US Asst. Secretary of Education Peter Cunninghan on Education, Creativity, and the Arts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiWg3edBawg

US Department of Education Arts Magnet Blue Ribbon School in Baton Rouge, LA

http://www.youtube.com/user/usedgov#p/search/0/EONzNXrNZVU

NEA Webcast on Creative Placemaking Now Available Online

 This panel discussion on the role of the arts and the creative community in creating livable, sustainable communities is now available at:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9570386

Panel participants include Richard Florida, author The Rise of the Creative Class and The Great Reset; Tim Jones, president & CEO of Toronto Artscape; Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas; Ann Markusen, director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute; and moderator Carol Coletta, CEO of CEOs for Cities.

Following are some of what I heard from the panel this afternoon:

• Creative Places/Spaces engender:
  • Optimism
  • Inspiration
  • Curiosity
  • Learning

Rick Lowe, Founder, Project Row Houses, Houston, Texas

• Creativity is a major factor in growth and change in the world.

• Places that are truly creative have creativity that permeates all areas and levels. Arts and culture are strategic catalysts that can help inspire more people.

• People care about arts and culture. When you look at what gives people a good deal of happiness….the aesthetic sense of a place, creative places are multi-dimensional.

• It’s time to move beyond putting creativity and the arts on display. The real challenge of our time is to put creativity to work.

• We have to enhance the creative capacities of kids not destroy them.

Watch and listen. Let us know what you hear by going starting a discussion at:

http://mivpaa.blogspot.com/

The Michigan Film Office and Education

The Michigan Film Office provides information on film, television, and digital media related programs in Michigan including state universities, community colleges, and trade schools.

In order to teach a trade, occupation or vocation for a fee or consideration of any kind you must be licensed to operate a proprietary school by the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (Reference: MCL 395.101). We will not be posting training opportunities except from licensed providers. For more information please go to www.michiganps.net 

Announcement

One of the goals of the Michigan Film Office has been to create and put in place educational competencies for all entities planning to offer training to develop new Michigan crew for the growing film industry.
Michigan Film Industry Job Competencies have been adopted by Michigan Film Office Advisory Council. These competencies are a standard that schools may voluntarily adopt as their measure to insure we have a skilled, trained, and quality educated film production workforce. Students may also refer to them as a guide to insure they are receiving the necessary education to be an effective candidate for a film production job in Michigan.

Link: Michigan Film Industry Competencies (pdf)
When considering a school students may want to ask the following questions as a guide to insuring they receive a quality education that properly prepares them for employment in the film production industry.

1. Is the school accredited and/ or licensed?
2. Does the school voluntarily agree to adopt the ‘Michigan Film Industry Job Competencies”?
3. Does the school have any job placement assistance, how many former students are working in the business, and what type of jobs do they have ?
4. Does the school have any relationships with the film unions , prospective employers, production houses , or producers?
5. Are there former students available you can speak with?
6. What length and costs are the programs they offer?
7. Are the instructors professionals in the field they are teaching and do they have credits to their name on productions?
8. Are there any complaints against the school? Were they resolved in a timely and effective manner?
9. What type of equipment and facility does the school utilize?
10. Does the school offer specific classes in the field you are planning on entering?

The answer to these questions will help the prospective student make an informed decision as to the best school for their specific needs.
If you have any questions please contact:
Richard Jewell
Workforce Development Manager
(517) 241-8589
jewellr@michigan.org

