K E N ROBINSON 1 to discuss issues in curriculum development;

The Arts as a 2 to develop practical strategies for change;

Generic Area of 3 to support each other in taking initiatives in their own
the Curriculum schools;
4 to consider issues in evaluation; and
5 to develop related materials for publication.
The work of each group was facilitated by a full time coordi-
nator seconded by the authority. Each authority also convened an
advisory group of head teachers, advisors and others to help
monitor the work and to advise on strategic and resource issues.
The project was organised nationally by a central project team
including the director, two national project officers, an informa-
tion officer and an administrator. The full time local coordinators
created an extended national project team that met regularly to
analyse and compare work throughout the national network. The
project formed close working relationships with other regional
and national agencies sharing similar concerns for the develop-
ment of the arts in schools: these included the Arts Council, Crafts
Council, British Film Institute and the Regional Arts Associations.
The design of the project was based on three perceptions about
the arts in schools which had emerged from the national inquiries
of the Gulbenkian report. First, specialists in different arts disci-
plines have a good deal in common and can benefit from coopera-
tive action in curriculum development. For this reason, the project
was concerned with all of the arts, equally. The nature of this
common ground is a key theme of this paper and I will come back
to it shortly. Second, arts education is a developmental process
which is profoundly disrupted by the fracture of primary and
secondary education. For this reason, the project was concerned
with the whole age range of compulsory education from 5-16.
Third, an effective strategy for the arts in schools must be
comprehensive: it must deal with all the major themes of whole
curriculum planning. For this reason the project brief identified
six themes for work in schools:
1 the arts and the whole curriculum;
2 the arts curriculum,
3 assessment and evaluation;
4 progression and continuity;
5 special educational needs; and
6 the school in the community.
The schools and local authorities taking part in the project
negotiated with the central team the focus of their own pro-
grammes of work, according to their specific needs and circum-
stances. Over three hundred schools took part in the project with
over five hundred teachers in the development groups, and many
more in the school and community projects they set in motion.
There is an immediate point to make against this background of
the projects aims and methodologies.
A number of the participating schools and teachers used the
opportunity of the project to explore ways in which arts specialists
could work together. They did so for a variety of individual
12
reasons: conceptual, pedagogical and curricular. The concern of KEN ROBINSON
the project for all of the arts created an atmosphere in which they The Arts as a
could do this, as did its methodological emphasis on self-determi- Generic Area of
nation. It would be a profound misunderstanding or a careless the Cum*culum
simplification to conclude that the project as a whole was therefore
promoting integrated arts courses as a matter of policy. The fact
that a number of schools set out to explore combined arts courses
does not mean that they uncritically endorsed them. The projects
work did lead to specific conclusions about combined arts. These
are part of a general framework of recommendations that emerged
from the projects overall programme of work.

