|
Kate
Levin, Commisioner
of Cultural Affairs NYC |
Quantifying Creativity: A Recent Symposium Addresses
The Importance Of Arts Education
By Gillian Granoff
Recently, Arts Connection,
a non profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting
the cultivation of arts in the school system, launched a
two day conference entitled Beyond
Arts Integration: Defining Learning in Arts Education at
New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education.
The conference brought together over 250 teaching artists,
educators, specialists and researchers and policy makers to
discuss the challenge of integrating the arts into the mainstream
education curriculum. Included in this group of elite educators
were Carmen Farina, Deputy Chancellor for the New York City
Department of Education, Rob Horowitz, Teachers College, Steven
Tennen, Executive Director of Arts Connection, representatives
from the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, and members
of the Dana Foundation, a major funder of Arts Connection.
Dr. Steve Seidel, the director of Project Zero and Arts In
the Education program at Harvard University delivered the keynote
address entitled “To Get to the Other Side:” Curricular
Integration, Dangerous Ignorance and the Drama of Learning.
Seidel defined the “other side” as “the knowledge,
skills and understanding that we need in order to create a
world and live lives that we consider decent and morally acceptable.” Seidel
expressed concern for the dangerous ignorance pervasive in
society and the important role that the arts play in overcoming
ignorance by helping us “to look at things that we’d
rather ignore and to facilitate conversations of these difficult
issues.” Seidel credits the arts in helping students
to understand concepts such as “human rights, languages,
globalization, and other abstract concepts such as density
which requires students to grapple with non linear thinking
and complex causality.” Bringing a sense of artistry
to our teaching and our expectations of our students is a powerful
element of integrating the arts with teaching. Seidel cautions
that effective teaching requires the integration of multiple
disciplines and studying subjects from various perspectives.
The arts contribute to understanding how to learn in two ways.
The first is artistry: the “practice of one’s work
with great care, the highest level of technique, attention
to detail, a sense of pride in craft, and a strong aesthetic
sensibility.” The second is “artistic processes.” Seidel
defined six artistic processes that helped to cultivate learning: Improvisation,
Composition, Interpretation, Practice, Performance and Critique.
Seidel’s
comments were met with rousing applause and set the tone
for the panel discussions concerning the challenges of documenting
the role of the arts in education.
Attendees
discussed the challenge of quantifying the beneficial impact
of the arts on student performance in today’s “accountability focused” environment.
Panel participants such as Warren Symons, the Executive Director
of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University,
addressed how the “No Child Left Behind” act
has excluded the benefits of arts education for children
at risk by narrowing the definition of an effective curriculum.
“The pressure to quantify
intelligence and the emphasis on test taking as the most
significant measure of performance and learning, excludes
many of the value and perceptual and social benefits the
arts provides to students in urban areas,” stated Dr.
Rob Horowitz. “The Arts is the glue that brings children
together. In urban schools with many different languages
and English as a second language, arts experience develops
social skills of working together.”
Carol
Morgan, Director of Arts Connections, was pleased with the
incredible turnout. “I
think the symposium was a great success. We were talking
with a national audience. My hope for the symposium was that
it would begin to pose some questions that are being obscured
in the current environment by really examining the role of
the arts in the education of children. Our purpose in doing
this was to help people to think about what they do in a
new or different way.”
The
symposium concluded with the resolution that more tools need
to be developed to document the arts learning process, and
the need to develop a more compelling language through which
Arts education advocates can build their case. Jon Katzman,
and the Board of Directors of Arts Connection addressed the
crucial question of how to “measure curiosity and imagination.”
Despite
the obvious challenge arts educators face in today’s
political climate, educators and participants remained optimistic
and confident about the invaluable role the arts can play
in helping children confront the obvious challenges they
will face in the future.#
