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The Role of the Humanities in Art EducationAuthor(s): Terry ZellerSource: Art Education, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Jul., 1989), pp. 48-57Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193143 .

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The Role of the

Humanities I n

Art Education

Terry Zeller

Student observing a 19th century Benin bronze. Photo courtesy of The Minneapolis Institute of Art.

48 Art Education/July 1989



I t is the premise of this article that none of the current models for teaching art in American schools is appioptiate as a way

of structuring art in general education. The article makes a case, within the context of recent calls for educational reform, for using a humanities approach to art in general education.

In addressing the role of the humanities in art education, it is necessary to answer a number of basic questions: What are the humanities? How have the humanities been viewed in the recent educational reform literature? What places have the humanities had in art education? What is a humanities approach to art education, and why is it important? What might be done to promote a humanities approach to art education?

What Are The Humanities? A dictionary definition of the humanities describes them as that which concerns the interests and ideals of people. The word humanities tradition- ally conjures up an image of a Great- Books-approach to the study of literature, history, philosophy, and the arts. But the humanities are more than the sum of individual disciplines. By nature interdisciplinary, the essence of the humanities is interpretation - having to do with meaning. The 1965 Act creating the National Endowment for the Humanities defines them as:

language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurispru- dence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts (my emphasis); those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environ- ment with particular attention to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.'

It is important to note that three of the four so-called parent disciplines of both the Getty's discipline-based art educa-

tion and the National Art Education Association's goals for quality art education are among the humanities subjects - the theory, history, and criticism of the arts.

Howard Mumford Jones in his book One Great Society says that the humanities "include philosophy in all its branches, languages, literature in all its varied aspects, music, the fine arts, the decorative arts, the arts of the theater. Certain aspects of anthropology and folklore are of interest to humane learning. So are many of the philosophical aspects of science and social science..." But as Jones observes, it is the study of these disciplines in the perspective of time that is to be stressed, and therefore "history is the essence" of the humanities. 2Funda- mental to the humanities is the notion that through the analysis and interpretation of the human experience recorded in literary, philosophical, and artistic documents and material culture/ artifacts, one comes to understand, to paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas, that we are alone and not alone in the unknown world; that our hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats, certainties and doubts are forever shared and forever all our own. Or as Lynne Cheney, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities said, quoting Mark Van Doren, the humanities provide "the connectedness of things, an overreach- ing vision of connectedness." As basic components to the humanities, the appreciation and criticism of the arts should be studied in a broader cultural and historical context. The humanities are concerned with cultural documents of societies over time not merely with the description, formal analysis, interpretation, and judgment of the aesthetic qualities, the physical/corporal proper- ties of artifacts be they paintings, poems, plays, operas or folk songs, choreographed dances, or architecture and furnishings. The NEH states that "beyond certain areas of knowledge, the term humanities also involves the processes.. .whereby these areas are analyzed, understood, and preserved."

Thus the humanities use a variety of perspectives or methodologies to search for the multiple layers of meaning both contained in and created by documents and artifacts, among them works of art.

The Humanities and Recent Educa- tional Refrom In modem American society with its emphasis on specialization and practical education for careers, the humanities have not fared very well. Lynne Cheney in her recent NEH report while documenting a steady decline in humanities majors and enrollment in humanities courses in colleges, reports a significant rise in interest in humanities among the general public. Her concern for the place of the humanities in the academy is only the most recent call for educational reform that has included proposals for strengthening requirements in the humanities. A Nation At Risk, Boyer's High School and Sizer's Horace's Compromise all stress the importance of academic disciplines, including core subjects such as English and history, while recom- mending cutting time for the likes of driver's education, sex education, and drug education. A Nation at Risk calls for the critical study of "our literary heritage and how it enhances imagina- tion and ethical understanding, and how it relates to the customs, ideas, and values of today's life and culture." Likewise in social studies A Nation at Risk recommends approaches to content and instruction that will "enable students to fix their places and possi- bilities within the larger social and cultural structure [and] understand the broad sweep of both ancient and contemporary ideas that have shaped our world..." Though lacking the specificity given in descriptions of the so-called New Basics, the report does call for "programs requiring rigorous effort" in other subject areas, including the arts.3 Another recent study, Against Mediocrity, specifically addresses the place of the humanities in America's high school. It is interesting to note that while some art educators have lately seemed to equate the use of textbooks