Theory, practice and ideology

The project was concerned with the relationships between ideas
and practice. The applications of theory are part of this concern:
so too are the constraints of ideology. The distinction is important.
Formal theory consists in explicit patterns of ideas which are
intentionally directed to problems of understanding. Theory is an
abstraction from the phenomena it attends to and is recognised as
such by those who profess it. Theorising is undertaken consciously
and deliberately. Ideology by contrast is often unrecognised. By
ideology I mean the inferential structures of values and beliefs
that Alfred Schutz [6] would describe as an individuals taken for
granted view of reality; his or her natural conception of the way
things are.
Theorising may be oblivious to the tacit influences of ideology.
Theories develop in response to questions, and a question, as
Susanne Langer notes, is really an ambiguous proposition [7].The
answer is its determination: its sense can only be completed in a
certain number of ways. For this reason the most important
characteristic of a theoretical system is its disposition of problems
as revealed in the questions to which it is directed. This, rather
than the explanations it provides, reveals the underlying principles
of analysis. These unrecognised or unquestioned assumptions set
the boundaries of theory by disposing the theorist to this or that
set of issues [8]. In this sense theories are also ideological.
Some practitioners say they have no time for theory. They may
mean literally that they do not have time to read books or to
engage in the conscious construction of theory. They mean that
theory is irrelevant to practice. Although they may think them-
selves un- or anti-theoretical, they can hardly be un-ideological.
Like everyone else they act on their understandings, tacit or
conscious, about the way things are, and about how they are in
relation to them. I noted earlier that Kenneth Clarkes demotion
of the arts in schools illustrated a dominant ideology about
education which arts educators in a long tradition have challenged.
The work and publications of the Arts in Schools project identified
two common ideological assumptions about education which ob-
struct the development of the arts in schools.
The first of these is academicism. This is the assumption that
13
KEN ROBINSON academic ability is the same as intellectual ability in general. By
The Arts as a academic I mean the processes of logico-deductive reason and of
Generic Area of propositional knowledge. On this assumption the arts are said to
the Curriculum be non-intellectual and therefore of less importance in the curricu-
lum than those subjects that do promote these abilities. The
development of the arts in schools requires that those who influ-
ence and determine policy should understand that childrens intel-
ligence embraces a much wider range of intellectual abilities than
those of academic discourse. The arts represent this richer concep-
tion of reason and understanding. The second ideological obstacle
is vocationalism: the assumption that education in schools is a
direct preparation for work afterwards. On this basis the arts are
thought to matter only for those children-not the majority-who
plan to have careers in them. The case must be put for the
importance of general education, and for the roles of the arts
within it. The Secretary of States unargued decision to make the
arts optional graphically illustrates both of these ideological posi-
tions.
Arts educators have their own ideological boundaries. Some
have an insistent preoccupation with promoting childrens per-
sonal creativity and a corresponding resistance to teaching chil-
dren about the arts. Often this view of arts education is rooted in
Romanticism and ideas about individualism and free expression.
Many arts educators have taken for granted assumptions about
how many art forms there are. A common assumption is that there
are five: visual art, music, dance, drama, and literature. With some
variations this is the view of the National Curriculum. The
controversy about combined arts often turns on whether these five
arts forms should ever be taught together in schools.
Part of the work of the Arts in Schools project was to enable
practitioners to reflect critically on their practice: to consider their
own and other peoples theories and the underlying assumptions.
The project was not promulgating a specific theory of arts teach-
ing: it was generating opportunities for theorising in the context of
daily practice-through the work of the teacher development
groups and through a wide ranging series of seminars, conferences
and publications. The many teachers and artists involved will have
their own insights and conclusions. In framing the national publi-
cations, the central project team and the LEA coordinators identi-
fied a series of key ideas and principles as fundamental to
describing an arts entitlement of all young people in schools.

A framework for the arts in schools

The framework we offer is a response to eight key questions which
in our view needed to be addressed by all schools in providing a
balanced arts education for all pupils:
1 What are the arts?
2 What is distinctive about the arts?
3 What are the differences between arts disciplines?
4 What are the general roles of the arts in education?
14
 5 What are the roles of the different arts disciplines in K E N ROBINSON
education? The Arts QS a
6 What range of arts provision is necessary in the school Generic Area of
curriculum? the Cum*culum
7 What should be included in arts courses?
8 How can pupils progress and attainment in the arts be
assessed?
We note in the introduction to The Arts 5-16: A Curriculum
Framework [9] that three general themes run through the argu-
ments and recommendations of the Arts in Schools project. The
first is that the different arts disciplines have a number of common
characteristics and should be planned for together as a generic part
of the school curriculum. This is not to argue against the specialist
teaching of different disciplines, but for greater cooperation be-
tween teachers in the interests of a more coherent arts education
for all pupils. This calls for a different conception of the arts in
many schools.
The second theme is that the forms and media of different arts
disciplines draw on different aspects of young peoples intelligence
and abilities. This has significant implications for the range of arts
provision in schools. We argue that this should embrace equally a
number of basic modes of understanding in the arts. In due course,
there should be coordinated opportunities for young people to
specialise in arts disciplines that best suit their interests and
aptitudes. This calls for a new balance of provision between the
arts in schools.
The third theme is that arts education should be seen within a
general context of cultural education. In many schools, the empha-
sis in arts teaching in all disciplines is often on promoting pupils
own creative work. We argue that the best practice in primary as
well as in secondary schools gives equal weight to developing
young peoples critical understanding of other peoples work and
their knowledge of different cultural practices and traditions. This
calls for a shift in the balance of work in many classrooms.