http://www.michiganfilmoffice.org/Jobs-and-Training/Education/Default.aspx

Let's Save Michigan

http://letssavemichigan.com/blog/

Michigan can emerge from the current downturn stronger, more livable, and more likely to withstand future economic crises—but only if we convince our elected officials to put the right policies in place. To save Michigan, we must come together and fight for smart redevelopment and a rededication to our cities. Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, and other struggling cities shouldn’t be abandoned to sprawl and blight. They should be transformed into centers for culture and innovation to attract a talented workforce and tomorrow’s growth industries.
“The point of cities is multiplicity of choice,” Jane Jacobs once wrote. We completely agree. Downtowns should be dynamic hubs where jobs, stores, restaurants, and other amenities are all within walking distance. Through sustainable urban planning and careful tax-incentive programs, we can carve out vibrant neighborhoods in Michigan’s city centers, attracting a diverse mix of businesses and residents. Urge your state and local officials to support mixed-use buildings, people-centric zoning policies, and tax incentives for investing in cities.
We want to foster more livable cities through the development of alternative modes of transportation. As we work to resurrect our cities and streets, we must keep pedestrians and cyclists in mind. Urban neighborhoods are best experienced from the sidewalk, among the people, at ground level. Demand that your elected officials endorse public-transportation solutions, bicycle-friendly roads, and pedestrian-friendly open areas.
The state must dedicate itself to improving and maintaining quality of life for all residents. Funding for parks, public services, and the arts isn’t a luxury—it’s critical to the health of our cities and our state, and every Michigan resident’s future. We must be mindful of fiscal realities, but we must not allow our cities to be stripped of their unique character. Insist that your legislators embrace policies that support museums, restaurants, bars, libraries, and performance spaces—the lifeblood of vibrant cities

By changing its approach to its cities, Michigan can attract and keep a dynamic workforce that will carry the state through the end of the 21st century—and beyond.
Won’t you join our fight?

Student Voice and Film in Exploring Identity

Researcher Erica Halversion discusses the role of film-making in identity construction for adolescents.

Detroit Diary: Detroiter is a Finalist in Poetry Out Loud

Detroit Diary: Detroiter is a Finalist in Poetry Out Loud

Creativity in the Classroom by Dave Gray, founder and CEO of XPLANE, the visual thinking company.

Futurist Alvin Toffler once said that mass education has both an overt and a covert curriculum. The overt curriculum was “reading, writing and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects.”1 But beneath it, he said, lay an invisible or “covert curriculum” which consisted of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience and one in rote, repetitive work.

This makes sense when you look at the history of U.S. education. The public school system was introduced during the industrial revolution, which spanned from about 1840-1920. In 1840, most of the population (about 90 percent) lived in rural communities, and by 1920, the urban/rural split was about 50/50, as workers migrated to cities to work in factories.

The industrial revolution radically changed the way we turned raw materials into products. It changed the way goods were collected, processed, exchanged, distributed and ultimately controlled. This changed not only how we organized our work but how we organized society.

The factory teaching model that Toffler describes was successful throughout most of the 20th century. It is so deeply embedded in our educational system that it’s sometimes hard to see. We don’t notice it because it’s how we learned when we were in school – it’s how we were trained to be the people we are today.
But today’s world brings new challenges, for which many of us find ourselves unprepared. New technologies with massive processing power are connecting more people to more information than was previously conceivable. The amount of new information in the world doubles every two years. It’s predicted that by 2015 it will double every week.

Like the industrial revolution, this new information revolution is shifting the way we collect, process, exchange, distribute and control a key asset – information. This new economy requires a new kind of worker, with different skills, methods and approaches.

It also requires a rethinking of our educational system. What should a new, revised curriculum look like? For clues, let’s examine the fundamental differences between industrial work and knowledge work.
How do we prepare students for a world that’s undergoing such radical change, a world where none of us have ever been and many of us still don’t understand? We need a system that looks at teaching differently; that rewards breadth of vision and creativity and recognizes a diversity of viewpoints.

To continue reading, go to: Creativity in the Classroom

Michigan Teaching School Tries Something New - NPR

 Larry Abramson/NPR

America's teachers' colleges are facing some pressure to reinvent themselves.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been leading the assault, with a series of speeches calling for better teacher training. Duncan says it's crucial that education schools revamp their curricula so they can help replace a wave of baby boomers who will soon retire from teaching.

One university is trying to rebuild its teacher-training program from the ground up.
At the University of Michigan School of Education, Dean Deborah Ball and her faculty have taken apart their training program and reassembled it, trying to figure out what skills teachers really need.

Katie Westin, a senior at the University of Michigan and a student teacher, says that when she compares notes with teachers-in-training at other schools, it's clear that her program is more hands-on.

 

 

Katie Westin, a senior at the University of Michigan and a student teacher, says that when she compares notes with teachers-in-training at other schools, it's clear that her program is more hands-on.

"We expect people to be reliably able to carry out that work. We don't seem to have that same level of expectation or requirement around teaching," Ball says.

Teacher Education Initiative
The program overhaul — an ongoing process that began five years ago — is called the Teacher Education Initiative. It will cut the number of classes students must take, and it will turn time in the classroom into an experience that is tightly focused on problem solving.