Art Education/July 1989 49



in art with disciplinary rigor, Against Mediocrity "calls for less reliance on textbooks and more on letting students get at lively and demanding original materials." In 1984 the NEH in a report on the state of the humanities in higher education also called for a curriculum based on original literary, historical, and philosophical texts rather than on secondary works or textbooks. 4 In 1987 the NEH issued the results of a study that concluded that a textbook approach to literature and history does not assure the transmission of basic information on those disciplines.5 Unfortunately most undergraduate art history courses also rely on textbooks rather than texts; students read Janson or Gardner in the survey courses, Armason on the twentieth century, Mendelowitz for American art, etc, rather than primary texts, monographs, or scholarly articles. As a result students end up woefully ignorant of the research methods and historiography of art history. And all too many art education courses supposedly intended to prepare students to teach art history, aesthetics, and criticism rather than stressing original texts rely on overhead projections presenting the models of Gene Mittler, Vincent Lanier, Karen Hamblen, etc. or perhaps having students read Edmund Feldman or Mary Erickson rather than study, adapt, and apply Arthur Danto, Harold Osbome, Monroe Beardsley, or George Dickie on the philosophy of art; or Heinrich Wolfflin, Ernst Fischer, Erwin Pan- ofsky, or Rozika Parker on the methods of art history, or John Berger, Clement Greenberg, Donald Kuspit, Lucy Lippard, or Harold Rosenberg on art cirticism.

In his book Cultural Literacy, E.D. Hirsch expresses concern for the decline among young people of "shared information" which he believes necessary for true literacy. He places responsibility for this failure squarely at the school house door, saying, "Cafeteria- style education, combined with the unwillingness of our schools to place demands on students, has resulted in a steady diminishment of commonly

shared information between genera- tions and between young people themselves." And in this he is right. I can remember, and I trust that I am not alone in this, having undergraduates introduce me to the work of certain authors and composers twenty years ago. Not only is this not the case today, but what is more, literary and historical illusions mentioned in lectures and class discussions fall on minds innocent of the knowledge of a common cultural heritage. This situation is the result, as Hirsch explains, of the "faulty theories promulgated in our schools of education and accepted by educational poli- cymakers," that stress the teaching of skills rather than thinking. Hirsch sees both as a "fundamental error" because each "avoids coming to terms with the specific contents of literate education or evades the responsibility of conveying them to all citizens... "6

In his recommended curriculum for a model high school, former Secretary of Education Bennett stressed an analyti- cal/critical/interpretative approach to the humanities that includes four year- long courses in literature, year-long courses in both Western Civilization and American history, and a semester each of art history and music history. And just this year, the NEA in its Toward Civilization: A Report of Arts Education repeated what we have all heard for years, that arts instruction in the public schools is primarily a matter of process, product, and performance, not a fostering of an understanding of works of art. Noting that "there is a growing consensus that arts curricula should include study of the great works of art from all times and cultures, those that probe the nature of man and reveal us to ourselves," the report underscores the importance of a humanities approach to the teaching of art in saying, "Arts education need not be confined to arts courses per se. History and foreign languages, for example, can have a deeper meaning for students when the arts are part of them. Such integration can begin even in the elementary years." The report goes on to point out that "The single greatest drawback of

existing arts curricula and the guides which teachers use is their emphasis on skills development at the expense of the art form as a whole." All too often the focus of visual arts in the schools, the report notes, is on the elements and principles of art - on design - rather than on the cultural, historical, philosophical, and critical study of works of art.7

To a great degree the way art is taught in the public schools is a reflection of the way in which art teachers have been prepared in our colleges and universities. And it has not taken long for the calls for educational reform to spread from the schools to the halls of academe and to touch both undergraduate general education and teacher education programs.

