National Art Education Association

The Role of the Arts in EducationAuthor(s): James RussellSource: Art Education, Vol. 20, Special Issue Reporting on the NAEA 9th Biennial Conference(Sep., 1967), pp. 22-25Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190984 .

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relinquish some of the sanctities of their studies and commit themselves to following the task through to the point of operation in the public school classroom. The public school personnel, in turn, would have to commit themselves to disengage themselves from their current patterns of practice and to be willing to explore and test what ought to be made to become the practice.

Is there any reason why university faculties should not engage in major reconsideration and reconstruction of their teacher education programs so that prospective art teachers are truly educated in the new abilities they will require to extend the content of art into instruction aimed not only at teaching to make and create art but also to see and understand art? Inevitably, such reconstruction would lead to major changes in course requirements and fundamental changes in the course content of university art education studies themselves.

Is there any reason why university faculties should not multiply their research efforts to generate and refine the necessary knowledge for developing and assessing the effect of instructional innovations? Is there any reason why public school faculties and their administrations should not deliberately concentrate and deploy their resources at points in the educational programs where possible efforts can achieve significant marks of accomplishment? Is there any defensible reason why the limited art instructional resources in the public schools should be spread thin and dissipated to the point where their effects are nullified?

Clearly, the tasks of recreating education in art into a major force in aesthetic education require the partnership of university and public school faculties and the U.S. Office of Education. Only to the extent that we can exploit the challenge and venture into the changes that are necessary will we make of art education what it ought to become in the 1970's.

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FOOTNOTES 1. Manuel Barkan. "Prospects for Change in

the Teaching of Art," Art Education. November 1966. pp. 4-8.

2. Research Division, National Education Association. Music and Art in the Public Schools, Research Monograph 1963-M3. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, August 1963. 88 pp.

-3. Ibid. 4. Reid Hastie and David Templeton. "Profile

of Art in the Secondary Schools: Report of a National Survey," Art Education. May 1964. pp. 5-9.

5. Elliot W. Eisner. "The Development of Information and Attitude Toward Art at the Secondary and College Levels," Studies in Art Education. Autumn 1966. pp. 43-58.

e of the Educational Policies Commission began the project entitled "The Role of the Arts in

Education" because it seemed to be called for by another

project which the Commission published last summer under the title "Education and the Spirit of Science." The thesis of that project is that the future of mankind and of men as individuals depends on development of their ability to think rationally. Some people believe that if you favor science, you must be against art. We think that is nonsense, but at least it helped us get this project started.

We of the EPC staff feel that there is a much deeper reason to get into a project dealing with the educational role of aesthetic experience: it is that the more one studies the processes of rational thought, the closer one comes to aesthetic components. It is easy to say, "Teach him to think," but what does it mean to think? It certainly does not mean to apply some kind of mechanistic structure; it does not mean to be coldly logical. It means to perceive meanings, to see connections, to press the powers of the mind onto events. The process of thought is not receiving something from the outside world, but instead it goes the other way. It is a process of constructing connections and integrations which occur within human minds and are then applied by the mind to the external event. The process is intensely creative; it is intuitive; and it has all the elements and the terms that we use when we describe aesthetic events. Consequently, our next great push in understanding the intellectual revolution of our time is to see if we can understand the essential components of rational processes, particularly those parts which encompass the intuitive, the aesthetic, the creative, and the irrational. Thus there is in our background a set of motives which were not all alike; on the one hand, the staff conceived of the project as a central thrust into the major intellectual problem of our age, but there were members of the Commission who had a much more down-to-earth approach.

We decided to start with practicing artists. We discovered that when we asked questions like-"What are we really doing? What is it worth? Is it really worth it?"-that these people have not asked themselves these questions. They do not think in those terms because they are not asking for any one else to make a commitment; they are just making a commitment of themselves.

Then we went to groups of art educators, and here we discovered something that was to us a surprise. I went to the meeting of the National Council on the Arts in Education last September, and just for an exercise I did something that I had previously done in a lot of other fields: that is, to find out what the leaders of that field say are the benefits of participation in that field. I once did a

Dr. James Russell previewed a project by the Educational Policies Commission in this address to the Second General Session on "The Role of the Arts in Education."

study of what economists (or teachers of English or political science or physical education, or almost anything) say are the benefits in studying their field. We discovered that all of these fields make virtually identical claims. For example, by studying physical education what do you get? You get character, citizenship, religion. Down in about fifth place, you get physical fitness. History teaches patriotism; literature teaches ethics, or humanity, or some other godhead. So, since other fields are so pretentious in their stated expectations, I wondered what the professionals in the arts and humanities would claim. A short perusal of recent literature turned up a group of quotations, not old classics but modern classics.