The arts and the whole curriculum

The tendency in most schools is to think separately about different
arts disciplines with the result that some art forms are well
provided for and others not. As a result, pupils individual abilities
are often inadequately catered for and the curriculum as a whole is
impoverished. The Arts in Schools project argues that the arts
should be planned for collectively as a generic area of the curricu-
lum. As such they should have equal standing with other major
fields of the curriculum, including sciences and humanities. Plan-
ning for the arts collectively is essential to ensure that all of
the arts are given appropriate time, status and resources in the
curriculum as a whole, so that they can fulfil their real roles in the
education of all pupils.
Collective planning does not mean that the arts should all be
15
KEN ROBINSON taught together in combined courses, nor does it mean, as a recent
The Arts as a JADE review curiously inferred [lo], that all arts teachers should
Generic Area of become teachers of all of the arts. The projects publications do
the Curriculum not put either of these views and I certainly do not hold them.
David Best thinks that I do, or that I must. He argues oddly in one
instance that although I deny it, so many people assume I do
promote combined arts that he feels justified in chastising me for
it [ll]. On a different track he argues that I am committed to
promoting combined arts by the use of the word generic. In a
characteristic attack on the project to the National Association for
the Teaching of Drama, Best berates the
senseless theory of generic arts which implies that somehow
the arts ought to go together, that arts integration is
somehow more natural than other integration, that the
distinct art forms can be adequately learned solely in a
combined context. [ 121
As I say, I do not make this argument and never did. If David
Best were right that I must mean this by using the word generic, I
should be happy to drop it. I might then talk instead as he does of
the arts in general. He concludes his address to the N A T D by
saying that
I must emphasise that nothing I have said implies my
opposition to the idea that we should all, in all of the arts,
work together for the arts in general. On the contrary, for
those of us who are convinced of the enormous values of the
arts in education, it is high@ desirable, from strategic and
political points of view, that we should work together to
present a solid, united front, to insist that our children and
students should be entitled, as a central part of their
education, to as rich as possible an experience of all of the
arts. [ 131
This is perfectly consistent with the projects published and
persistent position. What all of the arts might be is an important
issue to which I will return shortly. For the moment, the contro-
versy seems to be the word generic. Bests argument is that,
according to the Oxford Dictionary:
the meaning of the word generic is most clearly exemplified
in zoology or botany: a group of animals or plants having
common structural characteristics distinct from those of all
other groups. [141
On this basis he argues not only that the project must want all the
arts to be taught together but also that we must see no relation-
ships between the arts and other areas of the curriculum. He seems
confident in mounting these criticisms despite the explicit argu-
ments the project publications contain to the contrary, including
specific sections on the close relationships between the arts and
the sciences and on the arts and the whole curriculum.
It is true that in zoology and botany the term generic has a
specialist meaning. But we are not discussing zoology or botany.
Outside these disciplines generic is used less specifically to mean
a group with common characteristics. Its root is the Latin genus a
16
kind, class, order. The Oxford Dictionary goes on: characteristic KEN ROBINSON
of a genus or class; applied to a large group or class; general, not The Arts as a
specific. The term general itself, as used by David Best, comes Generic Area of
from the same root and means not partial, local or sectional, the Curriculum
relating to a whole class, true of all or nearly all cases; including
points common to individuals of a class and neglecting differ-
ences. A class is a number of individuals having common name as
like in any respect. The use of the generic does not mean that
there are no distinctions within a class, nor does it mean that the
characteristics of the class are wholly exclusive. In the case of the
arts, neicher is true.
The commonalities of the arts and sciences is an example of the
overlapping of classes. Much has been made in the past about the
differences between the arts and sciences. It has been argued for
example that science is objective and the arts are subjective; that
the arts are concerned with imagination and creativity and science
with factual knowledge. Both of these arguments are based on
false perceptions of the arts and of the sciences. A considerable
body of argument and analysis now exists to show that the pro-
cesses of scientific enquiry are deeply creative and draw heavily on
the scientists powers of intuition and imagination. So far from
being an oasis of factual certainty, the results of scientific enquiry
are best seen as provisional and open to refutation and amendment
in the light of further experience [15].
Equally, work in the arts is often conducted in a mood of
intense objectivity, and the results may be judged by rigorous
standards of professional achievement. Scientists and artists may
be the same people, and sometimes are. One of the exhilarating
features of contemporary life is the growing rapprochement be-
tween scientific and artistic modes of understanding. The differ-
ences are to do with the attitude of enquiry and with the forms of
perception involved. As Sir Allan Bullock argues of the sciences
and the humanities:
A better way is not to allot subjects as such on different
sides of a demarcation line, but to accept that the same area
of human experience or activity is of interest to different
kinds of study and that what distinguishes the humanities
and sciences is the kinds of questions they ask, the range of
evidence they are prepared to accept and the kind of
answers to which they attach importance. [16]
On what grounds should the arts be treated as a generic field of
the curriculum? There is an analogy with the National Curricu-
lums provision for science. The architects of the National Cur-
riculum did not begin by specifying which science subjects should
be taught: for example, physics, biology and chemistry. The
starting point was to map the various fields of understanding with
which science in general is concerned: to identify the generic
characteristics of enquiry by which science is identified. This
approach recognised that specialists in different branches of sci-
ences may be concerned with the same questions and problems,
but explore them from distinctive perspectives. A curriculum
17
KEN ROBINSON which assumes an essential separateness of disciplines may over-
The Arts as a look these fundamental relationships.
Generic Area of A second reason is that there are so many different branches of
the Curriculum science that a curriculum which gave time to them all would have
time for little else. A common map of science education is a way
of identifying the essential knowledge and experiences of science
which all pupils should gain in school. It is not a charter to
dispense with specialist teaching but a way of locating the contri-
butions of different specialists within science education as a whole.
There are similar grounds for treating the arts as a generic area
of education and for planning the curriculum accordingly. The
first, as we argue in The Arts 5-16: A Curriculum Framework is
that work in the arts has some common characteristics and con-
cerns. In general terms the arts are concerned with comprehending
the qualities of human experience, with the ways in which events,
ideas and beliefs affect us as living individuals or communities. In
the arts we aim to formulate and express our perceptions through
the creation of unique objects or events that in a particular sense
symbolise our ideas and feelings. There is thus a deeply personal
dimension to work in the arts. In experiencing the work of others
we are often as conscious of the artist as of the artefact: eg. that
this is John Cages music, or a Dostoyevsky novel, or a Molikre
Play-
A second reason is that the various forms of arts practice
operate through similar processes of creation and reflection. In the
Arts 5-1 6: A Cumculum Framework we discuss the following:
Descriptive
The arts are vivid ways of observing and describing
experience. In some cases this is obvious, as in
representational painting or the narrative forms of novels,
poetry, dance and drama. They are also descriptive in the
less obvious cases of, for example, abstract art, music, and
lyric poetry. These descriptions are not necessarily of
events, through they may relate to them, but of ideas and
perceptions. To communicate through the arts is to convey
an experience to others in such a form that the experience is
actively recreated.. .actively lived through by those to
whom it is offered [ 171.