In 1984 a higher education study group published a report titled Involve- ment in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Educa- tion. Its recommendations called specifically for collaboration among faculty from various disciplines, the establishment of opportunities for integration of learning in senior semi- nars or theses, and the requirement that "students actually apply learning from different disciplines in individual or group projects." The report stresses "the ability to synthesize" as well as to analyze, noting that synthesis, which is too often neglected in education, is needed for the development of abstract thinking and for making informed judgments. William Bennett when head of the NEH issued a paper titled To Reclaim a Legacy in which he emphasized the importance of the humanities and in particular a knowledge of the classics in the history of Western literature, philosophy, and the arts.8

A committee of the American Association of Colleges in 1985 addressed the need to reform the baccalaureate degree by reestablishing a strong general education component and by loosening the strangle hold individual departments have on their majors. The Committee noted that "Study in depth, if it is to be disci- plined and complex, cannot be re-




Asian studies junior high students, with a docent, examining the symbolism of some 18th century Chinese gold ornaments. Photo courtesy of The Minneapolis Institute of Art.

stricted to the offerings of one academic department." Citing an example, the Committee observed:

the study of literature is not requisitely deep if at the end the student has merely taken six or eight or ten courses in a literature department: there is no depth if the students have not brought into focus and appreciated in their interrela- tions a refined degree of literacy, an understanding of literature as cultural history, and a knowledge of the theory of how language and literature create meaning, and of the problems of reach- ing aesthetic judgment.

In this regard one might well substitute art for literature, for the same is true of art majors. Pointing out that "real life, we need to remember, is interdisciplinary," the Committee emphasized the

importance of interdisciplinary studies for teaching the complexity of knowledge and promoting analysis, interpretation, and synthesis.9

Ernest Boyer in his report for the Carnegie Foundation, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America called for an integrated core curriculum that "introduces students to essential knowledge, to connections across the disciplines, and in the end, to application of knowledge to life beyond the campus." In the spring of 1988 the Professional Preparation Network issued a position paper titled Strength- ening the Ties that Bind: Integrating Undergraduate Liberal and Profes- sional Study. Among the report's suggestions were: joint teaching appointments across disciplines, more team-teaching by liberal arts and professional school faculty, and

clustering courses students take simultaneously with beginning professional courses rather than completing liberal arts requirements in a block before beginning the major.10 While there are differences of emphasis and method in the approach to liberal/ general education in the reports mentioned above, they all share a belief in the centrality of the humanities in the curriculum and a commitment to interdisciplinary studies.

Teacher education has also come in for very careful scrutiny over the last five years. In 1984 both the Rand Corporation and the National Center for Educational Information issued reports that focused on teacher education as a significant factor in the poor performance of our schools. Critics, among them college of education deans and the president of the AFT agreed




that teacher education curricula often focus on practical skills rather than on intellectual content or content that is intellectually challenging. The National Commission for Excellence in Teacher Education in 1985 not only recommended that all future teachers major in an academic subject but that they also have a strong grounding in liberal/ general education, a grounding "equivalent to that of the best-educated members of their community, not simply a few courses in each of several academic fields..." While a group of education school deans known as the Holmes Group has recommended the abolition of undergraduate degree programs in education in favor of

majors in the liberal arts with all prospective teachers required to complete an academic major and a fifth year devoted to the study of pedagogy, the Carnegie's Task Force on the Teaching Profession recommended a bachelor's degree in arts and sciences as a prerequisite for entry into teacher education, and called upon liberal arts faculties to review the undergraduate curriculum in terms of the education of prospective teachers." The NEA's report, Toward Civilization, specifically stresses the need for changes in the training of art teachers, stating:

If arts education is to provide an understanding of the artistic heritage,

as stipulated in most state curriculum guides, teacher preparation programs must provide more training in the historical/critical aspects of the arts. Future arts teachers must also be able to relate the teaching of their art to the other arts, other subject areas, and the history of ideas, for the arts are an integral part of history, philosophy, anthropology, and the other humanities disciplines.12

The Place of The Humanities in Art Education In light of the importance being given to liberal arts education from public schools through college, and with the emphasis placed on knowledge of cultural heritage and the ability to make informed, critical judgments through analysis, and interpretation of literary, historical, philosophical, and artistic documents, what, one might ask, has been and is today the role of the humanities in art education?

Within art education in the twentieth century one can identify a number of schools or theoretical orientations, among them the child-centered, creativity approach represented by D'Amico, Cole, and Lowenfeld; the cultural/art-in-society approach based on anthropological concepts and methods and associated with June McFee; the aesthetic education school championed by Munro, Smith, and Broudy; and the DBAE model backed by the Getty Center for Education in the Arts and articulated by Eisner, Greer, Day, and others, but whose essential componets were developed during the 1960s by Barkan. Within each school one can discern differences in focus or emphasis; however, let us here direct attention to how the three most widely applied schools - the child-centered creativity, the aesthetic education, and DBAE - in their essential philosophical foundations address the content and methods of the humanities.

