editorial: when ‘more’ means ‘less’

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Editorial: m en ‘more’ means ‘less’ This issue went to press during the statutory consultation peri- od following the publication of the National Curriculum Council’s Draft Orders for Art. The outcome of this consulta- tion, and whether NCC recommendations were further modi- fied before being enshrined in legislation, will be known by the time this Editorial is read. Rehearsal of these developments is therefore in one sense superfluous. However, there are matters of principle which deserve to be aired: it is necessary to record aspects of the debate preceding legislation because the legisla- tion itself will affect educational provisions for the foreseeable future [l]. It will, for example, be important to know whether the curriculum that is eventually implemented was the result of accepting or rejecting the advice made available to the Secretaries of State in the form of the National Curriculum Art Working Group’s report Art for Ages 5 to 14. Now many people expected that what the NCC would initi- ate at the Draft Orders stage would be some sort of compro- mise between the Working Group’s recommendation-that there should be three Attainment Targets for Art-and the Council’s well-known preconceived preference for two. What has emerged is indeed a proposal that there be two, and this has been presented as compromise, but it is in fact little short of outright rejection of the Working Group’s expert rationale. The Working Group defended the principle of a non-hierar- chical relationship of three distinct, but mutually-informing, elements: ‘Understanding’ (AT 1); ‘Making’ (AT2); and ‘Investigating’ (AT3). A persuasive case was argued for regarding each of these categories as embracing unique disci- plines, each contributing essentially to the Group’s realistic ambitions for creative achievement in primary and most of secondary education. Being quite distinct, the three ATs could be taught as isolable components of the curriculum; being complementary, they could be assessed holistically and promote a tangible appreciation of the ‘added value’ pupils were able to realise in the course of bringing them into conjunction. There was thus a strong sense of a real disciplinary foundation having been defined for Art-promoting the systematic design of curricula, the logical structuring of assessment and evaluation, the defin- ing of teachers’ previously-tacit judgments on standards of achievement, a ‘knowledge map’ comprehensible to pupils, parents and teachers of other subjects, and the definition of contributions that Art is capable of making to other areas of the curriculum, such as Technology. However, the Chairman of the National Curriculum Council rejected this rationale in favour of a model featuring two hybrid ATs: ‘Making and Investigating’ (AT1); and 135 Journal of Art &Design Education Vol 11, No 2, 1992

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Editorial: m e n ‘more’ means ‘less’

This issue went to press during the statutory consultation peri- od following the publication of the National Curriculum Council’s Draft Orders for Art. The outcome of this consulta- tion, and whether NCC recommendations were further modi- fied before being enshrined in legislation, will be known by the time this Editorial is read. Rehearsal of these developments is therefore in one sense superfluous. However, there are matters of principle which deserve to be aired: it is necessary to record aspects of the debate preceding legislation because the legisla- tion itself will affect educational provisions for the foreseeable future [l]. It will, for example, be important to know whether the curriculum that is eventually implemented was the result of accepting or rejecting the advice made available to the Secretaries of State in the form of the National Curriculum Art Working Group’s report Art for Ages 5 to 14.

Now many people expected that what the NCC would initi- ate at the Draft Orders stage would be some sort of compro- mise between the Working Group’s recommendation-that there should be three Attainment Targets for Art-and the Council’s well-known preconceived preference for two. What has emerged is indeed a proposal that there be two, and this has been presented as compromise, but it is in fact little short of outright rejection of the Working Group’s expert rationale. The Working Group defended the principle of a non-hierar- chical relationship of three distinct, but mutually-informing, elements: ‘Understanding’ (AT 1); ‘Making’ (AT2); and ‘Investigating’ (AT3). A persuasive case was argued for regarding each of these categories as embracing unique disci- plines, each contributing essentially to the Group’s realistic ambitions for creative achievement in primary and most of secondary education.

Being quite distinct, the three ATs could be taught as isolable components of the curriculum; being complementary, they could be assessed holistically and promote a tangible appreciation of the ‘added value’ pupils were able to realise in the course of bringing them into conjunction. There was thus a strong sense of a real disciplinary foundation having been defined for Art-promoting the systematic design of curricula, the logical structuring of assessment and evaluation, the defin- ing of teachers’ previously-tacit judgments on standards of achievement, a ‘knowledge map’ comprehensible to pupils, parents and teachers of other subjects, and the definition of contributions that Art is capable of making to other areas of the curriculum, such as Technology.