Creative
Artists are creative in the obvious sense of making things
that did not exist before: a play, a composition, an object, a
dance. They may also be creative in the more profound
sense of generating new ways of seeing. Creativity is
possible in all modes of understanding; in science, history,
philosophy, mathematics and so on. The creative artist is an
observer whose brain works in new ways making it possible
to convey information about matters that were not a subject
for communication before [181. The discoveries of artist
and scientist are exactly alike in this respect. Artists have
discovered new aspects of space with one symbolism just as
18
 physicists have with another [19]. In all cases the creative KEN ROBINSON
process of the arts involves developing forms of expression The Arts as a
which capture and in some sense embody the artists Generic Area of
perceptions. This is not a matter of identifying an idea and the Curriculum
then finding a form in which to express it. It is through
developing the dance, the image, the sounds that the
perception becomes clear. The meaning is uniquely available
in that form.

Expressive
The arts are processes of expression which may draw deeply
on an artists feelings about the subject in hand. Because of
this, it is sometimes assumed that the arts are outpourings of
emotion and non-intellectual. This view is based on
misconceptions about expression in the arts. Expressive
activity reflects an inner state of feeling. Not all expression
is deliberate. A cry of pain is an involuntary expression,
artistic activity is not. Involuntary and deliberate expressions
can be distinguished as expressive behaviour and expressive
action. The arts are processes of expressive action. Not all
expressive action is artistic. Some expressive actions are
symptoms of feelings and are intended to give them relief.
In the expressive actions of the arts, the intention is not to
give vent to feelings but to give them meaning.

Aesthetic
The terms artistic and aesthetic are sometimes confused.
Aesthetic awareness is a sensitivity to the formal qualities of
objects or events. In responding aesthetically we are aware
of such qualities as rhythm, harmony, balance, tone and
texture. Aesthetic perception is not always positive: it
includes perceptions of ugliness, for example, as well as of
beauty. Like creativity, aesthetic perception is possible in all
areas of human activity. Anything can be an object of
aesthetic response: natural objects-flowers, landscapes,
water-and made objects of all sorts. Mathematical
equations and theoretical proofs can have aesthetic appeal in
one sphere, just as accomplished performances in sport can
in another. Aesthetic perception is an essential part of
artistic perception, but these are not synonymous. An
important difference between natural phenomena and works
of art is that sunsets, for example, do not have intentions
and artists do. Artistic perception includes some grasp of the
meanings of a work, of which its aesthetic qualities are part.
Artists work within or against different cultural styles and
conventions. A full grasp of a works artistic qualities
requires some understanding of these conventions.
A third reason is that the arts fulfil similar and related roles in
education. These include essential contributions to intellectual
development, to aesthetic education, to the education of feeling, to
moral education, to cultural education, the development of physi-
19
KEN ROBINSON cal and perceptual skills and to personal and social education.
The Arts as a Each of these is elaborated in the project publications and perhaps
Generic Area of need not be detailed here.
the Curriculum The argument for treating the arts as a generic area of the
curriculum is I think soundly based. The purpose of this is to
assist planning for the arts in the curriculum as a whole so as to
ensure appropriate provision for all of the arts. It does not mean
that they should all be taught together, nor that the various
disciplines should not be given separate provision. On the con-
trary, one of the purposes of making the argument at all is to
ensure adequate provision for all of the arts in the interests of
differentiating the curriculum to meet the distinctive needs of
individual pupils. The question is what are these disciplines?