The Humanities and the Child- Centered Creativity School The humanities have no place in the


Workshop on the art and culture of Ancient Egypt. Students working with hieroglyphics. Photo courtesy of The Minneapolis Institute of Art.



child-centered creativity school. Lowenfeld emphasized uninhibited expression focused on creative and mental growth. Instruction was based on technique, topic, and materials appropriate to each developmental level. Like D'Amico and Cole, Lowen- feld warned against "an artificial adult approach" to art that might "destroy the spontaneous act of creation." Nowhere in the "art stipulations" sections of Creative and Mental Growth does one fin'md Lowenfeld even mentioning the inclusion of art history, aesthetics, or criticism, let alone an interdisciplinary/ contextual approach to the study of art. Lowenfeld said that the goal of art education is "not the art itself or the aesthetic product or the aesthetic experience, but rather the child who grows up more creatively and sensi- tively and applies his experience in the arts to whatever life situations may be applicable." He told students, "we are thinking of art education as a process and not as a final product We think of it as a means to an end, and the end is always the individual" - a happy individual useful to society. His method for teaching art was one of process predicated on a strictly intrinsic formal/ expressive aesthetic. "A creative product of a student or work of art," he wrote, "can be understood only by its own means, by studying the basic elements, such as line and its relationship, space and its meanings, and color and its individual interpretations. To do this, we shall first discuss the meaning of single elements, and later bring them into relation with one another." Even on those rare occassions when Lowen- feld actually points to works of art, it is merely to use them as illustrations of the application of certain principles of design - emphasis, repetition, symme- try.3 And this elements and principles approach remains today the only or the primary way in which all too many art teachers incorporate art history, response to art, into their teaching.

Natalie Robinson Cole also took a child-centered creativity approach. The very titles of chapters in her The Arts of the Classroom- "Creative Painting,"

"Creative Clay Work," "Free Rhythmic Dancing," "Creative Writing" - tell the story. She discouraged teachers from demonstrating, drawing on the chalk- board, or showing photographs or pictures, warning, "The child has marvelous ability to express himself. If properly drawn out and encouraged, he needs no help. The moment a teacher draws on the board or paints on paper, that moment is the child crippled and inhibited. That moment is he ruined for confidence in his own way of doing. Hands off!" Wondering how to obtain "free, creative expression" in children's writing, Cole explains, "Finally I decided I would worry no longer about the academic approach. That, I knew, would fail in art," She went on to explain:

My roomful offourth-graders had taught me what was true in their art. Might they not lead me here? The child had sincerity, directness, and rhythm in his art- delightful emphasis and unexpectedness. 'Why not take those as my criteria? ' I cried excitedly. How simple it all became.

Gone was the insecure feeling that I had missed out on something academic and could never know intellectually how to judge their writing. I would feel' the child and give him faith and confidence. He would open up as he did in his art. He would teach me.'4

There is obviously no place for the humanities in Cole' s vision of art education.

The Humanities and Aesthetic Education Writing during the 1930's, Thomas Munro, long-time Curator of Education at the Cleveland Museum of Art and editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, advocated the inclusion of art history, aesthetics, and criticism as a regular part of public school art programs. He saw the study of art history as essentially stylistic, a way by which students might learn how "older schools of art solved their own aesthetic problem, and to derive there from

suggestions for dealing with one's own (art)..." Munro proposed "that the training of critical powers should be one of the dominant aims of art instruction on all levels. It is a process which can be continued from early childhood through graduate school..." He believed that secondary students could and should grapple with the principal aesthetic issues current in art criticism. He also believed that high school students could handle "the study of art history from a broadly cultural view- point, in relation to social, intellectual, and religious factors." However, Munro's own orientation was toward aesthetics and art history in its traditional Wolfflinian, stylistic dress. Indeed his mistrust of the social history of art approach manifested itself in articles unsympathetic to Marxist interpretations. 15

