National Art Education Association

Aesthetic Education: The State of the Art

Author(s): Martin Engel
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Art Education, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Mar., 1975), pp. 15-20
Published by: National Art Education Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192056 .
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Martin Engel
(Withappreciation to
Junius Eddy of the
Rockefeller Foundation
who pulled much of this
informationtogether.)

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Without ceasing to be aesthetic, the

aesthetic experience must be shown
to be a vector in the cognitive, moral
and social aspects of life. Only then
can a case be made for the spending
of money and time to develop the
of large
aesthetic
competence
numbers of our people via the public
school system. (JAE, 1966)
Harry Broudy
Background
There is a quiet revolution going on
in education that is not making the
headlines. Articles are being written in
ever increasing quantities and quality;
organizations are conducting conferences, workshops, and seminars;
speeches are being given describing
the needs and demanding greater efforts; experiments are being conand results brought into
ducted
15

schools. Modest funding from private,

local, and federal sources is supporting
this growing interest. We refer to the
revolution which is expanding the artistic and aesthetic character and content of basic education.
Until recently, most Americans experienced art in their education as a
trivial and isolated activity. For example, the art teacher came once a week
to each class and devoted an inordinate amount of time to clean-up.
Music education was personified by
the lady with the pitchpipe, or
transmitted by the trombone in the
marching band. Drama has been little
more than the annual school play.
While those days of artistic drought are
not yet gone forever, there is a massive
movement afoot to encourage their
departure, to integrate the arts as a
total academic
from
experience
elementary to senior high school.
In 1973, the President called attention to the importance of the arts:
But renewed faith in ourselves also
arises from a deeper understanding
of who we are, where we have come
from, and where we are going-an
understanding to which the arts and
humanities can make a great contribution.
the schools
have
Intellectually,
regarded the arts as entertaining rather
than as fundamental to human understanding. We are now witness to
basic changes in this attitude. The arts
enjoyed a brief flowering in the schools
during the 1930's, when progressive
education
individual,
emphasized
behavior.
creative, and expressive
World War II and the Sputnik era
restored the narrow view of the
academic disciplines. The recent advocacy of an enhanced "quality of life"
for every American alluded only to
economic and material quality, not
aesthetic quality. During the 1960's,
however, the arts again began to catch
the attention of the education comin conjunction
with
munity,
and
developmental
psychology
humanization of education generally;
that is, with social and personal as well
as aesthetic growth. In other words,
education re-focused its sights upon
the development of the whole person,
not only his academic skills.
August Heckscher has been one of
the leaders of this aesthetic revolution.
During the early 1960's, he stated his
belief that the United States was
entering a period when in terms of
the genius and ability of individual
artists in all fields, and when in terms
of the excitement and enthusiasm of
the great public, we are witnessing a
kind of renaissance such as we have
not had before and which in the
decades to come may wellplace us in
the very forefront of the civilized
world ....
You cannot travel about
in this country today without finding
in every city there are plans afoot to
16
Art Education, March 1975