However, the Chairman of the National Curriculum Council rejected this rationale in favour of a model featuring two hybrid ATs: ‘Making and Investigating’ (AT1); and

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Journal of Art &Design Education

Vol 11, No 2, 1992

Editorial ‘Knowledge and Understanding’ (AT2). There are several dif- ficulties inherent in this conception. The first is that it lacks the discrete clarities of the Working Group’s proposal. ‘Making’ and ‘Investigating’ having been arbitrarily combined, there is a danger that the synthesising of creative experience- so vital in pupils’ responses to curricula and one of the prime factors in assessing the quality of engagement-will be pre- empted in the delivery of the curriculum by means of teaching that will have been packaged to ensure that an acceptable mix- ture of making and investigating takes place. As it is the syn- thesising of these two very different activities that results in individual originality, the transfer of responsibilities for synthe- sis from the pupil to the curriculum designer is a recipe for conventionalisation and standardisation.

The apparent compromise in the Draft Orders was couched as a reasonable attempt to balance and simplify. Hence the two ATs were presented as natural counterparts-‘Making and Investigating’ complemented by ‘Knowledge and Under- standing’. In art one investigates in order to understand, one makes in order to know. This simplistic model of educational ‘causes and effects’ is both neglectful of pupils’ abilities to syn- thesise (and thus produce creative results of tangible ‘added value’) and disregards the essentially non-linear characteristics of creative activity. The Working Group’s model had the virtue of making the multidirectional interaction of ‘Understanding’, ‘Making’ and ‘Investigating’ clear.

Additionally, an extra corpus of knowledge was proposed in the Draft Orders, consisting in the History of (dominantly) post-Renaissance Western Art. Setting aside the obvious cul- tural bias here, one must of course admit that the History of Art constitutes important knowledge that all citizens should possess. However, there is no consensus outside the NCC that this knowledge should be the prime outcome of practical cre- ativity, and the reverse of this-that art historical knowledge may inform creative practice-is tenable only when the history in question is relevant to the unique circumstances of the cre- ative programme itself.

This part of the Draft Orders proposals was in the nature of a conjuring trick. It suggested an omission on the part of the Working Group, rectified by the NCC insistence on additional curricular content. But specifying a narrow range of historical content has reduced substantially teachers’ abilities to identify and work with historical and critical matters bearing specific relation to their pupils’ original creativity. The ‘enlarged’ cur- ricular field reduces the scope of art education. More is less.

The arbitrariness of the NCC Chairman’s selection of his- torical phenomena, the marginalisation of some cultures, and the fact that the recent history of art would be taught unsup- ported by sociopolitical and other knowledge embedded in mainstream History (the National Curriculum prohibits pupils from engaging the history of their own lifetimes), all emphati-

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Editorial cally suggest that the ‘Knowledge’ half of AT2 is not being proposed in order to facilitate forms of creativity specific to contemporary, eclectic experience. In other words, History of Art-and a quite specific conception of the History of Art-is to be regarded as a strategic outcome in its own right. Whether this is a valid educational objective is not at issue (though if the Draft Orders have survived intact into legisla- tion it may well be debated for years to come): the point is that it was far removed from the Art Working Group’s recom- mendations. In this light the NCC Chairman’s reasonable compromise is in fact an out-of-hand rejection.

Events are moving too quickly for the contents of this issue to have been selected expressly in order to criticise the Draft Orders, but if the suspicion that the Draft Orders are misin- formed is reasonable then any representative collection of papers in the field of art and design education ought to be use- ful in calling them into question. One contribution here cer- tainly does question the proposal of an essentially monocultural view of the subject. Amrik Varkalis, last year’s BeroVNSEAD Bursary recipient, offers convincing argument in favour of encouraging black and bilingual pupils to approach creative achievement through the intermedium of cultural values acquired in the home and community-values that are unlikely to feature Western conventions of close observation and topological recording.