More recently Ralph Smith has been championing aesthetic education which takes a very traditional view of the history, philosophy, and criticism of art. He suggests studying "selected master- pieces, classics, or exemplars in depth" from a stylistic point of view. Though Smith deserves credit for his interdisciplinary scope or content, including the study of literature, music, and the visual arts, his method is a traditional one in which, he would have students describe, analyze, interpret, and judge the formal and expressive qualities of works of art. There is little difference between his intrinsic approach and that of Harry Broudy's "aesthetic scanning" method. Both give scant attention to the importance of contextual factors and to the layers of meaning it is possible to uncover by applying metholodogies that are extrinsic to the physical object. Smith seems frankly hostile to newer methodological approaches such as Structuralism and Deconstruction, as well as to Feminist and Marxist methods, saying "What must be avoided in art education at all costs is the acceptance of theories that are more concerned to further a political ideology than to understand and appreciate art in its true complexity. It is therefore important that an excellence curriculum




for art education reaffirm the intrinsic and inherent values of art and put political and ideological interests in proper perspective." 16 But Smith in questioning the validity of cultural criticism when it comes to art, and in denying the value of contextual methods that he lumps together as "varieties of Marxist commentary", is himself guilty of ignoring the complexities of art and of fostering an ideology, that of the cultural hegemony of the socially dominant classes. What he fails to recognize is that his own approach to art education is inherently ideological. If one examines the writings of Smith and Broudy, one of the intellectual fathers of DBAE, one finds that, with the occasional mention of other philosophers such as Nelson Goodman, the philosophers of art whose influence is most apparent and who are most frequently cited - Croce, Collingwood, Langer, Dewey, Osborne and particularly Beardsley - all subscribe to an instrinsic theory of art with a philosophical orientation in which formalism and expression play the prominent part. Not surprisingly, the same thing can be said of the exponents of DBAE.

The Humanities and DBAE Dwaine Greer wrote that "The focus of discipline-based art education is on art within general education and within the context of aesthetic education." For Greer, "a major goal of discipline- based art instruction is to provide conditions that can lead to aesthetic experience." The basis of such an experience is apparent in his statement that the task of art appreciation is "to encourage students' attitudes toward a work that lead to recognizing the expressive character of particular works of art." The DBAE approach to art history is equally narrow, for Greer says "attention to personal, geographic, or chronological styles, along with symbol systems presented in works of art, identifies the tasks of the art historian." Just as traditional is the conception of art history found in Beyond Creating:

Art history provides a timeline that shows us how artists, styles, and periodsfollowed each other, what works from different civilizations were produced at the same time, and how art has evolved through the ages. It tells us why certain works are considered prominent examples of a particular period, why works look the way they do, and how artists have influenced art produced by later civilizations.

These statements represent only one approach to the history of art. They tell teachers that art history is linear, evolutionary, and stylistic. That art history is merely a matter of iconogra- phy (decoding symbols), period and national styles, the attribution of works of art to particular individuals, and the influence of someone on someone else. They uncritically suggest that "art reflects the values of a society" and as such blur the complexities involved in cultural history. Equally simplistic is Eisner's statement that "All art is part of a (my emphasis) culture. All cultures give direction to art, sometimes by rejecting what artists have made and at other times by rewarding them for it. To understand culture, one needs to understand its manifestations in art, and to understand art, one needs to understand how culture is expressed through its content and form." Such a statement seems to imply that cultures are monolithic/homogeneous. It neglects the necessity of studying "non-aesthetic" artifacts in order to come to a full understanding of art. And it leaves unexamined the ways in which definitions of art are created. What is more, it suggests what is implicit in much of the DBAE literature, that skills development is the primary concern not acquisiton of knowledge. Not only does this concern permeate Beyond Creating with its emphasis on enabling children "to develop increasingly sophisticated abilities to produce, describe, interpret, and assess art," but Eisner in his thirty-six page essay "The Role of Discipline-Based Art Education in America's Schools" uses skill or skills at least thirty-eight times. That DBAE is heavily skills oriented is

apparent to anyone who observed in the model classrooms opened to partici- pants in the Getty's January 1987 Los Angeles conference. Too great a reliance on the aesthetic scanning technique or any other formula in teaching art should be subjected to serious scrutiny given the criticism of substanceless skills development found in the recent educational reform literature. But even some of the critics of DBAE also champion a narrowly expressive theory of art and stress skills development. More recently, however, the proponents of DBAE seem to have begun to appreciate the complexity of art history, recognizing that there are what one of their art history consultants terms intrinsic, extrinsic, and integrative approaches.17