The range of arts provision

What range of arts provision should be included in the school
curriculum? The House of Commons Education, Science and Arts
Committee has adopted this definition of the arts from the US
National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities:
The term the arts includes, but is not limited to, music
(instrumental and vocal), dance, drama, folk arts, creative
writing, architecture and allied fields, painting, sculpture,
photography, graphic and craft arts, industrial design,
costume and fashion design, motion pictures, television,
radio, tape and sound recording, the arts related to
presentation, performance, execution and exhibition of such
major art forms, and the study and application of the arts to
the human environment. [20]
This is an impressive list, and it is far from exhaustive. There
are two problems with it. The first is that it is already out of date.
Conceptions of the arts change over time. A European of the
sixteenth century would have drawn up a different list of art forms
from that of a contemporary European. In Elizabethan England
the high art form of the Court was the Masque. This is as alien to
the sensibilities of the modern world as the novel, one of the
principal art forms of the twentieth century, would have been to
Shakespeare.
One of the engines of cultural change is the interaction of the
arts and new technologies. The novel evolved with the technolo-
gies of printing and publishing. Developments in the moulding and
glueing of wood made possible the instruments of the symphony
orchestra. In our own time, advances in computer technology are
unleashing entirely new forms of artistic practice in music and in
visual arts. These changes may well be resisted by those with a
narrow view of arts practice. The development of photography in
the nineteenth century, for example, revolutionised the recording
of people, places and events. Photography posed fundamental
questions about the roles and purposes of painting in particular.
Artists questioned defensively, and for obvious reasons, whether a
photograph could really be a work of art. Walter Benjamin [21]
20
observed that this was not the point. The real question was not KEN ROBINSON
whether photography was art, but what it was that photography The Arts as a
had done for the established conception of art. Generic Area of
The second problem with this list is that it represents a the Curriculum
specifically Western way of thinking about the arts. The distinc-
tions between music, art, drama, and so on are not recognised in
all cultures. Kwesi OWUSUillustrates some of these cultural
differences in an analysis of Afro Caribbean and Asian arts in
Britain. There is in Western art, he argues,
a central artistic concern for the creation of illusory space.
This requires artificial containment to separate it from real
space. Frames and proscenium arches accomplish this
containment. Galleries, museums and other institutional
spaces separate visual art from performing art, books from
films, music from poetry. African and Asian carvings and
masquerades.. .share the real space of the physical world.
Masquerades, which combine visual and performing arts,
occur in the streets, and carvings exhibit a living and
immediate presence in real space. The physical and social
landscape is the immediate canvas of creativity. [22]
There are many other examples of cultural variations in ways of
thinking about the arts. If schools are to engage seriously in the
issues of multicultural or intercultural education, we would be
wise not to root our ideas so thoroughly in one cultural context.
It seems woefully inadequate against this background that the
National Curriculum should identify the arts as art and music
(with drama in English and dance in PE). This classification does
not give an adequate account even of contemporary Western
European arts practice. Many of the items on the us National
Foundation list above would be hard to classify in this way. What
is a stage play when it is filmed-visual art or drama? Or is it
literature? What is opera-music or drama? What is contemporary
performance art-visual art or theatre? Is a contemporary dance
performance theatre or visual art? Or both, or neither? These
anomalies illustrate the problems of trying to base a plan for arts
education on a list of art forms. Our approach in the Arts in
Schools project was to describe the necessary range of arts pro-
vision on a different basis.
In all cultures the arts, however defined, are practised in a
number of different modes which are available to us as the natural
capacities of sentient human beings. These fundamental modes of
arts practice include:
the visual mode-using light, colour and shape;
the aural mode-using sound and rhythm;
the kinaesthetic mode-using bodily movement, time and
space;
the verbal mode-using words; and
the enactive mode-using imagined roles.
The many different forms of arts practice emerge from the
interaction of these different modes of understanding with each
