Agency Urges More Arts Education in All Grades

All pupils from kindergarten through the 12th grade should receive basic sequential arts education in order to “gain a sense of what civilization is, and how, as adults, they can contribute to it,” a two-year federal study released Tuesday says.

Warning that the nation’s “cultural literacy” was at stake, the study, conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, said that arts education can help elementary and secondary school students “reach out beyond prime time and understand the unchanging elements in the human condition. It can teach them to see and hear as well as read and write.”

Endowment Chairman Frank Hodsoll, speaking at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday, said: “Arts education to these ends does not exist in the United States today. Like other school subjects, the arts must be taught sequentially and to all students, not just the especially talented. Do we teach math only to those students who are good at it?”

Basic arts education is needed “to understand civilization” and “to develop creativity and problem-solving skills,” Hodsoll said. He said it is necessary “to learn the tools of verbal and nonverbal communication, particularly in an age where images on television are a principal means for communicating, and to develop the capacity for making wise choices among the products of the arts.”

Hodsoll said the study’s findings were not entirely pessimistic.

“This is not a bleak report--this is a positive report. But there are miles to go.”

School resources devoted to the arts have been rising, “in terms of both time and dollars,” he said, but “there is a major gap between the stated commitment and resources for arts education and what is actually happening.”

According to the study, “resources are being provided, but they are not being used to give opportunities for all or even most students to become culturally literate. The arts in general are not being taught sequentially. Students of the arts are not being evaluated. Many arts teachers are not prepared to teach history and critical analysis of the arts.”

The study said that arts education has generally been limited to instruction in music, drawing, painting and crafts, but “has always had a place, even if a minor one, in America’s schools. And the current move for educational reform has to a certain extent embraced the arts as well as the sciences and humanities.”

The report said that 29 states, including California, have high-school graduation requirements that in some way involve the arts--27 of them enacted since 1980. Forty-two states require school districts to offer arts instruction in elementary, middle or secondary school.

At the school district level, an increasing number of districts also require units in the arts for high-school graduation, the study said. In addition, 50% of school districts report that the percentage of their budgets allocated to arts education grew between 1982 and 1987, the study said.

Hodsoll said: “While 15% of the elementary school day is devoted to the arts, it is likely taught by general classroom teachers who lack relevant training in the arts.”

Further, he said, “although 17% of the junior high/middle school day is occupied by the arts, it is likely focused on creation and performance, with no attempt to impart historical or aesthetic context--it is almost entirely confined to visual art and music, with very little dance or drama and no attention to the design or media arts.”

Also, he said, arts classes in high school are “mostly options for the gifted and talented” or for students pursuing an academic track to college.

“There are no readily available textbooks and related teaching materials in the arts, except for music,” he said. “Specialist art and music teachers generally are not trained in art history and aesthetic theory.”

The study said that “the vast majority of today’s adults say they had no real education in the arts when they were in school.”

“Then as now,” the report continued, “resources for arts education were used primarily to produce performances and exhibitions by talented and interested students for the enjoyment of parents and the community. They are not being used to help young people move toward civilization. This is a tragedy, for the individual and the nation.”

Hodsoll said he realized that, with the United States “facing broad scientific and technological challenges,” some might question the need for arts education. But, he said, “the arts and humanities contribute to our ability to compete by giving us a sense of the human condition and of national identity.”

“The Japanese understand this, and have included the arts as a basic and sequential part of their children’s education,” he added. “Study of the arts also helps us to be masters, not servants of technology.”

The study also recommended that:

--State education agencies and school districts should identify, and achieve consensus on, the “minimum knowledge and skills in the arts needed to satisfy high school graduation requirements.”

--Elementary schools should consider providing arts instruction, exclusive of English studies, for approximately 15% of the school week.

--Junior high and middle schools should require all students to take arts instruction, exclusive of English studies, for at least 15% of the school year. The curriculum should specifically require study of the design and media arts, and teachers should be trained to teach these subjects.

--High schools should require all students to complete two full years of arts study, either in arts courses or as a part of other courses, in order to graduate.

--Each school district should begin a comprehensive testing program to assess student achievement in the arts.

--State certifying agencies should strengthen arts certification requirements for all teachers whose responsibilities include the arts, particularly general classroom teachers in elementary schools.

--The education of all teachers should “include the study of important works of art.”

--More sustained research on the teaching of the arts should be undertaken.

--Increased and improved educational materials on the teaching of the arts should be made available.

Hodsoll said implementing these recommendations “will take as much energy, skill, patience and foresight as creating art itself,” requiring the collaboration of educators, administrators, public officials and parents. He pledged that the endowment would continue strengthening its efforts in that direction.

“As we move in the weeks, months, years and even decades ahead, toward making the arts as basic in our schools as the three Rs . . . we will be counting on the voices of the American people to join us in one loud chorus for arts education,” he said.