National Art Education Association

Half a Case for Environmental Studies in SchoolsAuthor(s): John BailySource: Art Education, Vol. 22, No. 6 (Jun., 1969), pp. 10-11Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191272 .

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BY JOHN BAILY. One of the reasons we are accustomed to giving for the inclusion of art activities in school programs is that art forms a central part of the visual education of children. I suppose by "visual education" we mean increasing the ability to register and interpret the things we see for more than their literal meaning. We hope through sensibilities gained by art experiences, one will become more aware of the qualities of things. We have thought that by handling colour, one becomes more sensitive to the qualities of colour generally; by handling textures, then textures also.

While it seems reasonable that this may happen, to prove that it happens is not so easy, and a good deal of wishful thinking has gone into the program that presumed it to be so. My experience of art teaching leads me to suggest that it is far less effective in this regard than we have often supposed it to be.

I am suggesting that the experience of handling paints and paper, paste, and

brushes, the carving, modeling, constructing, etc., that go for art education seldom assist children to be more conscious of the qualities of the environment in which they live-that is, unless their attention is specifically drawn to it.

I think I am referring to art education as I have seen it in practice, both in Australia and in the United States. Predominately this is art education which engenders a high degree of creativity with the materials of the art room. It certainly fosters a fair degree of sensitivity to the aesthetic ingredients of art-in the art room. But how far either individual creativity or sensitivity pass into any other of life's situations is still a matter for any amount of investigation.

I have no doubt that there are experiences which can be planned which will, indeed, help children to become aware of their visual environment, but I am not at all sure that art education is not moving away from that kind of experience. I have a feeling that art education lately has been looking more and more to the piece of paper in the room than to the view out of the window.

I remember some high spots in my own art education when I did indeed begin to become aware of the visual environment. There was a time when the man-made forms of water towers, bridges, and viaducts, especially those that had special qualities of form, took a great deal of my attention as potential subjects for paintings. At the same time the rubbish dump, dead trees, and rocky landscapes held fascination simply because they also had forms which I had learned to enjoy.

Far from seeing the rubbish dump as an eyesore, a civic blot, we sought the "good" dump along with the derelict house or the old graveyard. With my closest friends, I thought this new enjoyment of the visual world to be an enormously important advance, and it continued to develop. We began to see brushstrokes in the sky, in the bark of trees; we admired stones on the beach, pieces of driftwood, dead birds, seedpods, and so on. We began to observe these things as a direct result of certain aspects of our art education, but our attention had been brought right to them. It was not as a result of doing something else that some magic transference took place.

I am suggesting that at that time we

were more generally concerned with the visual environment than students are today. We had not, however, given a thought to the sociological implications of what we saw. I am also suggesting that trends in art generally have affected trends in art education. As a student I was concerned with the art of the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists, and the Fauves. We painted subjects, and we looked at the subjects we painted. Many kinds of abstract painting have enabled us to see qualities of vision uncomplicated by their associations with real things, but they have brought our gaze away from the window and onto the desk. Now another kind of imagery in art is taking us out again-but not to the natural world. I refer to the world of man's own making-and, for the most part, the tawdry details of it. Pop imagery has brought us quickly to find the ingredients of art in a town poster, a lavatory bowl, neon signs, fire hydrants, etc. I guess the experience is not so far removed from my earlier exercises with the rubbish dump. There are social sides to the pop artist's work, but his comment is essentially ironic and cynical; it has another kind of value. The artist can help us to identify qualities which are new to most of us; then we perceive and may continue to perceive them. The history of art since the Renaissance has been a gradual overall expansion of our perceptions of qualities in art. Sometimes, perhaps, it has not been so gradual, and sometimes, I fear, there has been contraction rather than expansion.