other and with the values and technologies of different cultural
21
K E N ROBINSON settings. In the WesterdEuropean context, for example, the ver-
The Arts as a bal mode of arts practice is predominantly literary. In some
Generic Area of cultures it is predominantly oral. Western European mime is a
the Curriculum blend of enactive and kinaesthetic modes. Opera uses them all.
The essential point for education is that these different modes
of arts practice draw on different aspects of our intellectual and
sensory capabilities. It is vital that arts education should offer
young people opportunities to experience them all. Few individu-
als feel equally able or inspired in all of these modes. For different
individuals, creative ability tends to be specific to particular
materials or modes of work. Some children and young people
come alive in the visual mode, others in the enactive or the
kinaesthetic. Part of the task of arts education is to enable young
people to discover where their own capacities actually lie. This
means providing opportunities across the full range of practice in
the arts: not in every art form, but, through a variety of art forms,
in all the different modes of arts practice.
The project recommends that young people in the primary
school should have opportunities to work in all the major modes of
arts practice, to discover what each offers them and to explore
where their own aptitudes and abilities lie. We also argue that,
In due course in the secondary school pupils should be
allowed to concentrate on those areas of the arts they find
most rewarding and fulfilling. Real achievement comes from
close application. A curriculum which offered only one or
two disciplines would be inadequate. Equally one which
required all pupils to work in all of the arts every week
would be unrealistic and probably counter-productive,
allowing neither the time nor the opportunities for the
sustained work on which progress and attainment in the arts
depends. [23]
It is neither possible in most schools, nor necessary for most
pupils to continue in all areas of the arts throughout compulsory
education. Young people reach a point, often by the end of Key
Stage Three, when they are ready and content to concentrate their
efforts in the areas of the arts where their interests are sharpest.
This focusing of interests offers a consistent and principled way
forward for the National Curriculum which should allow pupils to
choose a compulsory arts option in Key Stage Four.
We do recommend that specialist teaching and learning should
be complemented by work in combined arts courses. We use the
term combined arts as a general heading for a variety of forms of
collaboration: mixed media, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary
and integrated arts. In promoting a proper depth of study in
pupils chosen areas of practice, arts teachers challenge concep-
tions of the arts on which the conventional curriculum is based.
The history of the arts has been of new forms of practice
emerging from artists creative adventures in challenging existing
styles, media and conventions of work within and across the
accepted art forms. In terms of the five conventional art forms of
the European tradition, and of the National Curriculum, a good
22
deal of contemporary arts practice outside schools would be KEN ROBINSON
considered combined arts of one form or another. In schools The Arts as a
collaborative work can open up new ideas and practices for pupils Generic Area of
and teachers alike. We report on various examples of combined the Curriculum
arts work in The Arts 5-16: Practice and Innovation [24].
These schemes have no guaranteed benefits. Everything de-
pends on the attitude, understanding and commitment of those
taking part. They are not a panacea in arts education nor a
replacement for specialist study in specific areas of the arts. We
see them as one element in a curriculum that aims to balance
depth of study with breadth of vision.
The resistance to collaborative work is readily understood. On
the one hand some teachers may feel their professional identity
threatened by such initiatives which they may see taking them
outside their established fields of competence and security in the
arts. This is an issue of curriculum and staff development. On the
other hand there is a justifiable anxiety whatever the perceived
merits of such schemes that school timetablers and policy makers,
misunderstanding the purposes of collaboration, see combined arts
courses as a way of reducing the net time and resources available
to the arts as a whole. This is a particular risk where combined
arts courses are seen falsely as a substitute rather than as a
complement to specialist arts teaching. This is a policy and
planning issue and has to be dealt with as such by arts teachers in
arguing for the elaboration and extension of the arts in the
curriculum as a whole. At all events the case for collaborative
work has to be judged against the educational principles involved
and not dismissed out of hand because it is sometimes misapplied
in practice.