do something new with the life of that

place: to build a cultural center, to
create an opera group, to make of
that city a center for culture and the
arts .. .
It is this renaissance which, in the
characteristic time lag of the cultural
shift within the schools, is only now
beginning to permeate the education
community.
The Teaching of the Arts in the Schools
Until the last decade, the creative
and artistic efforts of most children
were encouraged and rewarded until
they reached a certain age, early in
their schooling, when it was time to
"get serious." The adult world then
began demanding preparation for job
and work, and an end to play and fun.
Home and school, which had enart and other creative
couraged
production, reversed their field. The
importance of the body was replaced
with the importance of the "mind" or
head. Henceforth, perhaps sometime
around the first or second grade, artistic and idiosyncratic expression
came to be regarded as detrimental to
the development of behaviors appropriate to adult life. From that time
on, in the educational life of every
youngster, the curriculum relegated
the arts to a peripheral role.
Nevertheless, it should come as no
surprise that the arts have been a part
of every school curriculum to some
degree for quite a long time. Nearly
every teachers' college has art and
music education
as a specialtyoffering to its trainees. Most public
schools have, if their budget allows it,
at least a part-time art and music
specialist on the staff. Representing
the art and music teachers respectively, the National Art Education Association and the Music Educators National
Conference enjoy a membership of
nearly 100,000 members. The theatre
education teachers are represented by
several organizations, among them the
American
Educational
Theatre
Association.
In other words, the arts are being
taught in the schools, and the profession has been organized forsometime.
About 98% of all junior high schools
and 90% of all senior high schools offer
some activity in the field of music, such
as a weekly class period, participation
in the orchestra, or instrument instruction. However, only 14% of all junior
and senior high schools require any
music for graduation, and only 6% to
9% require some visual art experience
for graduation. Thus, while the arts, in
one form or another, have indeed been
offered as educational experiences in
the schools, that experience until now
has simply not been taken seriously.
More importantly, this indicates that
while the visual arts and music are
available, only enough is available for a
small percent of the student popula-

tion. When the kids demand more art, it

will not be available. And student demand will reflect, if not exceed, the
changing demands of society. The arts
have been the sole "affective" component of the curriculum, and the affective domain has rarely been agreed
upon as an important responsibility of
the schools. But times are changing.
The direction of their change is the
topic of this document.
Education in the Arts and Aesthetic
Education
A basic terminology includes a
number of frequently used and confused terms and phrases which might
be summarized in the following way:
1. Art;the Arts: Includes the visual arts,
such as two-dimensional art (painting, graphics, etc.) and threedimensional
art (sculpture,
ceramics, etc.); architecture; music,
which includes performance, comand theory,
and
position,
musicology; dance; literature, i.e.
creative literature, such as fiction or
poetry; drama and theatre; and film,
still and motion.
2. Art Education: Has traditionally
referred to courses and educational
programs only in the visual arts, as
distinct from Music Education.
Emphasis has been upon "artsycraftsy" manipulation of materials;
that is, the technology of production, or "how-to," rather than upon
aesthetic or qualitative perception
and judgment of works of art.
3. Arts Education, or Education in the
Arts: Terms of recent vintage gaining currency among curriculum
developers and theorists. Attempts
to integrate the several art media
and espouses
interdisciplinary
classroom content. Therefore has
met with resistance
from the
in the various
specialist-teachers
media.
Much
stronger
basis for
theoretical/conceptual
curricula
than in the more
widespread art education programs,
still
centered
though
upon
traditional art media, rather than
upon aesthetic perception which
ranges far beyond the arts.
4. Aesthetic Education: A generic term
intended to incorporate all of the
arts as the most concentrated form
of aesthetic expression and perception within a single philosophical
system. Stress is upon the teaching
of the arts from an experiential basis
rather than a production oriented
method.
Harry Broudy is one of the prime
movers in the relatively new discipline
of aesthetic education. He defines this
discipline as well as suggesting several
avenues of approach:
Experiences with images that have
value import we shall call aesthetic
aesthetic educaexperiences....
tion ought to concentrate on helping

the pupil to perceive works of art, the

environment, nature, clothing, etc. in
the way that artists in the respective
media tend to perceive them ....