Thus the Commission on the Humanities, in the section "America's Need of the Humanities," gives five major reasons for supporting them and concludes the statement of each reason with the following sentences, quoted from pages 4 and 5 of the Commission's Report: (1) "It is both the dignity and the duty of humanists to offer their fellow-countrymen whatever understanding can be attained by fallible humanity of such enduring values as justice, freedom, virtue, beauty, and truth. Only thus do we join ourselves to the heritage of our nation and our human kind;" (2) "To know the best that has been thought and said in former times can make us wiser than we otherwise might be, and in this respect the humanities are not merely ours but the world's best hope;" (3) "It is by way of the humanities that we best come to understand cultures other than our own, and they best to understand ours;" (4) "If we appear to discourage creativity, to demean the fanciful and the beautiful, to have no concern for man's ultimate destiny-if, in short, we ignore the humanities-then both our goals and our efforts to attain them will be measured with suspicion;" and (5) "The humanities are the immemorial answer to man's questioning and to his need for self-expression; they are uniquely equipped to fill the 'abyss of leisure'."

Or Marshall McLuhan, writing of modern man reeling under the impact of change: "The percussed victims of the new technology have invariably muttered cliches about the impracticality of artists and their fanciful preferences. But in the past century it has come to be generally acknowledged that, in the words of Wyndham Lewis, 'The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present'." (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964, p. 65.)

Or the Committee on the Schools of the Commission on the Humanities: ". .. we would assert that the humanities play a uniquely effective role in determining a man's behavior and values. Included in the humanities are those studies that help man to find a purpose, that endow him with the ability to criticize intelligently and therefore to improve his own society, and that establish for the individual his sense of identity with other men both in his own country and in the world at large. Men and women who have a thoughtful appreciation of humane studies understand more fully than others the complexities with which we all live, and they have the potential for dealing with these complexities more rationally and more

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successfully than people who are unaware of or indifferent to the humanities. Those who understand and appreciate the humanities also lead more rewarding lives both within their own hearts and minds and in their relations with their neighbors and associates, their communities and their country." (Report of the Commission on the Humanities, 1965, p. 20.)

So they understand more fully, they deal more rationally, they deal more successfully. Do I hear a second coming approaching? Who will take this literature seriously? There is only one group who will, and that is us. We take it seriously because we are expressing a commitment to some of these same things. But will school boards take it seriously? Will we sell this literature to the businessman who is making the day-to-day decisions that decide whether or not we have the funds to do the job we know we need to do? Can we sell this literature to the legislators? The point I am making is that this literature is defective. It is defective for a peculiarly arrogant reason, and that is that it speaks ex cathedra, without reference even to our own experience. It does not state points that the unconvinced will believe; it operates, in effect, in terms of a closed system, on the assumption that we all agree. Hence, it does not provide a basis upon which to defend school programs.

Is there a better way to describe the role of aesthetic experience and root it in something more convincing than an asserted claim of authority? These statements don't answer questions; they raise them. So we constructed a set of questions ourselves, not knowing whether or not they were valid: "What is meant by education of the emotions? Are emotional responses teachable? If so, how are they taught? Is skill in the use of language the product of aesthetic experience? Is there such a thing as communication through art? If so, what is communicated? How can we study these communications? Do aesthetic experiences communicate and teach values? Do the arts form good taste? Does the experience of good taste carry over into good taste in daily living? Is the development of the ability to think furthered by aesthetic experiences? Does aesthetic experience communicate and teach values? Does aesthetic experience foster creativity? Can the arts be used to form the powers of perception? Do people see differently because of artistic experience? Does one learn about the humanities through the arts? Does one learn through the arts how to deal rationally with the complexities of life? Does one get revelations of other aspects of reality through the arts? What are the sorts of experiences, aesthetic or other, which develop a broad human being? Are th gains for students in having the opport izi- through artistic creation to express themselves, perhaps reducing internal tensions? Is catharsis an identifiable effec? Does the joy of participating in the perfor ng

arts have beneficial by-products? Does it provide, perhaps, a rationale for staying in school to persons who would otherwise drop out?"