"Image the difference between learning about child development, which is unquestionably helpful, and learning how to have a sensible interaction with a child, which permits you to know exactly what's going wrong right now with that child's reading, or why is this error occurring over and over again in math. That's actually being able to do something with that knowledge," Ball says.

The program stresses what teachers have to do, not simply what they have to know.

Professor Robert Bain says that when the effort is finished, the education program will no longer be a series of courses students have to take, "but rather a program that's building on these experiences, much like most professional schools, like a good med school or law school."

The university has also picked up an idea from medical school: rounds.

You can see the idea in action at North Middle School in Belleville, Mich. Teacher Steve Hudock is talking to four University of Michigan student teachers before seventh and eighth graders arrive for a class on comparative religion.

Read The Series

Lesson Plans: What Makes A Great Teacher?

This is one of several schools these budding teachers will visit as they learn to analyze various teaching problems in different settings. Here, it's how to deal with students in small groups.
Bain says that before class, he demonstrated how the teachers-in-training might approach this challenge.
"What their job is, is to practice the experience with actual students, but then also look to see how Mr. Hudock, a skilled teacher, does the exact same sorts of things," Bain says.
Student teacher Katie Westin says that when she compares notes with teaching students in other programs, she notices a big difference.
"We take on more of an interactive role, I think, than some of the other programs do, because we actually lead lessons, and we get to work with the students in group activities."

Hands-On Training
Once the religion class is over, the group sits down with Hudock and talks about what worked and what didn't.

Hudock says this is a lot different than the student-teaching experience he had 15 years ago.

The College Board Launches "Arts at the Core" Website with Recommendations for Advancing the State of Arts Education in the 21st Century

Comprised of more than 50 leading educators and artists, the National Task Force on the Arts in Education (NTFAE) was created in 2008 to address the opportunities and challenges facing arts education in the United States. The NTFAE advises the College Board by recommending strategies for placing the arts at the core of elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. These strategies include:

Researching underserved student populations.

Promoting student creativity.

Understanding the arts in a global perspective.
Integrating the arts into a greater number of College Board programs.
Engaging a greater number of professional artists in arts education.
Building partnerships and affecting policy at the national, state, and local levels.

The NTFAE's report, "Arts at the Core: Recommendations for advancing the state of arts education in the 21st Century" confronts challenges to the state of the arts in education, identifies the many benefits of arts learning, and details eight key recommendations for advancing the place of the arts in American education. It outlines recommendations for making the arts a core component of American education.

For more information, read the brochure and final report, Arts at the Core, available at the link below. This brochure introduces you to the voices and ideas that make up the NTFAE. Learn more about the importance of the arts in education through these essays from leading thinkers and policy makers in arts education.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/policy-advocacy/access/national-arts-task-force

Another point of view on "Art Expert: The Problem with School Art Programs are Teachers Who "Can Barely Draw"

Art Expert: The Problem With School Art Programs Are Teachers Who "Can Barely Draw"
David C. Levy

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/david-levy-the-problem-with-sc.html#

http://mivpaa.blogspot.com/2009/10/problem-with-school-art-programs-are.html

I am in my ninth year as a high school art teacher. After a twenty-year career in illustration, I went to back to school to receive my teacher certification and a master’s degree in art education. I have to say that the vast majority of art ed students I attended classes with (undergraduate and graduate students alike) had very limited ability in terms of traditional art skills such as realistic drawing and painting. Additionally, I have to say that I have been largely pretty unimpressed with most of the teacher artwork that has been on display at the art education conferences I have attended. In my opinion, David C. Levy’s assertion that “many art teachers can barely draw” is correct.

Mr. Levy cites a number of reasons as to why this is. To him, the main reason is that K-12 visual art instruction focuses on “the nurturing of ‘creativity and self-expression’ at the expense of competence.” This is in large part true, as far as I can tell. The question is, why is this so?