In

opting for perception as the proper

focus for aesthetic education, I am
rejecting-with certain qualifications-two others: one is the performance approach and the other is the
traditional course in appreciation of
music, art, literature, etc. (Enlightened Cherishing, pages 28,60)
One of the most pervasive problems,
apparent in this short list of terms, is
the isolation of the arts, one from the
other, as well as the arts from other disciplines. Also, the various representatives of the different arts are vying for
territorial dominance in the battle of
methodologies as well as content, all
within the educational setting. The
visual arts professionals have, until
very recently, ignored the music
educators, and vice-versa, or have
fought them over crumbs of the school
budget. The teachers of performance
and craftsmanship, who have insisted
upon the primacy of production as the
path to learning, have regarded with
contempt the theoreticians and
teachers who stress perceptual experience. The emergence of the concepts of arts education and aesthetic
education indicates that the several
arts are coming together, both conceptually and operationally, within coordinated educational programs and that
a balance is being struck among perand
formance,
appreciation,
knowledge.
The Federal Role
One of the earliest efforts to research
and develop the teaching of the arts in
the schools emerged in 1965 with the
establishment
of the Arts and
Humanities Program within the U.S.
Office of Education's Bureau of
Research. The government thereby
made an introductory commitment to
the importance of the arts in the
schools. The Arts and Humanities
Program supported over 200 projects,
spending about $10.6 million over a
period of six years. The influence of
this program was far more widespread
than the amount of money would
suggest. Support for research and
development in the arts provided a
legitimacy for art educators previously
available only to the sciences and
science education.
The second most influentialrole that
the federal government played in implementing a renewed interest in art
education was Titles I and III of the
1965 Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA). Funds were
channelled directly to the local school
systems for special programs for disadvantaged students. It has been
determined that nearly $150 million
were invested in art, music, and other
cultural activities in the firstthree years

alone. However, ratherthan systematic

educational efforts, these programs
consisted of isolated exposure to performances and one-time out-of-school
"cultural"trips. The 1970 evaluation of
Title I indicated that such random exposure had little lasting educational
value, and subsequently all arts activities were sharply reduced, thereby
eliminatingeven the few effective ones.
When Title III funded the arts on a
much more modest scale than Title I,
its impact was more significant. Under
this Title, a total of several thousand
projects have been funded, ranging
broadly across the educational spectrum. Between 1966 and 1970, nearly
400 of these projects, at a cost of nearly
$80 million were concerned directly or
indirectly with the arts. Because Title
III called for significant community
participation and forced linkages
between the schools and the resources
of the community, this brought school
children out into the cultural life of the
community and at the same time
brought the performing arts into the
schools on a regular basis.
Junius Eddyof the Rockefeller Foundation, and one of the leading
observers of the federal role in the arts,
said:
. . . the projects which were most apt

to achieve some kind of permanent

educational pay-off were those in
which the emphasis was on the
of processes,
development
activities
and
procedures,
materials-which would continue to
facilitate teaching and learning after
the project as such had ended.
Because they seem to have been
aimed more at changing the ways in
which the arts were regarded and
taught in the regular school program
ratherthan bringing in an occasional
artistic dividend to delight and
'enrich'a few children, these kinds of
projects represent, in my view, a wise
and more effective use of Title III
monies... (The Arts and General
Education:. Rockefeller Foundation
Paper; January, 1974)
The Two Endowments
By 1970, federal support for the arts
in the schools diminished. Other
priorities displaced the arts within the
constraints of shrinking budgets and
rising costs. This brief summary of the
federal role is by no means complete,
however. Some government watchers
believe that the U.S. Office of Education Arts and Humanities Programwas
established
only as an interim
program, anticipating the creation of
the National Endowment for the Arts
and the National Endowment for the
Humanities in 1965. The Arts and
Humanities Programwas placed within
the Bureau of Research because that
was the only unit in the U.S. Office of
Education that cut across all school