This is an account of individual expectations of art educa- tion that have virtually no points of contact with models of achievement as presented in museums and galleries. Indeed, such models-for example, C 17th portraits, C 18th sporting prints, C 19th landscape watercolours-may merely confirm alienation. Alienation may occur either as between the individ- ual and the ‘host’ culture, or (if this culture is embraced) between the individual and his or her family and community. In either case there is dislocation. However, if black bilingual pupils are encouraged in the knowledge that their inherent creative cultures are valued, this may be developed in art and design, and principles of comparability established. Such bridging opportunities will be lost if in future such pupils’ knowledge must be measured chiefly against Western arche- types.

A standard defence for proposing a range of cultural arche- types is that it is necessary to take a clear view of whatever seems to represent the most respectable goals of achievement and that this is best achieved by drastic selection. All historical specimens exhibiting less than perfection are cleared from the field of analysis. The resulting models of excellence are there- fore isolated from their various contexts and linked within a rationale that emphasises their common themes and values: whatever it was that contributed to their original uniqueness is discounted.

Again, while not questioning the merits of such a classical

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Editorial view of art education, it is reasonable to ask why it should be considered to have exclusive legitimacy. Leslie Cunliffe pre- sents an alternative view to the effect that all forms of art may be understood only in terms of their own special symbolic codes-which are contextual-and that to attempt to engen- der an understanding of all art by means of selected examples will inevitably be self-defeating. He extends this argument beyond simply criticising a dependency on realism, arguing that any kind of art knowledge that ultimately requires the decontextualisation of works of art will be equally corrosive.

The scope of his criticism therefore includes expressionism because of its distracting association with a limited field of emotions and dramatic gestures. He offers an alternative model of art education in which schemata are associated with numerous layers of complementary information about tradi- tions, environments, and sociopolitical and other contexts, in order to construct an understanding of them that approxi- mates to the special circumstances of their origination. For Leslie Cunliffe all artmaking and aesthetic understanding are achieved by being able to read symbolic codes that embed art within its contexts. Thus he argues that a theory and a peda- gogy of symbols are necessary components of art education, but at the same time he deprecates reliance on exchsive theory and pedagogy, and it is therefore possible to perceive a consis- tency with the cultural objectives of Amrik Varkalis.

On the other hand, also published in this issue is a reasoned case for a reductionist approach to theory, and there might possibly be something here that supports the NCC Chairman’s action. Colin Brookes considers theories to be proactive in artmaking and in art education-that is, that they initiate forms of practice, and they thus inform and enhance curriculum design-but he maintains their educational poten- tial is substantially reduced because of their difficulty of access within often impenetrable texts. He therefore offers a digest of especially useful theories of art and of accounts of aesthetic explanation.

This may seem compatible with the identification of stan- dard aesthetic types, but it is not. What Colin Brookes propos- es, as a basic encapsulation of theory, is a collection of four categories-‘imitationalism’, ‘emotionalism’, ‘formalism’ and ‘functionalism’. The first two of these are the fields that Leslie Cunliffe concentrates upon, while the fourth emphasises the role of art that reflects upon applications. Even the third, ‘for- malism’, which may be compatible with the identification of an authorised taxonomy in the Draft Orders, is predicated on the fact that all characteristics of art and design, including original, imaginative, expressive and individually-sincere mani- festations of all conceivable types, have formalist ramifications that may be identified and criticised as form. This view is dam- aging for arguments about a preferred history of art, for it argues that excellence cannot be the preserve of a single idiom.

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It is damaging for an exclusivist approach to art education in general, for it supports the notion of a necessary eclecticism, and an opening of art education to as wide a variety of symbol systems and signification as possible.

Now Terry Genin would argue, as he does by curricular example in this issue, that this is where computers demon- strate their worth. His contribution celebrates possibilities inherent in the changes proposed by the Art Working Group, and a consequent potential for focusing upon visual communi- cation, the symbolic transmission of concepts, and the trans- formation of meaning through the manipulation of images and media. His concern is to teach art as visual literacy, consider- ing works of art, in common with other media constructs, as assemblies of symbolic information dedicated to the transfer of meaning from one individual to another, from an organiser to a receiver of visual data.