But the type of depth suggested by the latter two approaches will not be realized if DBAE remains predicated on the traditional theories represented by Wolfflin, Panofsky, Langer, Beardsley, etc. Such breadth and depth cannot come from compartmentalizing the visual arts off from other disciplines; it will only come from a solid grounding in the humanities - interdisciplinary content - and the analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of works of art within their multiple cultural and intellectual contexts, a task that can be realized only through the application of methods borrowed and/or adapted from social and intellectual history, anthropology and sociology, and literary history and criticism. A humanities approach would also help to counter the ethnocentrism that tends to charac- terize both the aesthetic education model and DBAE. For while both models maintain that students should study Western and non-Western art, their approach is rooted in Euro- American philosophy, and as such their interpretation of the material culture of the Third World and Native Americans is shaped and colored by Western theories of art, art history, and criticism. One searches in vain through the DBAE literature for references to books and articles on African, Asian, or American Indian aesthetics.'8




Since Arnold Hauser's pioneering book The Social History of Art (1951), the contextual approach has grown slowly among art historians; however, more recently Michael Baxandall, T. J. Clark and his students, Svetlana Alpers, and Feminist art historians such as Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock have been helping to reshape the content and methods of art history, 19 a situation examined by Grace Glueck in a long New York Times article last year. These revisionist art historians, following long established practice in such other areas of the humanities as history and literary criticism, stress, as Glueck notes, the relationship of the work of art to "the socio-political climate of its time rather than focusing on such esthetic elements as shape, color, and composition."20 The sessions at the

College Art Association over the last few years have also begun to reflect a broader approach to the history of art, and in fact the statement of the program co-chairs for the 1990 CAA conference acknowledges:

Art History as a discipline has ex- panded into many allied fields in the last several years resulting in new methodologies, areas, and issues being brought into the mainstream. One of the aims of the 1990 annual conference will be to explore the common reciprocal boundaries of art historical scholarship and related fields of inquiry.. .the 1990 meeting will attempt to focus attention on aspects of current research that reveal intercon- nections between art, history, social history, anthropology, comparative

religions the 'history of consciousness,' and philosophy, among other fields. 21

This social-cultural history approach to art is also the line of interpretation taken in the new interdisciplinary Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which operates on the premise, to quote its guide book, "that visitors should be aware of the major chronological references of the period covered by the museum's collections," and of "the connections and juxtapositions of history (including technology, literature, and music), which may be obscured by the museum's stylistic presentation, [but which] can also help us understand the material conditions governing artistic production, the artist's status within society, and the status of art in general in a given social context." 22

Fourth grade students exploring the artist's role as social commentator, using Daumier's The Fugitives. Photo courtesy of The Minneapolis Institute of Art.




Promoting A Humanities Approach To Art Education Given the changes taking place in the practice of the philosophy, history, and criticism of art, all of which point toward a more inclusive humanities approach, neither the child-centered creativity, the aesthetic education, nor even the tradition-bound DBAE is an appropriate model for art in general education. Fundamental changes in the content, structure, and methods of art education are needed from elementary school through higher education if a humanities approach to the teaching of art is to be realized.

Art educators at all levels need to put aside resistance to the idea of integrating, correlating art with other areas of the curriculum. Innerconnec- tions, linkages, interdisciplinary perspectives are the essence of a humanities approach. Heretical as it may seem, one needs to ask whether the ideas of a values-free child-centered curriculum have been carried too far at the expense of subject matter. Has American schooling, art education included, become therapeutic rather than educational? Have the very important ideas of Bruner and Piaget been applied with such indiscriminate vengeance as to have simplified the complexities of knowledge into, as Hirsch suggests, a series of empty, substanceless experiences? Elementary and secondary art teachers need to abandon the projects-driven approach to instruction that defines art in general education as a smorgasbord of "expo- sure" to or "experiences" with a wide range of media and techniques. While some reformers in art education decry the traditional emphasis on teaching the processes involved in making art, they merely want to substitute for it another type of process - "higher order/critical thinking." The primary focus of art in general education should be information, subject matter content, with attention to the ways in which such information can be analyzed, inter- preted, and synthesized in understanding and valuing our own and other cultures, both past and present. Elemen-

tary art teachers should not abdicate their responsibility for teaching artistic heritage and response to art, as all too many now do, to volunteer "picture ladies." They should earmark more of their art budget for resources to teach artistic heritage and less to consumable supplies. At the secondary level, the prevailing studio basis of art instruction, particularly in the Art I, introductory courses, needs to be abandoned in favor of a model analogous to the way science courses are structured; that is, with several periods a week of lecture/ discussion in addition to a laboratory- studio period in which students gain experience with media and techniques that grow out of and deepen their understanding of artists and works of art they are studying, not with an eye to their potential as vocational or avoca- tional artists, but to sharpen their ability to make informed observations and judgment of the history, philosophy, and criticism of art based on a substantial body of information obtained through reading, direct instruction, AV materials and guided individual research projects. High school art programs should, of course, include studio electives in a number of areas. One would also, of course, hope that electives in watercolor, printmak- ing, ceramics, etc. would include some time devoted to studying the history and criticism of these specific media.