It is my assertion that the reason lies within the realm of art philosophy and art criticism over the last hundred years or more. The modern era brought with it a myriad of changes in not only art, but in Western culture as a whole. World War I spawned DADA, with its outright rejection of tradition; Marcel Duchamp and others created a anti-art/non-art aesthetic/non-aesthetic. The Surrealists, influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, also turned from tradition, exploring the world of dreams and the subconscious mind. In mid-century, the influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg determined that for art to be ART, it had to always be new and different. Painting was no longer about “making pictures”, it became simply about paint on a flat surface. Initially supported by Greenberg, Willem de Kooning, after painting pure abstraction in the late 1940s, returned to figurative painting with his “Woman” series, and he was essentially rejected by Greenberg as being “old-fashioned”. Never mind that most people today would likely consider de Kooning’s Woman paintings as exceedingly modern, if not downright ugly.

Having passed from Abstract Expressionism through Pop Art and Minimalism, we are now in what many consider to be the Postmodern era in art (and Western culture in general). Art has now gotten to the point where, to many people in the upper echelon of the fine art world, we have moved beyond the “art object” itself, and are into the realm of pure concept. For many in the art world, SKILL IS NO LONGER AN ISSUE. In fact, there is now a whole body of literature on the notion of “deskilling” in art.

One might also look back to the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s, where “do your own thing” was the order of the day. Certainly, many art teachers and post-secondary art educators over the last few decades came from that era, and one could argue that many of them have continued to pass along this mentality to art teachers of more recent years.

Indeed, to many art teachers, art is about “creativity and self-expression”, and it is oftentimes also much about helping students explore and express ideas in the political/social arena—one need only look at an issue of Art Education journal to see that this is the case. Never mind that the sociopolitical themes are heavily leaning in one direction. This is, of course, also true in post-secondary art programs, and in the contemporary art world in general.

Art is about many things nowadays, but in the art world and in K-12 visual art education, it does not seem to be much about skill. K-12 visual art standards and benchmarks are for the most part non-specific and open to interpretation; for example: “Intentionally use art materials and tools effectively to communicate ideas.” How about something like “Demonstrate the ability to draw a properly proportioned human figure”? Not a chance. As Mr. Levy implies, a lot of K-12 art teachers would have difficulty doing this.

Is there a solution? In large part, probably not, given the state of art in general in the postmodern era. For my part, I run a program that places a good amount of emphasis on traditional skills. As I like to say, if you can’t write a decent sentence, how are you going to write a whole story?

One final word: art teachers, if your drawing skills are really weak, try taking a few life drawing classes.

Richard Jacobi
Arts Academy in the Woods
Fraser, Michigan
http://rjart.blogspot.com/

Response to David C. Levy article "But many Art Teachers Can Barely Draw!

The following was submitted in response to David C. Levy's article posted earlier on this blog. Bolded sections refer to statements in Levy's article.

To my associates, the Visual Art Teachers,
10/20/2009


I will address point by point what I view as flaws in David C. Levy's article discussing "But many art teachers can barely draw!".


38 credits of studio instruction

Studio classes consist of 9 hours of studio time for every three hours of credit. While he said that you could take 38 hours in little more than a year (15, 15, 8), it would not be productive nor would any student attempt it, it would mean 135 hours of studio time per week!

Most college majors consist of 30 hours of credit. At Eastern Michigan University, the B.F.A. program consists of 60 hours of Art. The Art Education is an additional 20 hours.


... this precious learning time is generally fractured into a smorgasbord of classes in unrelated media and disciplines

Art students do take a variety of classes but select an area to specialize in. Some are ceramics majors, other are printmakers, others are painters, but no one has a smorgasbord of classes.

Dr. Levy continues to compare Visual Art Education to Music Education and states that this selection of unrelated classes is unacceptable and that
“We would think such an approach absurd.” I believe that your whole approach to the Visual Arts is a bit absurd!

Of course Visual Art teachers can draw, sculpt, create and educate!

As they become adolescents, much of the ingenuousness that underlay their earlier creative spontaneity will automatically disappear; but good art-making skills will stay with them for life and, for some, the creativity will resurface. At this point it should be enhanced by the existence of the technical skills to actualize its full potential.

Yes this is true and it is what every elementary Visual Art educator is attempting it achieve and to a large extent, doing so with a great deal of success.

Consider that we don’t teach elementary school children creative writing;

I really question this, and in fact, encourage creative writing in my Visual Arts classroom, or as I call it, the Art studio. I am sure if you talked to the regular classroom teachers, they would question your assertion.

