Why teach art? - A case for teaching art online

What must be known and acknowledged is I am a white young woman living in Southern Africa. This in itself implies my privilege provided by my skin colour as well as any barriers I may face due to my gender. I come from a family of teachers and teaching has been my carrier trajectory since I was young. I decided that I would study fine art first followed by a PGCE (Post-Graduate diploma in Education). This means I have extensive content knowledge and have immersed myself in the subject before moving towards teaching. I also think it is important to note that while I am writing this the world is facing a global crisis, in the form of a pandemic, that has stilted the education system and the question becomes more prominent Why Teach Art, but also How do we teach art in the atmosphere of a global crisis while navigating an online context be it permanently, like in my case, or impermanently. 

Richard Siegesmund notes 3 conceptions and justifications for Arts Education. The first Conception is Expressionist: this concept speaks to the importance of the imagination of the child and giving the child a space to express that imagination. This is done by allowing the child to be with themselves and encourage personal reflection. Art is then used as the way of expressing emotions (Siegesmund, 1998). The second conception is Reconstructivist. Here the implementor of this curriculum is hyper-aware of the ability curricula has to alter the mind and how it can be used to reinforce or create a societal norm. It is then split into 3 sub-categories. First is reproduction, reproducing the norms that already exist, allowing the creation of a generation the same as the previous. 2^nd reinvention is still a replication of previous norms but allows for a bit of variation or slight modification. Lastly reconstruction is the creation of new societal norms, i.e. moving away from the previous system and creating new ideas. This variation is popular in newly constructed nations or regimes (Siegesmund, 1998). The final conception is called Scientific rationalism. This concept seeks empirical motivation for the doing of art as a subject. It requires measurable methods that are replicable and can be seen to have a certain effect or outcome.

STEAM can be seen as an example of the reconstuctivist justification for arts education (Siegesmund, 1998). STEAM is a reinvention of STEM, it’s the same curriculum with a bit of modification. This reconstruction includes Art as pedogues realised the exclusion of Art excluded skills approaching theoretical thinking and the ability to broaden research parameters (Radziwill et al, 2015). Herein is a justification for art for other subjects sake that institutions are well known for using.

Institutions justify the teaching of art in a few ways. Their stance is that art has to “do” something in order to be justifiably included into the curricula, this can be seen as the Scientific rationalism justification (Siegesmund, 1998). Art must improve your thinking or teach social skills but neither of these are for personal gain but rather what it does for other subjects. Art teaches critical thinking and therefore the student can do Maths or science better. Art aids in social interaction allowing for a better implementation of group work in English and Social science. Art improves research ability therefore helping research in History or Biology. This justification of art is what Gaztambide-Fernández calls “the rhetoric of effects” (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). What effect can art have on other subjects. Herein lies a paradox for me. Personally I do not feel that art has to justify itself in order to be included in curricula but on the other hand it is true that art has been proven to do all the things mentioned above.

The Qualities of Quality: Understanding excellence in Art Education outlines what the authors think arts education does and what it should do (Siedal et al, n.d.). These qualities are personally beneficial rather than present to aid other subjects. Firstly “Arts education should foster broad dispositions and skills, especially the capacity to think creatively and the capacity to make connections.” The importance of the capacity to think creatively cannot be overstated. This allows the student to think theoretically and metacognitively by exploring abstract ideas and concepts. The ability to make connections is also important. In Piaget’s second stage of development the child begins to understand the idea of object permanence. This allows the child to know that even when an object is not visible it does not mean it does not exist. This is basic connection making but art furthers that and allows for the student to connect the theoretical and the finite as well as the process while thinking about the process.

In her TED^x talk Cindy Foley then draws out from the report three aspects of art education that she personally feels are important and what should be shown as what art does. 1. Art makes students comfortable with ambiguity. 2. Art enables and encourages interdisciplinary research and 3. It allows students to generate and manifest ideas. (TEDxColumbus, 2014) These things do help other subjects by default rather than with intention but they also help with everyday life. This is where we come to the second of the three ideas I propose as ways of deeply understanding the reasons for arts education: Creativity and Connectivity. Number one (above) stimulates creativity. If someone is comfortable with ambiguity they are comfortable with not having a definitive answer, they are able to make theoretical connections without needing the whole story. Herein lies a space that encourages creativity and metacognitive thinking.

Metacognition is the third concept I would like to bring to the fore. Metacognition put plainly is Thinking About Thinking. This allows for the learner to think about making but also thinking about the process of making. Here is where manifestation of both theoretical and finite ideas (Goldberg, 2005) take place. This is an essential skill that is sought after by other subjects. It is the reason for the A to be added to STEM, it is a justification for art to be continued to be taught. Moving a student into a space that encourages metacognition opens up the mind to ambiguity and encourages exploration of different spheres and linking it to art, this is point 2 above. Art can be about everything and anything, this means research into other spaces is obvious and needed. It expands understanding and allows for new approaches to be discovered.

All of these point afore mentioned are important and are now even more important in a space of remote learning and lockdown. How do you teach art over a computer screen? Is it enough to give a prompt and hope? What we should aim to do is teach in a way that stimulates thinking like we would face to face but how? Is it the same over a screen? The answer to that is no. This is where we, the teachers have to be “comfortable with Ambiguity” (TEDxColumbus, 2014). There are a lot of unknowns right now and we need to get comfortable with that in order to give our students an authentic space where we can teach them. We must think creatively and make connections to things we have learnt.

So we are back to this, Why Teach Art? We teach art because it is fundamental to who we are. Gaztambide-Fernández introduces the idea of “the rhetoric of cultural production” (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013), Siegesmund offers the idea of “teaching Reasoned Perception” (Siegesmund, 1998) both of which are plausible ways forward. What both seem to agree on is that Expression is fundamental to production and producing things is all that we do. We produce papers, sentences, food, recipes. We produce ideas around culture and we produce concepts that involve relationships. Essentially what this means is that if production is the structure on which people are built art is a way of expressing that production and is production in itself and therefore is just as important as any other means of production. The Art Assignment touches on this in “Which is the real girl with the pearl earring” (PBS, 2018). Primarily “Art is about Sharing” (PBS, 2018) and that is why we teach art.