School districts must scrutinize more carefully those courses they approve for salary increments, promo- tion, and faculty retention by insisting that the majority be subject matter courses in art and humanities, not education courses. School districts also need to reexamine their inservice policy to limit the number of workshops and programs merely designed to improve teaching skills and classroom management and to increase those with content from the humanities, including the philosophy, history, and criticism of art.

Museums must resist becoming mere extensions of the art classroom or simply resource centers for the teaching of the elements and principles of art.

Building on their tradition of humanities education, art museum educators should take a leading role in working with the schools in the development of interdisciplinary approaches to art. Art museums need to give more attention to thematic and contextual approaches in their development of exhibitions, and should provide visitors with didactic materials that go beyond mere stylistic, iconographic, and biographical information.

Colleges and universities need to take a more eclectic approach to the education of art teachers. Their preparation should include a more coherent body of course work in the humanities, including courses in the interpretation and criticism of literature, music history, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and social and intellectual history which will provide not only the context for the visual arts but the methodological models by which response to art can be explored, particularly at the high school level, with the complexity necessary for ferreting-out the varying levels of meaning found in art. The aesthetic theories and art history of non- Western peoples should be included in all preservice programs that prepare art teachers. Although art teachers should have substantially more course work in art history, particularly upper division courses, there is also a need for reform- ing the way in which the history of art is taught at universities, particularly the way in which survey art history courses are taught. The endless process of viewing slides in darkened rooms and taking slide identification tests needs to be punctuated with discussion sessions in which small groups of students discuss primary written sources, scholarly articles, monographs, and work together examining and solving problems related to reproductions. Of course students should visit museums and work with original works of art whenever possible. Rather than a smattering of studio courses, most of which are at the introductory level, programs for art education majors should include a basic core of design, drawing, and color theory courses and




the opportunity to elect an area of studio concentration in which they would develop expertise in a particular medium. Art education methods courses should be restructured, abandoning a media-based, projects-organization that characterizes all too many preservice training programs, and which then is perpetuated in the public schools by graduates who model their programs on the way they have been taught, thereby isolating art from the rest of the school curriculum. Methods courses should instead address the variety of appropriate instructional strategies and resources to be used in teaching art within the framework of the concepts and content of the humanities as found in the public school curriculum. Finally, university art education departments need to recruit staff members who, in addition to training in education and/or art education, have advanced degrees either in the humanities, art history, or interdisciplinary arts rather than, as is the usual practice, limiting their faculty to individuals holding degrees in art education with a studio emphasis.

A humanities approach to art in general education is in keeping with recent calls for educational reform. A humanities philosophy serves the needs of art in general education better than any of the existing models, including DBAE. Such a philosophy, while not negating the value of specialized studio art courses for those wishing to pursue the making of art either vocationally or avocationally, would help to end the isolation and insecurity of art in the public schools by linking it with those traditional "basics" with which it shares a common humanistic content. And a humanities approach to art would provide for that interconnectedness so obviously missing in much of present- day American education. D

Terry Zeller is an Associate Professor in the School of Art at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb.

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86, Washington, D.C.: Author, p.3. 2 Jones, H. M. (1959), One great society:

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3 Cheney, L. V. (1988, September 21). Hu- manities in America, The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 17, 20, 23; U. S. Department of Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, D. C.: Author, pp. 25-26.

4 To reclaim a legacy: Text of report on humanities in education. (1984, November 28). The Chronicle of Higher Education. p. 17.

5 Have our kids lost their past? (1987, September 7 ), Newsweek, p. 60.

6 Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1987) Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know, New York: Random House, pp. 7, 10, 18-21, 110-112, 131- 131.