This requires visual imagery to be considered the result of technological, historical, geographic, social and a great variety of other cultural forces. Terry Genin offers a sample syllabus for teaching visual literacy, comprising a computer database and a taxonomy of images against which a set of interpretative and constructive skills may be rehearsed. Again there is super- ficial support for the idea of a selective range of exemplars, but the crucial difference here is an emphasis on understanding the contexts of imagery, its potential for carrying covert mean- ing, and the need for its intelligent decoding. In contrast, the Draft Orders propose a decontextualised history of images and forms of defined, largely uncontested, and therefore passively received, meaning.

In another, complementary, contribution on the possibilities inherent in computer applications, Jane Chia and Birnie Duthie discuss the benefits of encouraging children to be both organisers and receivers of their own visual data. Their pupils’ conventionally-produced images were scanned into computers so that they could be manipulated through an alternative tech- nology. As a result, their images changed substantially, but the special feature of computing that enables images to be dupli- cated-so that originals may be saved while copies are modi- fied experimentally-ensud that the pupils retained an absolute control. This in turn encouraged them to compare dispassionately their originals and modifications, and thus to begin to understand the nature of changing messages through media manipulation. Another important feature of this work was that it was undertaken by pupils in pairs, facilitating both cooperative learning and a critical dialogue during the process of creative production. Conducted in Singapore, this curricu- lar research underscores the belief expressed by our own Art Working Group that sophisticated critical analysis is within the scope of primary children.

So far, then, there is little in this issue to refute the idea that pupils-even very young children-may assume responsibility

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Editorial

Editorial for synthesising discrete types of knowledge in their own crea- tive programmes. The acid test would be whether a paper intentionally critical of the Working Group’s efforts, such as Harman Sumray’s contribution, would be supportive of the Draft Orders alternative, which places responsibility for syn- thesis before the point of curricular delivery.

Harman Sumray argues that though there have been numer- ous models of the art curriculum offered in the recent past, few have given attention to the need for disciplinary structures such as argued taxonomies. Underlying this neglect have been assumptions that art is not a linear subject, and that its com- ponents cannot be separated without destroying its very nature. However, while defending the holistic nature of art, and thus accepting that it is essentially non-linear, he main- tains that the teaching and learning of art must be linear if they are to be effective. It is therefore necessary to formulate a progressive development, in which principles need only be few but are to be revisited at increasing levels of complexity and sophistication.

He maintains, then, that although the discipline of art is not dependent on the acquisition of ordered facts, there is a par- ticular type of knowledge that is unique and essential to it. He believes that the Art Working Group should have given greater attention to defining this knowledge strategically, instead of presenting it-particularly in the non-statutory programmes of study-in tactical confusion. It seems to have been this confu- sion that ‘justified’ the NCC intervention, made in the guise of simplification. It remains to be seen whether critics of Art for Ages 5 to 14 will be happier with the NCC modifications, but there is no welcome in Harman Sumray’s critique for the prin- ciples the Draft Orders represent.

As it has already been noted, clearer water may have flowed beneath the bridge by the time this Editorial is read. In any event, in a forthcoming issue of this Journal John Steers will present an overview and an analysis of the complicated events leading from the Working Group’s appointment, via the vari- ous formal and informal consultation exercises, to the publica- tion of Orders in Council for Art. If a difficult and unworkable legacy has indeed resulted from two years of effort, at least it may be apparent where accountability resides.

DAVID THISTLEWOOD

Note 1 This discussion relates to the draughting of the National

Curriculum in Art for schools in England. Observations on the comparable exercises for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be welcome for publication in a future issue.

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Errata

Apologies are offered to James Hall whose paper in Vol 10 No 3 was marred by inaccurate references numbering (page 327) in the final stages of production. Notes 8, 9 and 10 (as print- ed) should all have been subsumed by Note 8. The rest of the sequence should therefore read as follows (corrections are in bold text): ll(9); 12(10); 13(11); 14(12); 15(13); 16(14); 17(15); 18(16); 19(17); 20(18); 21(19); 22(20); 23(21).

Editorial

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