grades. Also, the Bureau of Research

was the only place where the authority
to spend discretionary funds was
available (under Title IV, Cooperative
Research Act).
As the two Endowments began to
stand on their own feet, funding for the
Arts and Humanities Program in
U.S.O.E. diminished and finally, in
1970, disappeared. The point of this is
that the two National Endowments,
free of any educational research and
development obligations, excluded
any systematic commitment to art
education in the schools. The Endowment for the Humanitiesstresses postsecondary curricula in its education
division, while the Endowment for the
Arts targets its resources on the performing arts, art practice outside of
the schools, and support for artists
who "visit" and work in the schools
for limited periods of time.
With certain exceptions, the federal
commitment to arteducation has fallen
between two chairs. The Office of
Education came to assume that the arts
were now the business of the Endowments, while the Endowments
were reluctant to infringe upon the
educational territory which properly
belonged to the Office of Education.
In 1969, $100 thousand was
transferred from the budget of the
U.S.O.E. Bureau of Research to the
National Endowment for the Arts, with
a Iike amount to the Endowmentfor the
Humanities. In 1970, that was increased to $900 thousand per endowment. The purpose was to have those
funds more effectively invested in
school-based arts and humanities activities. In 1972, the transferredamount
was increased to over $1 millionperendovwment.The Arts Endowmentput the
funds into a program called "Artistsin
Schools." This massive program supports, through the administrationof the
states arts councils, the employment of
practicing professionals in all the arts,
to spend from a few weeks to an entire
school year as artists-in-residence in a
school. In 1973, this programwas supported at a $2.5 million level, placing
hundreds of painters, poets, sculptors,
actors, dancers, architects, musicians,
and photographers in the nation's
schools. Unfortunately,neither isthere
available a systematic rationale or
pedagogical design for such a massive
educational experiment, nor is there
any kind of rigorous evaluation other
than the collecting of enthusiastic
testimonials.
Most recently (1974) the Emergency
School Aid Act of the Office of Education has awarded $1 million to arts activities in a number of states to be
applied to education, but the emphasis
seems to be upon various forms of arts
performances rather than a rigorous
and sustained program of aesthetic
education. The Title I lesson may not
yet have been learned.
17

The National Institute of Education

Role
Upon its creation in 1972, the
National Institute of Education inherited the curriculum development
programs of the Labs and Centers from
the Bureau of Research of the Office of
Education. Among these was the
Aesthetic Education Program being
developed at CEMREL, a regional
educational laboratory in St. Louis.
Launched in the spirit of the massive
curriculum development projects in
the sciences during the 1960's, this new
curriculum in aesthetics education is
intended for kindergarten through
seventh grades, general classroom
rather than the once-a-week
art
specialist activity, and it stresses
aesthetic perception in all facets of
human experience, especially the arts,
rather than only manual dexterity, or
crafts-skills, or historical knowledge in
any one medium. Committed to the
the
learning-by-doing
pedagogy,
developers have borrowed from the
educational philosophy of Piaget, the
aesthetic
education
theories
of
Lowenfeld and Herbert Read, and the
ideas of Broudy, Barkan, and others.
Below is a list and description of the
various components of that program:
1. Aesthetics in the Physical World:
For kindergarten and the first grade,
these packages serve as an introduction
to the fundamental
elements of perception, such as
light, sound, and motion. The
developers describe their materials
in this series as: "Light, sound, motion, and space are fundamentals
that underlie aesthetic phenomena,
and each of these is explored in a
separate package. Activities in the
package encourage students to
become involved in such things as
creating their own spaces or examining the function of light and vision by experiencing
them in
playground games. Packages in this
group provide an introduction to
and a unification of the aesthetic
dimension of the arts and the
environment."
2. Aesthetics and Art Elements: "Activities in this group of packagesenstudents to recognize
courage
elements of aesthetic phenomena
both in the examples presented and
in their daily world. Texture in
music, shape in the visual arts,
movement in the environmentstudents
using this group of
packages learn to identify elements
such as these, recognize them as a
part of the arts, and relate them to
the structure of a work of art."
3. Aesthetics
and the Creative
Process: "Emphasis in this group of
is placed on having
packages
students take elements of the arts
and the environment and creatively
transform them into a whole work.
All people who create art, no matter
18
Art Education, March 1975

