TESTIMONY
Draft Regents Policy Statement on Middle Level Education
Special Session of the Board of Regents
New York State Education Department
April 29, 2003
Albany, New York
Michael E. Parks
Vice President, Eastern Region
National Art Education Association
Members of the Board of Regents:
My name is Michael Parks and I am submitting this testimony as a parent, a resident of New York, and on behalf of the National Art Education Association. Our association, founded in 1947, is the only national art education association in the United States. It is membership-based and our mission is to advance art education through leadership, professional development, service and the advancement of knowledge. Our members include elementary and secondary art teachers, school administrators, arts council staff, museum educators, and university faculty members. I serve as the Eastern Region Vice President representing the fourteen states in the Northeastern United States, including New York.
My purpose today is to recommend that any changes in the Middle Level regulations strengthen state policy in regard to the arts and ensure that the integrity of sequential instruction in the arts be maintained.
Why the Arts, Why Literacy in the Arts?
The arts disciplines (art, music, theatre and dance) are basic: as a means of communication, as historical components of civilization, and as providers of unique forms of knowledge. As such, they need no other justification as essential components of education. While study in the arts disciplines may enhance other skills, encourage personal development, or lead to a stronger economic base for professional presentation of the arts, these are not and should not be the primary reasons for their study.
The goal of all education in the arts, no matter what the career direction of the student, should be the development of basic literacy in dance, music, theatre and the visual arts. Basic literacy in the arts is an understanding of and ability to work with artistic elements, structures, and vehicles for meaning in each discipline. Such literacy is grounded in the study of the language and grammar of each art form as these are related directly to creation, performance or exhibition. Studies in the history, literature and analysis of the arts at the age-appropriate time are equally important in the development of artistic literacy.
As the oldest form of symbol-making used by human beings, art gives students the tools they need to respond perceptually, intellectually, and affectively to the world around them. Living in a culture that is predominately visual, the understanding of visual metaphor, analogy, and irony enable students to not only better understand the visual bombardment, but to respond to it as well. Because such things are open to interpretation and to multiple solutions, students learn to deal with ambiguity, as noted by Elliot Eisner in numerous publications. Unlike any other academic subject, art provides an effective and infinite source of objects for the discussion of meanings, ideas, values, multiple perspectives and contexts, and models of thinking. At an age where students are emerging from childhood and defining who they are and what their place in the world is, is this not the kind of educational experience they need?
As a means of communication consider the meanings that are engendered through choreography, through music, and through visual arts are unique or special to their forms. There are some meanings that can be grasped through visual form that cannot be described in language or in quantitative form. Toshiba, IBM, Apple, and other computer companies have long recognized that spreadsheets, pie charts, scattergrams, and visuals in living color increase the meaningfulness of some kinds of information; they know that the way in which we construct meaning depends upon that way in which forms of representation are configured. Not everything that we want to say can be said in language. Not everything that we want to convey can be reported in numbers. The moral here for school programs is clear: those that neglect or marginalize the fine arts, for example, embrace an educational policy guaranteed to graduate students who are semi-literate.
Potential Inconsistencies in State Arts Education Policies Reflected in Proposed Options for Middle-Level Regulations
Having reviewed the Draft Regents Policy Statement on Middle-Level Education, I am impressed with the content and tone of the statement, for its spirit supports the value and importance of visual art instruction in middle-level education. In fact, there isn't anything in the draft that I disagree with. However, I am concerned with what it fails to address in matters of subjects that have particular intellectual, emotional, and social benefits for middle-level students.
The emphasis on meeting the dual needs of young adolescents, both academic achievement and personal development, is important. Their emerging awareness of the world around them coupled with the physical and emotional changes they are experiencing, make middle-level students an interesting and often challenging group to work with. This can be addressed by providing learning experiences that examine world events and cultures, and that provide students with the tools they need to formulate their own personal, as well as, collective reactions and responses to the emerging world around them.
The draft emphasizes the need for educational programming that is comprehensive and fully aligned with the State's 28 learning standards. This is reinforced in the No Child Left Behind (Elementary and Secondary Act of 2001) legislation that recognizes the arts as "core academic subjects". All this sounds good, especially when coupled with the draft's emphasis on the developmental needs of the young adolescent. Yet some of the "suggested options" for changes to the middle-level regulations seem to defy all of the above. Currently the regulations require art in the primary and elementary grades (although not by a certified, content knowledge specialist), in the 7th and 8th grades, and then for high school graduation via entry level arts courses such as Studio in Art or Music in Our Lives. In high school, those with a vocational interest in a career in the arts can then pursue a 3 or 5 unit sequence.
Some of the suggested options for changes to the middle-level regulations
include:
#2. Options for possible changes that would allow the grades 7 and 8
mandated study in arts education and other content areas to be delivered in the earlier
grades;
#3. Options that pose the question, "Should the required study
(in the arts and other content areas) be defined by time (units of study),
by standards, or by achievement";
#4. Option that would mandate acceleration in the arts for all
students in 8th grade.
