Jeannine Hunter Lazzaro
590 Paine Road
North Attleborough, MA 02760
508-725-2173
My feelings about art education have not changed significantly in the time that I have become familiar with the public school system as an educator and also as a parent. My desire to see the arts taken more seriously and recognized as a viable means for developing critical thinking skills has lost out during this period to an increase in standardized testing. This alone says a great deal about the way that the arts are viewed in our public school system and in our society in general. My concern that the arts are not valued enough has simply developed and increased over time. My own experiences, coupled with recent research and studies have served to make me even more of an advocate for comprehensive art education in our public schools.
For the past thirteen years I have been teaching art in a relatively affluent community outside of Boston. While the parents, consumers of the educational system are largely supportive of the arts they are reluctant to do so if this support in any way will detract from the focus and funding (taxes) on the more important (?!) subject areas (English, Math and Science), those that are included in the MCAS testing. As more and more emphasis has been placed on standardized testing it is obvious that this has resulted in a comparable emphasis on teaching to the test. The fact that politics and marketing are more powerful than pedagogical theory when it comes to moving educational practices deeply disturbs me, however this seems to be the reality.
My own research and experience has made me feel ever more strongly that 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 being a 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, and the creative problem solving that go along with the arts 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.
When I initially went into the teaching profession I naively believed that the education reform that had encompassed the country had put to rest forever the notion that art education was unimportant. After twenty or more years of teaching in the public school system, I can say that the tendency to devalue and disregard the arts is alive and well. On a personal note and as an artist myself, I do not feel that I could have navigated the ups and downs of my life without art. Not that everyone should be an artist, but ideally I would like everyone to have had a comprehensive introduction to the arts in school. The passage of time has only made me feel more militant as an artist/teacher.
Bronson, Po and Merryman, Ashley (7/10/2010) The Creativity Crisis , Newsweek
Collins, A., Halverson R., (2009) Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. Columbia University Press
Davis, Jessica Hoffman, (2008), Why Our Schools Need the Arts, Teacher’s College Press, NY
Eisner, Elliot W. (2002), The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Yale University Press
Fischer, Ernst ( 2010)The Necessity Of Art, Verso, NY
Jackson, Philip W. (1998), John Dewey and the Lessons of Art, Yale U Press, New Haven
Hetland, L., Winner, E. Veeneme S., Sheridan K.,(2007), Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education. New York : Teachers College Press
Shlain, Leonard (1991) Art & Physics: Parallel Visons in Space, Time & Light .New York, William Morrow & Co.