We quickly concluded that these questions were not all equal. They are not all equally valuable to ask, and as we assembled data on them, we came to the awkward conclusion that some of the questions are better unasked. They do not deal with anyone's experience; they are really a reflection of some of the more silly of the ex cathedra pronouncements.

Our staff has recently begun dealing in depth with psychologists in human development, such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Nevitt Sanford, and we are reaching toward a set of formulations that we think are defensible. There are four areas in which we think we can point to empirically verifiable reasons for providing aesthetic experiences.

The first of the four areas is the concept "joy. It seems to us that it is not difficult to demonstrate that the aesthetic experience is one which carries a kind of satisfying quality for the person experiencing it. This is true in a much deeper sense than just the word "happiness" or "Isn't it a nice day today?" There is joy in the catharsis effect; you can have tears streaming down your cheeks and still say that the experience is joyful. Joy is not a simple concept. There are a lot of people who tell us it is a bad word and advise us to back away from it. Dewey faced this problem in looking subjectively at the aesthetic experience, and he used the word "play." People criticize that word for its connotations. But Dewey did not mean it in only that sense at all. He meant it in the sense that it is an activity pursued not for an external reason, but for its own sake: it is self-dignifying. I think that joy is a better word to describe the

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same effect. I believe the world will accept it. But what the world will not accept is the thesis that the joyful is necessary in life or in education. How does one argue that joy is so worthwhile as to justify putting public money into it and trying to make it part of the universal education of the person? I think we have to find the bridge between the value of an aesthetic experience and universal art education. The bridge between those two concepts, I think, lies in other areas.

The second of these areas we have termed release, or catharsis. We mean release in a number of senses. For one thing, it is possible to have an emotional experience in the course of an aesthetic experience. One can work off tensions, just as 50-year old adolescents work them off watching professional football games. Release is also available in much more subtle ways; artists in various mediums find it relatively easy to handle ranges of experience that are otherwise often excluded. Society will permit in art things that it will not permit in social relations. It is therefore possible for a person to find in art a release of tension. The question, or one of the questions, is: "Are these tensions present in all persons or are these just the qualities of a sick person?" And our answer would be that we think they are present in all persons, and here is where we hope to cross one of the bridges to universal education. There is rational value in the perception of yourself, and some part of what you are perceiving is the irrational states which can be brought to attention, observed, and come to be known through aesthetic experience. This process of the knowing of the self is certainly central to the process of becoming rational, and hence the release concept as we are using it carries a great deal of weight. But most of the research in this field deals with pathological situations. In the field of penology, for example, there is considerable research on the effect of providing aesthetic experiences to the prisoners. There is a demonstrable effect in the reduction of violence. Music, it seems, really does have charms to soothe the savage breast.

The third of these main areas we are calling creativity, but we do not mean it in the sense of action in the creative arts. What we do mean is open, spontaneous, nonconventional, free responding-a lack of hesitation, an absence of that tongue-tiedness

to which we are so accustomed in adolescents. This sort of quality is central to rational process. It is observably present in the curiosity and spontaneity of six-year olds. But many things in most schools seem designed to stamp this out; I am afraid that I have even seen it done in art classes. I recall once seeing a first grader denounced because he had painted the human face green. He was told he had wasted public property-faces are not green. But even if such tragic events did not happen in education in the arts, the rest of education would force on a child the awareness that he is going to be evaluated continuously, and that he will be humiliated day by day and year by year. This fact alone indicates the need for a very fundamental revolution-- not just in art education but in all education.

What is the kind of education that conserves the creativity, openness, spontaneity, and curiosity that is already there? Here again, the evidence is quite thin. The evidence is negative: we know some of the things that stamp it out. Does aesthetic experience directly foster it? There is some evidence that it does, but I think the evidence is much more persuasive put the other way around. We do not know whether artistic experience generates it, but we do know that it provides one of the best opportunities in the school program for the freely given expression of the self. Here I think that a strong argument can be stated: that it is in the role of developing spontaneity and openness in this person as a thinking person, not as an artist, that the arts make their greatest contribution. I think this probably will be the strongest point we can make. It certainly belongs in the defense of the arts.

