curriculum was funded by the National Institute of Education.

Available now, at $5.75

CEMREL, Inc. 3120 59th Street St. Louis, Mo. 63139

Elliot W. Eisner is professor of educa- tion and art at Stanford University, Stanford, California, and president of the National Art Education Associa- tion.

6 Art Education, September 1977

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