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Arts Education Curriculum

The curriculum in arts education in K12 schools may refer to the various artsvisual art, music, theateror to the visual arts curriculum only; this entry addresses visual arts education. Though arts education is a long-standing part of the U.S. school curriculum, its rationale, structure, and content have changed substantially over the years. The arts education curriculum has evolved in response to changing conceptions of the purposes of schooling and of the role of creativity in human development, and it challenges traditional conceptions of assessment. At its best, art education produces citizens who can respond appropriately to their visual environment with skills that go beyond those readily measured.

Visual Arts Media and Curriculum Structure

In the visual arts, the curriculum has generally covered art forms that are in traditional media, purely visual, and static in their finished forms. These include painting (in oil, watercolor, acrylic); drawing (in pencil, charcoal, oil pastels); other two-dimensional media producing original compositions such as murals, printmaking, collage, and photography (darkroom and digital formats); ceramics (wheel-thrown and hand-formed); fibers and textiles; sculpture (subtractive carving as well as additive building in three-dimensional forms with armatures or assemblage); jewelry making. In recent decades, as the world of professional art has embraced new art forms, the art curriculum has begun catching up with these options; more complete art curricula offer experience in videog-raphy, large assemblages even occupying entire rooms as mixed-media “installations,” and impro-visational performance art distinct from scripted theatrical productions.

The role of the arts in the public school curriculum varies by state, with most states leaving art instruction beyond a required introductory course as an elective. Nowhere is art education required in the extended sequence common to language arts or social studies; it has, however, enjoyed some strength in individual schools, districts, and states whose educational leaders have argued for the need for the arts in a well-rounded citizenry. Generally, secondary schools have at least one full-time art teacher each with a dedicated art room; students meet their art classes daily, for a full year, a semester, or shorter blocks such as 9-week sequences. Larger high schools may have specialized art teachers, each focusing on an art area such as two-dimensional, ceramics, or photography. Elementary school art-teacher assignments vary considerably with district resources. Just over half of elementary schools have an art specialist (one, more, or shared with other schools), teaching in a dedicated art classroom or working from a mobile cart. In elementary schools, student contact with art class is typically once a week; each art teacher may teach hundreds of children each week. For schools lacking an art specialist, art education falls to general classroom teachers with minimal, if any, preparation in art.

Historical Background

The purposes of the school art curriculum have changed dramatically during the past century in the United States. Initially, art was part of a goal of schooling that prepared children for life in the work force, and much of what is now called visual arts education took the form of teaching precision drawing and draftsmanship, providing individual discipline and technical skills useful in commercial areas or as a support to industrial growth. Early in the 20th century, especially with the rise of progressive education and an increasing focus on a child-centered curriculum, art came to be appreciated for its value in assisting in the complete development of children's capabilities, and an interest in “creative self-expression” as promoted by Viktor Lowenfeld helped argue for including the arts in the school curriculum. In this approach to the art curriculum, emphasis was placed on making art in the traditional art media, assessment of results was limited, and little was required of teachers to incorporate the history or philosophy of art systematically. The art curriculum lost in public favor with the school reforms that followed the USSR's launch of Sputnik in 1957, when increased emphasis was given to the “hard disciplines” of math, science, and reading, and the contributions of art to the national good seemed less clear than their contributions to individual growth had been. Nonetheless, committed art educators kept art in the schools, and starting in the 1960s, statewide efforts throughout the country succeeded in creating state arts councils, advocating for and supporting all the arts both in the school curriculum and in local communities. One of the strongest arguments for art education has, for a number of decades, been that at its best it teaches children to express themselvesand the ideas in their culturein creative new ways that could not have been fully anticipated. The 1980s saw the introduction of the concept of “multiple intelligences” through Howard Gardner's work at Harvard University's Project Zero, giving new impetus to the argument that artistic ways of responding to the world are valid and worthy of attention in school.

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