The arts and cultural education

The third theme of the Arts in Schools projects framework for
development is that there should be a particular balance within the
teaching of the arts. Many arts teachers put an emphasis on
encouraging pupils own creative work. Others emphasise the
importance of learning about the achievements of other people.
The first of these approaches has its roots in Romanticism and
sees the arts as a way of drawing out the natural individuality in
all children through creative self expression. The second tends to
see arts education as a form of cultural transmission or reproduc-
tion. We see problems in both approaches: the first because it
tends to overlook the significance of the cultural influences on
individual development; the second because it can overlook the
dynamic and evolutionary nature of culture and the arts.
We emphasise a balance between creative work and critical
understanding of the arts within a general conception of cultural
education. We refer to these respectively as making and apprais-
ing. Both are of equal and fundamental importance in arts educa-
tion: each is important in itself and each can stimulate and enrich
work in the other. Making is literally what artists do, creating
23
KEN ROBINSON physical objects-paintings, sculptures, prints and so on; and
The Arts as a events-music, a dance, a drama. Making in the arts is both a
Generic Area of conceptual and a practical process. It is conceptual in the sense
the Curriculum that it is concerned with ideas and understanding. It is practical in
that artists explore ideas through the manipulation of various
media-sounds, words, images, movement, paint, clay etc.-
to create forms which embody their perceptions. Appraising
describes all the processes through which young people engage
with existing work. This includes reflecting critically on their own
work as well as on other peoples work. We use the term apprais-
ing to suggest the need for critical judgement and discrimination.
Cultural education is one which:
helps young people to recognise and analyse their own
cultural values and assumptions;
brings them into contact with the attitudes, values and
institutions of other cultures;
enables them to relate contemporary values to the historical
forces that moulded them; and
alerts them to the evolutionary nature of culture and to the
potential for change.