The fourth of the effects is one we are having trouble with. We named it the lemon-juice effect. If you give an aesthetic component to an experience, you intensify the experience, much as lemon juice added to something intensifies the flavor. One example is the use of the novel, an art form which requires a high degree of integration of external data. A child studying a novel often puts himself into the situation, thus making the experience of the novel more vital to himself.

What we are now trying to do is to develop a statement which will anchor itself in these four areas and, added together, will say that here is a case for the integration of aesthetic experience into the school program at every level, continuously, and in a context in which the performer-the person involved-is not being threatened in his own integrity or his own dignity. We are toying

with the question of whether we should then go into the structure of fine art as a field, talking about the necessity to recognize that we have on the one hand actual participation as a practitioner, on the other, the more or less passive reception as the appreciator, and in between the intermediator; thus we have three levels of performance. And as you go to the art itself, you come first to the student of art and behind him your pure performer. You come ultimately to the art as a discipline, with all that that entails. One of our own possibilities will be to try to describe the program in those terms-in effect looking outward from the classroom back to the fine art as a discipline

Another possibility that I would like to explore is the nature of the aesthetic experience. I would like to make my point by reference to some graphics. I have a theory that it is possible to describe the structure of an aesthetic experience. It depends on understanding the concept of integration. Take, for instance, the famous reversing figures: the so-called open book design (figure 1) can be seen either as a book with the pages open toward the observer or showing the back cover of the book. If you look at it for a while, you see that not only can you shift it back and forth, but you can do it almost at will. Another of these figures is the so-called open tetrahedron (figure 2). The close angle of the tetrahedron can seem close to the observer, as if he stands above the figure, looking down on that angle. Or it can seem, by concentrating on the far point, as if he were standing underneath the Washington Monument looking up at it. This figure reverses itself also. Another example is the so-called reversing staircase (figure 3); it looks like a descending staircase at one time, but at another like an ascending staircase.

These are abstract examples of the way in which the human mind responds to external stimuli and supplies additional data, in a form which it creates, to make an integration. But there is more than one integration. These integrations are in various relationships to each other. When there is a tension between them, according to my theory, you have an aesthetic experience. These tensions can exist in a lot of forms; the examples I have used so far are examples of line. I want to demonstrate that these also occur with reference to mass, color, general

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design, shape, even to abstract forms, as in poetry. An illustration of the first of these is the Parthenon. Everyone knows of the subtleties of the Parthenon: the slightly convex verticals, the curving base of the entablature, the slight rise on the long side. Some people in the graphic arts say this was done to correct poor illusions. I do not think this is so. I think it was done for psychological reasons, in order to introduce the tension line. Incidentally, an example in the United States is the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, which has the same sort of subtleties in the facade. It unsettles a fixed design and introduces what I call dynamic tension.

I turn now to another medium, the dynamic tensions here being introduced in a variety of different dimensions. Observe the instability of the Lorenzo and Dawn and Dusk in the Medici Tombs in Florence. Those of you who have actually been in that room will recognize that it has an unsettling effect, a physical effect, which Michelangelo aimed for. In the contrapusto is shown the twisting of the figures against themselves in an effort to introduce dynamic tension, which is even more in evidence in the statue Winged Victory. The body is used as if it consisted of horizontal planes, each being twisted against the other to introduce the quality of tension.

This quality of tension can also be found in many of the other arts. In Picasso's painting Girl in Front of a Mirror, for example, he not only brings the tensions in forms of integration which involve line and mass and design and also color, plus the mirror-image effects echoing, but also tries to introduce contradictions of integrations which sit in tension with each other in seven or eight different dimensions all at one time.

Finally I suggest another abstraction, in which the dynamic tension is supplied by a direct internal contradiction, an irrational figure (figure 4). At one end we integrate it one way; at the other, another way. The two cannot coexist. Some people are made intensely uncomfortable by contemplating such designs. There are entire schools of painting devoted to exploiting such effects: Magritte, for example.