7 National Endowment for the Arts. (1988, August). Toward civilization: A report on art education, NAEA News, pp. 6-7.

8 Text of new report on excellence in undergraduate education. (1984, October 24). The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. 43; To Reclaim a Legacy: Text of a report on humanities in education. (1984, November 28) The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 16-21.

9 Integrity in the College Curriculum. (1988, February 13). The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 12-16, 18-24, 26-30.

10 Prologue and major recommendations of Camegie foundation's report on colleges. (1986, November 6). The Chronicle of Higher Educa- tion, pp. 16-22; Reform of undergraduate education requires integration of professional and liberal-arts studies, report says. (1988, June 8) The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. All, A13.

Why teachers fail. (1984, September 24). Newsweek, pp. 64-70; A call for change in teacher education. (1985, March 6). The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 13-14, 16-20; Report of education-school dean's report on reforms in teacher training. (1986, April 9). The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 27-37; A nation prepared; Teachers for the 21st century (1986, May 21). The Chronicle of Higher Education pp. 43-54.

12 Toward civilization (1988, October) NAEA News, p.4.

13 Lowenfeld, V. (1947). Creative and mental growth. New York: Macmillan Co., pp. 63, 167; Michael, J.A. (Ed.). (1982). The Lowenfeld lectures. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, pp. xix, 2-3.

14 Cole, N. R. (1940). The arts in the classroom New York: John Day Co., pp. 8-9, 98.

15 Munro, T (1956). Art education: Its philosophy and psychology. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., pp. 254-255; Munro, T. (1960). The Marxist theory of art history Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1960 18(4), pp. 430-445.

16 Smith, R. A. (1986). Excellence in art education: Ideals and initiatives. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association, pp. 50-51,

34; Smith, R.A. (1968). Aesthetic criticism; The method of aesthetic education. Studies in Art Education, 9 (3), pp. 12-31.

17 Greer, D. W. (1984). Discipline-based art education: Approaching art as a subject of study, Studies in Art Education, 25(4), pp. 212, 214- 215; Getty Center for Education in the Arts. (1985), Beyond creating; The place for art in America's school, Los Angeles: Author, p. 16; Eisner, E. W. (n. d.). The role of discipline- based art education in America's schools. Los Angeles: Getty Center for Education in the Arts, p. 20; Ewens, T. (1988). Flawed understandings: On Getty, Eisner and DBAE. In J. Burton, A. Lederman, & P. London (Eds.), The case for multiple visions of art education. University Council on Art Education, pp. 16-20; Clark, G. A., Day, M. D., & Greer, D. W. (1987). Discipline-based art education: Becoming students of art, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 21 (2), pp. 156-157.

18 The following titles suggest the range of material available within the literature on non- Westem aesthetics: Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1934). The transformation of nature in art. New York: Dover, Otten, C. M. (Ed.), (1971). Anthropology and art: Readings in cross-cultural aesthetics. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press; Thompson, R. F. (1983). Flash of the spirit African and Afro-American art and philosophy. New York: Random House; Maquet, J. (1986). The aesthetic experience: An anthropologist looks at the visual arts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Vogel, S. M (1986). African aesthetics. New York: Center for African Art; Wade, E. L. (Ed.). (1986). The arts of the North American Indian: Native traditions in evolution. New York: Hudson Hills Press.

19 Representative of the literature of contextual art history are the following books. Baxandall, M. (1974). Painting and experience in fifteenth-century Italy: A primer in the social history of pictorial style. Oxford: Oxford University press; Baxandall, M. (1985). Patterns of intention: On the historical explanation of pictures, New Haven CT: Yale University Press; Clark, T. J. (1973). The absolute bourgeois: Artists and politics in France, 1848-1851. London: Thames and Hudson; Clark, T. J. (1984). The painting of modern life. New York: Alfred Knopf; Crow, T (1985). Painters and public life in eighteenth century Paris. New Haven, CT: Yale Unversity Press; Alpers, S. (1983). The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century: Chicageo: University of Chicago Press; Parker R, & Pollock, G. (1981) Old mistresses: Women art, and ideolgy, New York: Pantheon.

20 Glueck, G. (1987, December 20). Clashing views reshape art history. New York Times, pp. A & E 1,22-23.

21 1990 annual meeting announcement of program chairs and call for season proposals. (1988), CAA newsletter, 13(2), pp. 4-5.

22 Guide to the Musee D'Orsay, (1987). Paris: Ministry of Culture and Communication, pp. 5, 24.




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