Conclusion
Coming as they do out of extensive developmental work in
schools, the publications of the Arts in Schools project are not
intended as a final prescription, but as an agenda for further action
and debate. In this paper I have reasserted and elaborated on some
of the projects basic propositions. The project does not advocate
combined arts to replace specialist teaching nor is this entailed in
describing the arts as a generic area of the curriculum. It does
encourage arts teachers to see themselves as part of a common
enterprise in education, and to have a generous view of the
borders of their own disciplines. The underlying fear that many
practitioners have to talk of collaboration is that it may be seized
upon by hard-pressed timetablers to effect a net reduction of time
and resources for the arts by rolling them all together. This is a
danger and it must be resisted. Often the danger comes from a
limited perception of the roles of the arts in schools on the part of
planners and policy-makers. It should be met by a more expansive
understanding on the part of arts specialists of their own unique
roles and of their common interests in education.

Notes and references

1 ROBINSON, K. (Ed) (1982) The A m in Schools: A.inciples, Practice
and Provision. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
2 (1990), Director K.ROBINSON.
3 BEST, D. (1990) Arts in Schools: a Critical Time, Birmingham Insti-
tute of Art and DesigdNsEAD; BEST,D. (1990) A Critique of the
N C C Arts in Schools Project The Arts 5-16, in: The Next Step.
Conference report, National Association for the Teaching of Drama.
24
4 Ross, M. (1 975) The Arts and the Adolescent; Schools Council Work- KEN ROBINSON
ing Paper 54. EvansIMethuen Educational. The Arts as a
5 Possibly misinterpreting this argument, David Best has concluded that Generic Area of
I repudiate the importance of philosophy. On the contrary, the point
is to bring philosophy and practice closer together. See BEST, D.
the Cumculum
Critique (n. 3).
6 SCHUTZ,A. (1972) The Phenomenology of the Social World (trans. G.
WALSHand F. LEHNERT). Heinemann Educational.
7 LANGER, S. (1951) Philosophy in a New Key.New American Library.
8 In Alfred North Whiteheads words: There will be some fundamental
assumptions which advocates of all the variant systems within an
.
epoch unconsciously presuppose. .With these assumptions a certain
limited number of types of philosophic system are possible.
WHITEHEAD, A.N. (1925) in: LANGER, S. (n. 7), p. 16.
9 Op. cit NATIONAL CURRICULUMCOUNCIL (1990). LongmadOliver
and Boyd.
10 EARLE,D. (1991), in: Journal of A n and Design Education, 10(2), pp.
224-227.
11 BEST, D. (1991) The art of the matter. Times Educational Supple-
ment, 3 March.
12 BEST,D. Critique (n. 3), p. 6 (Bests italics).
13 Ibid., p. 7 (Bests italics: my emboldening).
14 Ibid., p. 3.
15 As shown by: KUHN,T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Chicago UP; POLYANI, M. (1969) Personal Knowledge, Routledge;
POPPER, K. (1969) Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scien-
tifc Knowledge. Routledge.
16 BULLOCK, Sir A. (1990) A case for the humanities, Journal of the
Royal Society ofArts, Vol. CXXXVIII, No 5410, p. 665.
17 WILLIAMS, R. (1971) The Long Revoluton. Penguin.
18 YOUNG, J.Z. (1951) Doubt and Certainty in Science: a Biologists
Reflections on the Brain. BBC.
19 Ibid.
20 HOUSEOF COMMONS (1982) Education, Science and Arts Committee
Eighth Repmt 1981-82, HC49.
21 BENJAMIN,W. (1977) The work of art in the age of mechanical
reproduction, in: CURRAN, J. (Ed) Mass Communication and Society.
Edward Arnold.
22 Owusu, K. (1986) The Strugle for Black Arts in Britain. Comedia.
23 NATIONAL CURRICULUM COUNCIL (1990) The Arts 5-16: a Curriculum
Framework. LongmadOliver and Boyd, p. 40.
24 Op. cit., NATIONAL CURRICULUM COUNCIL (1990). Longman/Oliver
and Boyd.

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