what the arts discipline, go through

a similar process of originating an
idea and organizing elements into
an end productto communicate that
idea. Creating a characterization,
a dramatic plot,
constructing
relating sounds and movements,
are
creating word pictures-these
among the activities in which the
students make their own structure
for the creative process."
4. Aesthetics and the Artist: "Who are
the people that make works of art?
Why do they do it? Where do they
get their ideas? These are the
questions explored in this group of
packages. Students see how the
artist takes an idea, works with arts
elements, and organizes them into
objects and performances. The student also creates his own art works
activities
which
are
doing
analogous to the process the artist
uses."
5. Aesthetics and the Culture: "These
materials have the students explore
the
between
relationships
aesthetics
and culture.
Each
package provides a unique point of
view which
will increase the
student's
of the
understanding
aesthetic
elements
utilized by
various cultures. Through a series of
activities, students will be encouraged to form ideas on the
human creative expressions;
on
how those
are
expressions
and
generated
by individuals
groups and shaped by their interaction with the culture; and on how
aesthetic values and forms are
similar or different in various
cultures for a variety of reasons."
6. Aesthetics and the Environment:
"Aesthetics play a major role in the
affective quality of our environment.
To come to this understanding
students
see the effects
of
technology on the surroundings;
examine personal and public spaces
of today;
future enimagine
vironments; and consider the interrelatedness
of functional and
aesthetic concerns."
In addition to these curriculum packages, CEMREL is developing both curricula for pre- and in-service teacher
training, as well as a series of sitesteacher centers, or learning centers
which serve as foci for aesthetic education training for teachers, information
and instructional resources that are
themselves examples of an aesthetic
environment. The intent is to create not
only content packages, but to assure
their effective utilization within the
general classroom setting.
Also within the domain of elementary
school curriculum development, the
Southwest
Education
Regional
Laboratory is developing two major
curriculum packages, in artand music:
1. The Art Program (SWRL): The
SWRL Art Program is designed to

an alternative to the
provide
teaching practices common in many
elementary classrooms (K through
six). The program's curriculum is intended
to develop
the basic
proficiencies of a well-informed
layman rather than to enhance the
capabilities of a talented minority.
The curriculum provides for the acquisition of the basic techniques of
the artist, the fundamental skills of
the critic, and the elementary
knowledge of the art historian.
2. The Music Program (SWRL): The
program enables pupils to develop
their musical skills and appreciation
in a variety of learning situations.
Teachers with little or no music experience are able to conduct all
program activities.
NIE is also continuing support for a
basic research program that was
launched originally with funds from the
Arts and Humanities Program in 1970.
Project Zero, at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, focuses upon a
rigorous and systematic effort to ascertain the nature of the creative art
process during the actual making of a
work of art, either poem or picture. The
effort seeks to yield a knowledge base
from which a pedagogical theory can
be constructed, predicated upon the
premise that creative skills can be
taught and can be learned. As the project director, David Perkins describes
their activities: " . ..the Project has
sought to clarify the skills and abilities,
the perceptual and cognitive processes
and
underlying the comprehension
production of art."
David
Perkins
addresses
the
problem of education in the arts by distinguishing two modes of instructional
"delivery":
On the one hand, the teacher-artist
could act as an exemplar and a critic;
learning would depend on the
student's imitation, and indeed on
constructive rebellion. On the other
hand, education could be based on
an analysis of the processes and
component skills underlying effective production of art.'
Perkins suggests that the two modes
can be complementary. Education in
the arts has been and is still in the grips
of the modelling method of instruction,
dominated by production types of activities. This is the case in the visual arts
(every school's walls are papered with
collages, crayon drawings, and what
are called, euphemistically, "constructions") and in music, with its emphasis
upon instrumental performance. What
Perkins
seeks
to bring more
emphatically into the classroom is the
result of close study of the process of
creativity so that instruction can be
more purposeful, with a much more
clear sense of desirable outcomes than
now are available.
NIE has committed itself to support a
relatively comprehensive program in

