Jeannine Hunter Lazzaro
590 Paine Road
North Attleborough, MA 02760
508-725-2173
I had thought that the battle to have art education taken more seriously was over. When I began teaching over 20 years ago I assumed we had pretty much beaten that to death. Little did I know that this battle would go on and on? As an artist myself this really disturbs me. I know that the issues that I have had to deal with in life could not have been resolved in any other way than through my art. Partly because of this I feel that people should have the arts as an avenue to find themselves and explore the experience of life along with many other skills that are only learned in the arts. Recent education reform policies have not stressed the arts as a valuable part of education. Though the arts are included, as a core subject in No Child Left Behind, the standardized testing that has developed as a result of No Child Left Behind has not been directed at the arts (happily); this has obviously served to reduce the importance of this subject area. I am convinced of the necessity of arts education for all students more and more; the longer I am involved with teaching.
The importance of the arts in education cannot be overstressed. The present infatuation with test scores speaks to a very different time then the one that we live in. The case for standardized testing not beinga meaningful method for assessing learning has been made again and again. Schools need to address the ever-changing needs of society, which are not served by rigid standards and memorization. The critical and analytical thinking skills that go along with the arts and the creative problem solving are substantial and far removed from the kind of thinking that is necessary for memorization and rote learning. Studies in the way the brain works call for a re-thinking in the way children are educated. This and the technological advances and developments over the last quarter century have made conventional education obsolete. This need not be a negative
Looking back, this is how I see it…
…partly as a response to concerns that arose immediately following the Russian launch of the Sputnik satellite, the educational community in the U.S. produced a number of studies in an attempt to understand why and how we were being outpaced in the international picture. Galvanized by the realization that “mediocrity, not excellence, is the norm in American education” the National Commission on Excellence in Education published the report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. Along with statistical information this report made a number of suggestions for improving education in the country. A sort of “reformation” ensued. The race to improve education in the United States was launched- THE RACE HAD BEGUN.
Much of my frustration comes from the fact that the changes that have occurred in educational pedagogy in this country as a result of this have served to undermine the value of the arts in education. In an attempt to increase what many thought were measurable outcomes, standardized testing has become the craze. After many educational reforms, movements, misguided attempts the No Child Left Behind law advocates standardized testing as a legitimate method for measuring results of teaching. The politics and marketing involved in this are a poor motivation for good and sound learning. For the most part the educational community (teachers) was not in favor of standardized testing as a meaningful way to measure learning. Sadly, this was ignored or seen as an attempt by the teaching community to avoid evaluation.
What has resulted in large part is a generation of students that is overly concerned with grades (why not since that is what has been stressed?), spends little time engaged in learning (why not since all they need to know are the facts?), are wonderful test takers (why not? Since that is what has been the objective in most of their education) and has little experience with problem solving (again why not?).
In an article in Newsweek magazine in 2010 devoted to creativity (the demise of the print version of Newsweek magazine being somewhat of a metaphor here), the dire circumstances facing this generation of learners can be gleaned a bit. Studies show that the measurement of creativity---similar to the IQ score is decreasing. The expectation is that this score will increase regularly, this is commonly known as the Flynn effect. The IQ score for intelligence tends to increase every 10 years. The creativity score is not increasing. The article makes a very clear correlation between the creativity scores decreasing exactly as standardized testing increased. If students are not familiar with projects that rely on problem solving they languish in the sort of thinking that does not require this. In essence they are crippled and disabled.
The concept of hemispheric thinking has been referred to constantly since it was first proposed and by now is accepted universally. Basically, the idea promotes the theory supported in numerous brain research/studies that logical, linear thinking occurs on the left side of the brain, while creative, global thinking happens on the right. Students today spend most of the time in the left hemisphere. Educating the whole mind alone is enough reason to introduce work and study that requires switching hemispheres.
The Common Core Standards that have swept the country recently do not include the arts other than as a way to study other disciplines- harking back to an age-old practice that modern thinking has mostly abandoned. Presently, the educational community is so inundated with technological gimmicks and rubric driven teaching that it is hard to read the writing on the walls. Teaching, “out-of-the-box” thinking and creativity have been replaced by “teaching to the test”. Students are being taught to be terrific test takers… not to think. I am not exaggerating. Teachers today are hobbled by the push to stay “on track” shoving the Common Core Standards down the throats of students raised on rubrics who know nothing else.
Considering the post-modern practice of destroying false meta-narratives (the Leave it to Beaver/Disney world) that our society has recently worked it’s way through- I can’t help but imagine the present generation’s eventual take on all this. Kids growing up today are going to be really pissed when they realize that there are no rubrics in the real world and that they are not going to be graded on everything.