Most students entering college art departments or even professional art schools bring little more than their elementary and high school art classes as background preparation. And, as we have seen, skill development is often sadly lacking in these settings. (How could it be otherwise, when the majority of their teachers have so few skills of their own to teach?)

Again, another slap in the face of the Visual Arts teachers... shame on you Dr. Levy. Many of the Visual Art departments in colleges and universities require a portfolio of the students work and interviews to be accepted. High school teachers spend considerable time preparing students for application and provide portfolio production classes or after school assistance.

Visual Art students need to know how to draw to get in the door! It is like saying a music student went to college to study music because he/she liked the sound of the french horn! This is absurdity!

By contrast, the serious music student has probably had ten or more years of private study with a competent professional as well as participation in advanced school music programs, community orchestras and the like,

Ten or more years of private study? Well of course this student does have an advantage, but what about the other music students? What are their options and future in Music education?


even in the most selective of art schools the freshman year (or as it is often called, the “Foundation Year”) is essentially remedial. It does exactly what its name implies – lays down a visual arts foundation that should have been built years before.

Again, a true lack of respect for the Visual Arts teachers. As stated previously, Visual Art students need to present a quality portfolio to be accepted.

One might hope that even if the elementary schools are not doing their job, an interested and/or talented student would have an opportunity to develop visual skills at the high school level.

The elementary schools are doing their job in teaching Visual Art and encourage students to continue in middle school (a level that Dr. Levy seems to forget) and hopefully in high school.

most laymen are incapable of telling good drawing from bad, have little sense of composition or design and, in fact, don’t much care.

It appears that according to Dr. Levy, only a select few are capable of discerning the true effectiveness of quality visual art. As I used to tell my friends who questioned Art in school, “What would your sports car look like if it wasn’t designed by an artist?” Of course the layperson is capable of identifying and selecting quality Art, and they do care!

Regrettably, I have no answers. This is a gloomy picture and is likely to remain so. The miracle is that even without the enlightened interest and support of the educational community or the mainstream American public we continue to produce talented, skilled and creative visual artists.


Regrettably I had to listen to you trash the abilities of qualified people in the Visual Arts while still supporting the Music education. We are the Arts, both music and the visual field. True you have a greater resume than me and are able to identify various studies (without being specific to their source. But IF you are so qualified, why don’t you have the answers?

I do believe that yes we can draw and sculpt and paint and photograph and create digital art and effectively demonstrate for our students, and encourage and inspire and develop our future artists... and not accept your opinion especially without any clear direction to eliminate the so called “gloomy picture”.

As I said earlier, your resume is quite impressive although I couldn’t find it on the internet, but my question is, can you draw or play music? I assume you to be quite proficient given your ability to draw opinions on the talents of others.


We all need to work together to help our students, negative attitudes do nothing to solve the problems we all face given the economy of today. All Art is important to the future but questioning the abilities of the teachers displays a lack of respect, which is always present in my Art Studio.


Respectfully submitted,


Jim Schulz
Elementary Art Teacher
Haisley Elementary School
Ann Arbor Public Schools

The Problem With School Art Programs Are Teachers Who "Can Barely Draw"

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/david-levy-the-problem-with-sc.html#

Hand wringing among the enlightened has been a fairly standard response to the widespread practice of cutting the arts first – especially the visual arts -- when school budgets start crunching.

The arts community usually counters this ritual by references to data that show the positive effect of arts instruction on learning in “core” academic subjects. Though intellectually sound, this tactic has been sadly ineffective. It is also unfortunate that in order to make their case, arts advocates have found it necessary to piggyback on English or math rather than come right out with the plain fact that the arts are critically important to a civilized society.

Many believe that the repeated bloodletting of arts curricula in our schools is a reflection of community values in which the arts rank very poorly; perhaps a legacy from our iconoclastic 17th century forebears as well as the outcome of general disbelief in the arts’ relevance to intellectual and academic growth.
I would argue, however, that there is another reason why the arts, and visual arts in particular, are an endangered species in American K – 12 education.
It has been my observation that primary and secondary school art teachers rank very low on the continuum of professional respect among their peers.
And I would posit as a significant cause that they have generally not achieved a sufficient level of skill in their discipline to deserve that respect. For example, while English teachers may not be able to write The Great American Novel, the chances are pretty good that they can compose a competent essay. But many art teachers can barely draw!