arts and aesthetic education. Basic

research is being supported at Indiana
University ($10,000) and Harvard University ($200,000). Curriculum development is being conducted with NIE
support at two regional laboratories (SWRL and CEMREL) for well over
one million dollars per year. CEMREL
is conducting massive pre-service and
in-service
in
training
programs
aesthetic education for teachers. Many
of CEMREL's packages are being
published and distributed by Viking
Press. The Career Education Division
of NIE has supported research and
curriculum development in the arts as
one of a number of careers through a
consortium of Ohio State University
and local school systems (over $500,000).
Why the Arts are Still Not the "Real"
Business of the Schools
Junius Eddy, in his Rockefeller
Report, cites three reasons for the lack
of impact of the arts upon education:
1. Insufficient teacher preparation at
the pre-service stage.
2. Insufficient familiarization of school
administrators with the breadth and
range of aesthetic education, and
what it could contribute to the
success of the general education
curriculum.
3. Insufficient support of the vast
variety of arts organizations outside
of the schools which, with direction,
could
the necessary
provide
framework
for both
direct
educational activities in the schools
as well as the support from the
larger community necessary for the
success of any educational program
in the schools. Strengthening these
three factors, contends Eddy,would
contribute
to the
significantly
of art
growth and effectiveness
education and aesthetic education
in the schools.
There are, however, more fundamental reasons for the peripheral place of
the arts in the schools. In Crisis in the
Classroom, Charles Silberman argues
that: "It is not possible to spend any
prolonged period visiting public school
classrooms without being appalled by
the mutilation visible everywheremutilation of spontaneity, of joy in
learning, of pleasure in creating, of
sense of self . . ." These are qualities
essential to and inherent in the aesthetic education experience when well
taught. Silberman goes on to point out,
with irony, that the schools do, in fact,
conduct a massive aesthetic education
program for all students. The schools,
"... teach them that interest in the
arts is effeminate or effete, that study of
the arts is a frill, and that music, art,
beauty and sensitivity bear no relation
to any other aspect of the curricula or
of life."
In short, the problem is two-fold; that

is, intrinsic as well as extrinsic. Extrinsically, the arts and aesthetic experience are devalued in a culture that
is vitalized by materialistic-economic,
technocratic, and bureaucratic values.
Intrinsically, art education lacks a comand theory
prehensive
knowledge
a generally
base,
acceptable
pedagogy, and suffers from vague,
confused, and unclear goals.
The Argument for Aesthetic and Arts
Education
John Dewey explained the need for
the arts, and therefore the need for
education in the arts, when he said:
If all meanings could be adequately
expressed by words, the arts of
painting and music would not exist.
There are values and meanings that
can be expressed only by immediately visible and audible qualities, and to
ask what they mean in the sense of
something that can be put into words
is to deny their distinctive existence.
On the level of content, then, the
dominant curriculum of the schools,
specializing as it does in certain
cognitive skills such as print decoding,
number manipulation, and mnemonic
skills, neglects othersubstantive areas,
assuming them to be either available
elsewhere, or to be trivial and irrelevant
to the needs of adult society. Content
areas lumped together under the rubric
of "affective" or value education are
grossly neglected. The social/interpersonal as well as the introspective, the
moral/ethical and the aesthetic-all
attention only in
value-laden-enjoy
the speeches
of school
superintendents. When they do exist in
the school curriculum, they are regarded as daring, innovative, and experimental, the first to feel the knife
during budget cuts.
The late psychologist
Abraham
Maslow gave much attention to the arts
in education. He stated, at a conference on the arts in education:
Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning
what is good and bad, learning what
to choose and what not to choose. In
this...intrinsic
education, I think
that the arts are so close to our
biological and physiological core
... that we must cease to think of
them as a luxury. They must become
basic experiences in education. Intrinsic education may have art
education, music education, and
dance education at its core. Such experience could very well serve as the
model, the means by which we could
rescue
the rest of the school
curriculum
from the value-free,
value-neutral meaninglessness
into
which it has fallen.
The developmental theorists have
contended for some years that the
natural rate of development and limits
of mental and emotional growth can be
facilitated and raised by educational