The problem of educating young people to be visually alive to their environment would seem to be almost outside of art education at all, or at least incidental to it. Art education, if it is history-oriented, may help little. If art education is creativity-oriented, it will not follow necessarily that children will have concern for their visual environment. Where emphasis is to be given does, in fact, depend largely upon the sensibility and philosophy of the individual teacher. It may be argued that any good art education would sufficiently widen the vision to involve a critical view of the visible world. But there is a great deal of choice for the art teacher with so much at his disposal now. His year's program may take one of any number of directions and provide excellent experiences. One direction it can take involves a critical observation

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of nature and man's handling of nature in developing his communities. It is possible that we have neglected some of our responsibilities in this matter. I have already hinted that this study may even be outside of the special concerns of art education, but I believe that there is a very good case for the introduction of environmental studies in our schools.

During an extensive tour of school systems in the United States, I gathered a great many publications-courses of study, teachers' handbooks, etc. Very few of these make any reference to the visual environment beyond the home or the school. From the Pasadena Board of Education Publications, "Art in Our Schools," under Philosophy, Item 8, is the following: "The Art Programmes enrich the environment through the use of colour, textures, and materials." I believe this is a fond hope, but little more.

I believe that the notion implied by "environmental studies" has been neglected far too long. It is almost too late to save our communities from the depredations of progress. In Australia, as in the United States, oil refineries are permitted to drive people away from their beaches; natural bushland is razed for building lots; high tension electric wires are draped across our hills; and plans are afoot to emulate in our road systems the worst features of the worst cities in the United States. Human values take second place to the automobile. But what are cities for if they are not for people? How can our planners, designers, and engineers be so insensitive to people's needs? I believe the situation is almost out of hand, but I think an answer lies in the education of the young who may, in time, reject the values that are being handed down to them as placidly as we are doing now.

I left the United States bursting with admiration for the national and state parks systems throughout the country and the sensible and sensitive way they are administered. But sometimes I wonder if this whole system is not an easy salvation for the consciences of people who have created deserts to live in, from what was great natural country. I wonder what our communities would be like had all the effort put into national parks gone into making national parks of our residential areas. We have organized the natural environments out of our daily lives, and now spend huge sums of money just to get back to nature for a while. "Getting

away from it all" means more than just getting away from the rat race, the smog, and the noise. It also means getting away from the visually offensive environment to one which is visually relaxing.

I believe that the young should be helped to become more aware of their home, school, community, city, and national environments; and I repeat that this should be consciously developed. But it is as much a sociological study as it is an art study because the factors which determine the visible forms in the environment are not merely colours and textures, etc., but forms associated with the provision of services, engineering problems, and architectural structures, often together with the totally unnecessary forms that go with selling things.

To examine the visual environment requires a thorough study of the total environment so that the visual parts will have meaning within a proper context. There is nothing especially new about what I am suggesting. I have seen some amazingly successful experiments in Australia, and I hear of others in the United States, but their incidence is so slight as not to reflect a movement.

As a professional group, architects have, perhaps, more conscience about environmental planning than most others who influence the shapes of our towns and cities. They raise largely ineffectual voices against the aesthetically numb politicians and businessmen who run these towns and cities.

In Australia and the United States, positions of authority are being increasingly taken by people with better academic backgrounds-a generally healthy development. But in our schools it is now so much easier than it ever was for the academically talented students to enjoy aesthetic experiences. If, indeed, aesthetic experience promotes a kind of sensitivity which can apply to the perception of quality in the wide environment, then the student groups from whom the leaders of our communities will come are not even starters. Even when courses promoting aesthetic experiences are available, those students confident of a professional career are usually counselled into the more academic high school courses. Our future politicians, planners, and engineers

will be as aesthetically sterile as our present ones unless aesthetic studies are made more widely available to students.

I visualize a time when high schools will include Environmental Studies in their core programs, when students will examine architectural determiners of forms, town and city planning, park and garden design, services, and human needs for comfort, enjoyment, and efficiency. I have no doubt that programs can be devised by which students will be guided to both identify environmental problems and seek creative answers. I have heard of high school design classes which gave city authorities a lesson and of high school students who created designs for street furniture that were adopted by the city. These young people as adult citizens may not be misled any longer by the aesthetically second rate.

I believe I have presented a part of a case for Environmental Studies in schools. Research in controlled situations may establish the validity of what I have written.

John Baily is the director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, in Adelaide, Australia.

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