This, however, is really not their fault.
A survey of undergraduate art education curricula leading to teacher certification in the U.S. will show that few exceed 38 credits of studio instruction. In other words, the aggregated exposure to art-making by students in these programs adds up to just a tad more than one year.
What is worse, rather then comprising a progressively developing, skill- and concept-building sequence, this precious learning time is generally fractured into a smorgasbord of classes in unrelated media and disciplines -- presumably so teachers can respond to diverse areas of student interest.
The result is a curriculum shaped by a pastiche of courses; e.g., one in ceramics, another in printmaking, a course or two in drawing, painting or sculpture, digital arts, etc. So the majority of K-12 art teachers graduate without rigorous training in the fundamental skills that underpin competence in their discipline.
They haven’t been taught to draw, they barely understand the nuances of spatial organization, color or design, and their ability to produce a professional or even semi-professional art product is de minimis.

Compare this to music education. Would we take a program seriously that proposed to transform 18-year-olds, with only a rudimentary exposure to music, into music teachers after a year and a half of instruction in which each class was devoted to a different instrument?

The answer, of course, is a resounding “no!” We would think such an approach absurd.
But since this is, in fact, the way we prepare our art teachers, why should the educational community value their contribution, when it has so little potential to bring excellence to the table (notwithstanding that, amazingly and as the studies show, the exposure itself appears to have salutary consequences for the academic curriculum)?

How has this come about? How has a profession that was valued and whose skills were rigorously taught by western cultures and their educational systems for centuries fallen to such low regard?

I believe that much of the answer lies in the fact that since the early 20th century K -12 visual arts education in the U.S. and to some degree globally, has been based on fundamentally misguided principles.

The most saliently destructive of these is the belief that art classes for pre-pubescent children should emphasize the nurturing of “creativity and self expression” at the expense of competence. This is reinforced by the erroneous notion that skill development, especially in pre-adolescent kids, is at best irrelevant and at worst, an inhibitor to children’s creative self-expression.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Young kids before the age of puberty and its accompanying onset of adolescent self-consciousness are instinctively, often irrepressibly, creative.
What they need in their art classes is a foundation of skill building to make the fullest expression of those creative instincts possible.

As they become adolescents, much of the ingenuousness that underlay their earlier creative spontaneity will automatically disappear; but good art-making skills will stay with them for life and, for some, the creativity will resurface. At this point it should be enhanced by the existence of the technical skills to actualize its full potential.

Consider that we don’t teach elementary school children creative writing; we teach them reading, spelling and basic syntax. The visual arts have equivalent fundamentals but we are not bringing them into the classroom.

Again, look at music. Kids start playing an instrument early in life and steadily develop their physical, technical and perceptual musical strengths as they grow into adulthood. In the visual arts the physical requirements are somewhat different, but in general they are more similar then not, and the perceptual issues of eye training and visual judgment are corollaries for hearing, understanding structure and interpreting music.

Therefore, it is just as absurd to suggest that a competent art teacher can be produced through only a year-and-a-half of hands-on study in a peripatetic curriculum as it is to assert that music teachers can be produced in a program that sets out to teach them five or six instruments in that same period of time. [Author] Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule may not fully apply here, but it is certainly food for thought.

The argument might be made that like young musicians, serious art students enter college after many years of skill building. Unfortunately, this is not true!
Most students entering college art departments or even professional art schools bring little more than their elementary and high school art classes as background preparation. And, as we have seen, skill development is often sadly lacking in these settings. (How could it be otherwise, when the majority of their teachers have so few skills of their own to teach?)

By contrast, the serious music student has probably had ten or more years of private study with a competent professional as well as participation in advanced school music programs, community orchestras and the like, where technical skills, musical sophistication and competition are the sine qua non. Think about the criteria for participation in All State bands or the demanding meritocracy that determines admission to the elite musical ensembles in a large suburban high school. These have no visual arts equivalents.

A revealing comparison is that students entering good music conservatories quickly embark on the development of a professional repertoire, music theory and advanced technique. By contrast, even in the most selective of art schools the freshman year (or as it is often called, the “Foundation Year”) is essentially remedial. It does exactly what its name implies – lays down a visual arts foundation that should have been built years before.

One might hope that even if the elementary schools are not doing their job, an interested and/or talented student would have an opportunity to develop visual skills at the high school level.