intervention. Thus, Dewey spoke of

character
development,
Piaget of
cognitive development, and Kohlberg
of moral development. Another component of human growth is, of course,
aesthetic development. While we may
relegate the aesthetic valuations in our
lives to a peripheral role, we do in fact
constantly make aesthetic judgments,
just as we constantly make moral
judgments. These judgments, just like
our cognitive judgments, may be
deficient due to lack of appropriate
stimulation. Stated as an analogy,
teaching only selected cognitive skills
in the schools is like exercising only
one arm, but not the other, or the rest of
the body. The argument that one arm is
better than none is logically fallacious.
The Need for Research and
Development
The number of problems besetting
those wishing to implement effective
aesthetic education experiences in the
public schools is nearly limitless. From
basic research, theory, and knowledge
building on the one hand, to implementation and evaluation of on-going activities on the other hand, every step is
a pioneering one. There does not yet
exist a theory of learning and development in the aesthetic domain paralleling Piaget's intellectual development
theories.
We do not understand creativity except insofar as we equate it with
problem-solving. We do not have a
viable theory of instruction in arts and
aesthetics education. We know very little about evaluation and measurement
in the affective area generally, and in
the arts, specifically. The CEMREL
curriculum development
project is
plowing new fields. Curriculum in the
arts is in a primeval stage. Not only is
there a very "thin" rationale available in
the literature for aesthetic education,
but even the arts individually lack of instruction, teacher training, and fitting
into the schools' agenda. A major portion of the funding from government
and foundation goes to support either
an individual
or a
performer
professional group. From either the individual or the group, education is
assumed to take place when they enter
the school and involve the students in
some fashion. So far, there is little information about the nature of the effectiveness of this practice.
There is no clear conception about
the relative value and appropriate
emphasis
individual
upon
craftsmanship/performance in the arts;
knowledge acquisition, such as in an
art history, aesthetics, or musicology
course;
and
appreciation/criticism
judgment development; or, as is the
case with the CEMREL aesthetic
education curriculum, an attempt to
blend all three. Nor is there sufficient
comprehension about the integration
of the arts and instruction thereof, as
19

distinct from the concentrated effort in

a single medium, such as the visual
arts.
We do not know the most efficient
way to allocate and utilize the regular
classroom teacher in the elementary
school to teach aesthetic education.
We do not know what the best aesthetic
education teachers do to improve the
aesthetic perception and creative competencies of their students. We do not
know how to trainteachers to be effective practitioners in these best practices demonstrated by the most effective teachers.
E. PaulTorrance is one of the leading
educational scholars whose work on
creativity (the Torrance Test of
Creative Thinking, 1966) has, in the
past five or six years, led him to study
the characteristics of gifted children
outside of middle-class, dominant
culture populations; that is, among disadvantaged, minority, and ethnically
different children. His search led him to
believe that our definition of the
talented and gifted was far too narrow.
His thesis was," ... that we should no

longer insist on identifying and

cultivating only those kinds of talent
that the dominant affluent culture
values. I urged that we also look for and
cultivate the kinds of talent that are
valued in the various disadvantaged
subcultures of our country." (Teacher
Record, May, 1974) He goes on to say
that,
...

I have concentrated ...

on the

identification, recognition, and reinforcement of what I have called the

creative positives of disadvantaged
children. I have demonstrated
repeatedly that these creative
positives can be observed without
the use of tests by engaging children
in challenging activities in science,
creative writing, visual arts, music,
dance and creative movement,
dramatics, psychology, and the like.
Furthermore,these positives can be
observed as frequently or more frequently among disadvantaged
children as among morp affluent
ones.
He states that the gifted and talented
among those not from the dominant,
white, middle-class culture are,
". .. more likely to become outstand-

ing in art, literature, drama, music,

dance, athletics and the like, rather
than in law, science, medicine, and
engineering." On the basis of his
research, Torrance concludes that certain characteristics for successful
educational intervention with the disadvantaged and culturally diverse are
essential and that these include:
"...

