Art Is a Starting Point for Any Good Education

School reform in the United States is starting to make sense to people who were once unable to connect the rhetoric with the schools and children in their community. Today’s talk makes sense because it is about education standards in our community’s school districts.

All of us understand instinctively that without some way of holding schools, teachers and children accountable for what happens in classrooms, there is no realistic way to improve teaching and learning. Parents and taxpayers have a right to have this question answered: What do we in Ventura County expect our children to know and be able to do?

Standards help answer that question. Most would agree that when a student finishes Algebra I, whether in Southern California or New York City, he or she should have acquired pretty much the same knowledge and skills. It makes sense, too, that a high school diploma means the same thing in Maine as it does in Montana. The real issue for both the kids and the country is assuring that educational results are reliable.

That common-sense appraisal has led to a process of developing standards in basic school subjects: English, mathematics, science, history, geography, civics, foreign language, economics and the arts. Standards for mathematics and English have already been published; standards in the arts are available; those for other subjects are also either available or in development. In each case, subject-area specialists are stating what students should know and be able to do when they complete the fourth, eighth and 12th grades.

Why do we need standards for the arts? For three reasons.

First, because a mere nodding acquaintance with the arts, or exposure as it is sometimes called, is not enough to sustain a child’s interest or involvement, and both are crucial to a basic education. If exposure to the arts constituted an arts education, the best educated people in the arts would be museum guards.

Second, arts standards ensure that each child’s search for discovery is a disciplined one that only the arts can provide.

Third, and just as important for practical Americans, the arts contribute directly to success in the workplace. Current or former chief executives of the caliber of Kenneth Derr (Chevron Corp.), Robert Allen (AT&T; Corp.), William LaMothe (Kellogg Co.), and Willard Butcher (Chase Manhattan Corp.) have all argued vigorously that America’s economic success depends on the competencies a solid arts education provides. Says LaMothe, “One of the most wasteful decisions any school could make would be to discard arts education as a frill.”

Problem-solving skills, creativity and the ability to work as part of a team, as well as other desirable characteristics such as self-esteem, self-discipline, time and resource management and evaluation skills are all taught directly by the arts. As Butcher has said, “The kind of individual I am interested in bringing to Chase Manhattan is one who can bring a creative outlook to the conference table.”

Contrary to what many might think, arts standards were not developed by any federal agency trying to impose yet another program on local schools; they are not some unfunded federal mandate, as has been charged. The standards have been put together by a national coalition of teacher organizations, drawn from four arts disciplines: dance, music, theater and visual arts. The process included parents, students, administrators, legislators, artists and classroom teachers. These are people who understand arts education because that’s what they do and what they care about.

These standards do not insist, either, on a vague set of outcomes that some people fear could lead to values parents might find inappropriate for their children, or that might lead to a loss of local control of education. The standards are strictly academic; they speak to knowledge and skills, not attitudes or beliefs.

Neither are federal funds tied to the standards, although some money is available to train teachers to help their students meet the guidelines. Adopting them at state and local levels will be, by law, strictly voluntary. That is their genius and their Achilles’ heel because implementing the standards in our community, as elsewhere, will depend entirely on the energy and tenacity of our own citizens. There remain many localities where the arts are viewed as an extra that we’ll get around to when we can afford it. The message of the standards for music and other arts is the opposite. It says: Here is where you must begin if you want a child educated to meet the demands of the 21st century.

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Implementing the standards in local schools will require resources: the hiring of qualified arts teachers at the elementary and junior high level, professional development for teachers, improved materials and curricula and new methods for assessing how well our children are performing.

The road to success will begin with people who understand that producing the child, citizen and worker our country needs means committing ourselves today to our schools--not only in the arts, but across the whole curriculum. That means getting behind the standards, not just because they make educational sense but because they make common sense for the kind of education we want for our children.