What we are talking about when we talk of aesthetic experience is not something present in the external stimulus; we are talking about something present in the internal perception. My theory is that the thing that is present in the internal perception is multiple integrations with tensions among them. The experience of beauty is therefore in a very deep sense the experience of oneself. I do not know whether this point is capable of being developed, but I hope to try, and I hope to have the cooperation of art educators everywhere in an endeavor, which, if successful, might put us all on a sounder footing in gaining the support we all need.

hange has occurred in the past decade and will continue to occur even more rapidly in the next. The challenge for

education is to obtain a degree of consonance with changes and

innovations in educational, scientific, and technological areas. No longer can we speak of desired changes without implementation. To quote Adrian Sanford: "The whole purpose of the new technology for learning is really to bring about in the specified learner some kind of change in behavior in a direction which we who are involved in education want to see brought about."' We must resolve what types of materials should be developed and what method of presentation will be most effective, as well as what environment will encourage effective implementation of the learning process. The modern school building must frequently provide adaptation to grouping arrangements of all types. Grouping children for specific learning purposes enhances individual learning. School facilities must accommodate individual student study areas, small study groups, and large groups of students in presentation classes. According to Sanford, of all the constructs of learning, the small group offers probably more advantages and fewer disadvantages than any other.2

Such a learning arrangement may well provide an answer to the problem faced by teachers and curriculum specialists in accommodating the mass of knowledge available and requiring understanding. Knowledge has nearly doubled since 1947; it is anticipated it will double again within the next five years. With this increase in information at our disposal the challenge to education processes and systems is almost staggering. Change no longer occurs over a period of years, but in seconds or microseconds. The educational process of 20 years ago equipped us to resolve most problems by simple writing and communication systems. Written and oral communications now require high-speed computers to provide answers rapidly enough to maintain some currency. The educational process of today has the challenge of equipping students to understand, program, and control the machines required for this advanced knowledge collecting, generation, and understanding. Can we still expect the methods employed and the tools used during our education to effectively prepare the present students for their work, professional careers, and responsible actions in the world of tomorrow?

Why has this change occurred? Although we attribute much of it to the Russian Sputnik, it began in the U.S. political system. During World War II, legislators needed

scientific information to make crucial decisions. Vannevar Bush was employed to develop and coordinate scientific research needed by the government. Bush worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science; in 1950, after considerable effort, the National Science Foundation was formed. Aided by Sputnik, the National Science Foundation has financed and encouraged practically every curriculum innovation in the schools since 1957. Recently, additional support has been provided the schools through the National Defense Education Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Concern for low-income facilities, individuals, and the developing demands for manpower to meet the needs of technical change in our economy have been among the dynamic forces for change in our country. A continuous chain reaction has developed in our scientific and technological fields. The more we learn, the more we need to learn.

Research and development centers are an accepted facet of the business and industrial world. Now R and D centers are available to educational research. Thirteen centers are presently funded by the U.S. Office of Education for the purpose of conducting research in education. From this intensive research has come greater knowledge of child growth and development and increased information on theories of learning and strategies of instruction. This has led us to reevaluate the school facilities in areas of (1) teacher role in instruction, (2) logic of the self-contained classroom, and (3) reorganization of school planning of work functions of teachers and the support functions of materials, equipment, and building. The psychological needs of teachers and students are considered intimately tied to school facility planning.

The role of the teacher includes the utilization of professional skill in collecting and synthesizing data describing each student to provide guidance in his learning. The lecture method is being replaced with small group seminars and individual lessons. We once considered it absolutely necessary to contain elementary children in a classroom with their own teacher to provide security. Children do need security, but security can generate through assuming independence and responsibility for the results of behavior and work. School personnel have found that students, given the opportunity for independent study, have developed effective and efficient learning processes that produce valuable knowledge and achieve esteemed goals of education.

Educational methodology increasingly involves the individual child in the learning process. Blackboards and textbooks as instructional tools are giving way to audiovisual components operated by individual students for their own needs and desires. The electronic age has numerous devices applicable to education. Television provides opportunities for instruction of large groups of youngsters, but also provides a tool for the individual child through miniaturization of receivers. Computer-based teaching devices, talking typewriters, and question and answer machines utilizing an electronic stylus are operational. These emphasize individuality and recognize that learning occurs at the choice of the individual. Retrieval systems for immediate

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Dr. James D. MacConnell explores the role of facilities in educational change in this address to the Fourth General Session entitled "Are We Condoning Candlelight Educational Facilities for a Satellite Educational Program?"

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