the use of the arts in supplying

motivation and as a medium for

developing important skills, concepts,
and subject matter competencies."
(T.C. Record, May 1974, p. 471 ff.)
Torrance's work seems to confirm
the work of Alfredo Castaneda of Stan20
Art Education. March 1975

ford who has demonstrated that the

culturally diverse, that is, those not
from the dominant,white, middle-class
culture, perceive and construct their
reality in ratherdifferent ways. He contrasts a "field-independent" mode of
perception with a "field-dependent"
mode. I suppose that this is not unlike
an anthropological Gestalt model of
"figure-ground."He contends that the
ethnically different, such as MexicanAmericans or inner city Blacks,
perceive their world in non-discrete,
non-linear, non-abstractive ways.
Rather, their personal paradigm is integral pictographic, dramatic,humane,
personalized, context-dependent, and
highly charged with emotion and fantasy. In other words, they emphasize
the right hemisphere of the brainrather
than the left, and therefore artistic/intuitive modes of conceiving the world
are more familiar and useful than
Western scientific/rationalistic.
While it is possible to overstate this
dichotomy, nonetheless both Torrance
and Castaneda make telling arguments
for a far more extensive research and
development program through the
vehicle of the arts and aesthetic
perception in an educational context.
We can reiterate the need for
research and development by citing
the following major categories as they
mightapply to education in the arts and
aesthetic education:
1. Learning processes: How does the
individual learn aesthetic perception? How does one learn to create,
to intuit, and to imagine? How does
one measure such learning?
2. Content and Curriculum: What is
the most appropriate content for
education in the arts and for
aesthetic education? How does one
distinguish among various student
groups, considering age, socioeconomic, and ethnic/cultural
variables?
How much content should be
aimed at the "head"and how much
at the "hands"? Should all the arts
constitute the curriculum including
manipulativeskills in all the arts, or
can the student be expected to
generalize from the intimate working experience in only one medium?
Should
apinterdisciplinary
proaches with the concomitant
risk of superficiality replace the individual art disciplines, with their
parochial limitations? Should
aesthetic education be equal to, in
and importance,
emphasis
mathematical/logical thinking and
verbal-arts training? Should arts
and aesthetics content be prepackaged, as are other curricula in
the sciences,
reading, and
mathematics, or is that a contradiction in terms? How do we measure
the effectiveness of curriculum in
aesthetic education apart from its
delivery?

3. Teacher training: Is good taste, a

sense of beauty, sensitivity, and
connoisseurship learnable, or is it
an inborn trait? If it is learnable, is
it teachable? If teachable, can
teachers be taught to teach it? If it is
learnable, and teachable, and if
teachers can be taught to teach it,
then how does one motivate and
prepareteachers to teach such subjective and expressive disciplines?
What is effective teaching of
creativity and aesthetic perception?
Does one have to have itto teach it?
Finally,and most practically, how
does aesthetic education penetrate
the school? How will it be financed
in the face of declining school populations, increased vocationalism,
and shrinking budgets? What is the
administrator's role? It is not that
research must be expected to
generate definitive answers to these
questions. Rather,the debates, disagreements, and premises for
educational practice ought simply
to be much better informed than
they are now. The language of
theory in the arts and aesthetic
education ought to become more
precise, clear, and meaningful. In
order to pursue such research and
development, it is necessary to
create information networks to
create locales and pools of intense
commitment and effort, and to
seek out schools and school systems where the "ground is already
fertile."
The final word belongs, appropriately, to the President:
Need and opportunity combine...
to present the federal government
with an obligation to help broaden
the base of our cultural legacy-not
to make it fit some common
denominator of official sanction, but
rather to make its diversity and insight more readily accessible to
millions of people everywhere .. .
Martin Engel is with the Office of
Research, National Institute of Education, Washington, D.C.

REFERENCE
'David Perkins, "Probing Artistic
Success," Journal of Aesthetic Education, July 1974, Vol. 8, No. 4, p. 54.