To a limited degree this is true, especially in well-off suburban communities or urban magnet schools and there are other exceptions.

But by and large, even in schools where the art departments have not been slashed and burned by successive budget cuts, the teachers themselves simply do not have sufficient training to understand and foster the skills their students need.
Again a music analogy: Most people can tell in a heartbeat whether or not a kid can play an instrument at a basic level of competence. Since the days of Jack Benny the sound of a scratchy violin or caterwauling saxophone practiced in the bedroom has been the stuff of a thousand sit-coms.

By contrast, most laymen are incapable of telling good drawing from bad, have little sense of composition or design and, in fact, don’t much care. Extrapolated to teachers whose actual exposure to studio arts has consisted of 38 or fewer credits spread across multiple and unrelated art disciplines, it is simply unreasonable to expect them to be able to recognize technical deficiencies or needs, much less correct them. If you can’t see it, you can fix it. And worse, if you can see it but don’t know how to do it, you can’t guide a student effectively towards solving visual problems.

It is hard to say just where to go from here. Certainly there is no quick fix. Given the entrenchment of college and university art education faculties with a vested interest in the status quo, coupled with the myopic licensing requirements for art teachers in most states, the possibility of reform at the college level is remote.
Yet this is the sine qua non for the solution. And even if reform were miraculously to occur overnight, the education of a new breed of art teachers and their gradual infiltration into schools that are already resistant to the arts, particularly the visual arts would be a painfully slow process.

Regrettably, I have no answers. This is a gloomy picture and is likely to remain so. The miracle is that even without the enlightened interest and support of the educational community or the mainstream American public we continue to produce talented, skilled and creative visual artists.

Their success in this challenging cultural environment is a ray of bright light -- a tribute to their force of will and indomitable spirit. It is an achievement well worth celebration and support.

But just as literature is meaningless in a society of illiterates, artists can only expect a capricious and non-critical audience in a culture whose educational system places no value on the teaching of their craft.

David C. Levy is president of the Cambridge Information Group’s Education division. He is the former president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington’s largest private cultural institution) and its College of Art and Design. As chancellor of New School University, he founded the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. He was also director of Parsons School of Design, founder of the Delaware College of Art and Design in Wilmington, and is now a principal in Bach to Rock music schools.

Wharton Center Renovation Includes New Education Spaces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsdbkCGnMEw

ASCD and Edutopia on Innovative teaching method that uses arts, and looping to improve student achievement

Innovative teaching method uses arts, looping to improve achievement

A California educator is praising a teaching method that integrates the arts into lessons and allows students to learn at their own pace. The practice, known as the Waldorf methods, lets students connect poems and songs to numbers and letters, and teachers alternate monthly between teaching about numbers and teaching about letters -- a practice designed to boost students' long-term memory. Teachers also move with their students as they advance through grades, a practice called looping.

http://www.edutopia.org/waldorf-public-school-morse

Video: Day in the Life | Interlochen Center for the Arts

Feed their passions and they will thrive! Watch this short video which follows an Interlochen Camp student through a typical day filled with singing, choral music, and organ.

Video: Day in the Life | Interlochen Center for the Arts

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August 18-20 Creativity in the Classroom - Register today at: www.gomiem.org

Pocket Universes - Video landscapes for contemplation

David W. Gray of Xplane posted a series of Pocket Universes, self-contained video clips that can be looped continuously. Like landscapes, they are tiny reflections of the world and objects for contemplation.

Imagine the possibilities....

To see some of Gray's, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davegray/3698738372/

Arts NAEP June 2009 Press Conference

Announcement of the Nation's Report Card Arts 2008 Visual Arts and music.
Eileen Weiser, former State Board of Education member, participated in this video release.

Dana Foundation: Educators schooled by ‘guerilla artist,’ DreamWorks executive

“I was one the system failed,” self-styled “guerilla artist” and high-school dropout Keri Smith warned a crowd of teachers assembled May 5 at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum. “I was the rebel, the one who stayed in the back and snuck out for cigarettes.”

In high school, she explained, her classes, filled with teachers who focused on technical
skills and accurate landscapes, were stifling. So she couldn't wait to get home, where she could actually “create something.”

To read more about the Dana Foundation's “Arts, Creativity and Other Outrageous Ideas” go to:
http://www.dana.org/news/features/detail.aspx?id=21760