If such options are implemented, what will be the impact on our children's education in the arts? The draft emphasizes the importance of developmentally appropriate learning experiences, yet as a former elementary and middle-level art teacher, I will tell you that what is appropriate for 7th and 8th graders is not appropriate for 5th and 6th graders. Ten to twelve-year-olds do not yet possess the cognitive or emotional maturity to deal with 7th and 8th grade material (for example, understanding the non-literal, metaphoric meanings of art works). Therefore, if option #2 is implemented it in essence will mean the elimination of those 2 years of sequential art instruction. In Option #3 above, should units of study be eliminated, how will standards and achievement be assessed? The State has been reluctant to embrace mandatory assessment at the commencement level in the arts; is the state prepared to undertake assessing the arts at the Middle Level? How would achievement be defined? Merely going to a museum or concert, or singing in the church choir only exposes the child to the arts and provides some temporary entertainment value, but it is not an adequate substitute for a sequential education in the arts, nor would such an approach reflect an egalitarian policy (see Legislative and Policy Perspectives: Arts Education in packet).
Finally, option #4 would be a major travesty for a number of reasons. The Studio in Art course, now commonly used to satisfy the one unit of credit in art for high school graduation and as an entry for the high school sequences, is not developmentally appropriate for 8th graders. Right now, high school art teachers acknowledge that there is a big difference between the maturity level of 9th graders and the 11th and sometimes 12th graders enrolled in the course. To accelerate the course will inevitably require teachers to "dumbdown" the content. This course is to prepare the non-art major for lifelong learning in the arts, it is to address what all students should know and be able to do in the arts by the time they graduate from high school. What happens to the graduation requirement in the arts if Studio in Art is pushed down into the 8th grade? For those with an interest in art, Studio provides them with a broad overview of art before starting the 3 or 5 unit sequence in their preparation for college and careers in the arts. New York State is indeed viewed as the state of the arts, with the arts estimated to be the third largest industry in the state. What happens to the career ambitions of students who no longer have sustained, sequential instruction in the arts after 6th grade, and no gateway course to the 3 or 5 unit sequence in art?
The 21st Century
These are exciting and challenging times for education in New York, and in our country. There are good things going on in schools. Teachers have been doing a magnificent job. However, today's demands are unparalleled to those at any time in our history.
To meet these demands, schools must focus on basic changes in order to prepare all students for successful lives in a more demanding world. These demands will increase in the future. Knowledge alone facts, figures, and information is doubling every decade. The 21st century will require individuals with a capacity for managing knowledge and solving problems.
This makes your task even harder. It calls upon all of us to focus, and keep focused, on just what middle level education is all about and to prepare young people for the transition to high school, life, and work with the kind of education which enables them to achieve basic literacy in the arts.
As public officials you are often the guardians of New York's artistic and cultural trust. From a policy point of view, you are perhaps more involved in shaping the artistic learning of New York's children than anyone besides their families. Therefore, you have a moral imperative to advance children's art learning at all levels of schooling.
After all, children do not have agents, unions or lobbyists. If we do not champion their artistic well being, we are resigning our responsibility as custodians of American culture.
I commend your commitment to our young citizenry and for seriously examining ways to strengthen Middle Level education in New York State. Thank you for allowing time for my testimony.
Jennifer L. Childress, Past President on behalf of
Mitchell Visoky, NYSATA President
NYSATA Board of Trustees/Advocacy Committee
Visualize this in your mind's eye:
Three twelve-year-old students are working together to research an area of the world they are unfamiliar with. This team will eventually be creating a map of an imaginary country that shares many of the characteristics of the real country researched while other characteristics will be totally invented. In other middle level art classrooms across the State, students might be:
- creating a landscape painting that incorporates artistic representation of the environment and study of biomes in science;
- imagining and planning inventions to help improve quality of life, based on careful observation and contour drawing of natural and mechanical forms;
- printing multiple versions of self-portraits that reflect study of facial proportion, and ideals of beauty in different cultures and time periods;
- researching on the web and then making sculptures of ancient vessels that depict heroic deeds or myths from a real country's past or their own country's present;
- analyzing and interpreting the compelling visual message of early photographers that led to change in labor laws, and an increased understanding of ourselves as a diverse American people; and
- investigating careers, traveling to museums, and working with guest artists.
This is the face of art education today, where art is taught as a discipline that investigates the way that humans give visual form to the ideas and values that define their cultural, intellectual, emotional and physical existence. Art IS Core it grapples with the very stuff of life.
NYSATA believes that the research supporting NYSED's new policy draft points solidly towards making the Visual Arts a much larger and more integrated part of instruction than ever before. In a Standards based art program, students study works of art that deal with fundamental human issues such as identity, culture, our relationship with our environment, our struggle for balance between freedom and boundaries, and so much more. Art concerns itself with exploration of the big questions in life.
It does so through visual means, another "language" if you will, of imagery that becomes multi-layered metaphoric representations of thought. Our visual art is a record of who we were, who we are now, and what we hope to become. As middle level students explore their own identities through art, they look back at what they were, consider who they are now and think about what they would like to become. To connect them to the most profound record of human struggle to clarify its identity and purpose, is to give adolescents a sense of belonging, hope, and connection to the larger world.
Art encourages exploration of complex thoughts and ideas, and new combinations of those ideas. The imagination is engaged as a rehearsal space for new possibilities. Students learn that a work of art is not an answer arrived at by formulae. Working with varied media and imagery from visual sources, students explore and create new combinations that enhance or change the ideas being explored. When performing critical analyses of works of art, students practice logical thought processes that combine with more divergent modes as meaning is pursued. Students learn to hear and contemplate other points of view through aesthetic exercise. In the process of making and learning about art, students use self-assessment and reflection to evaluate their curriculum mastery and personal development.
Art motivates students because self-esteem is built through real achievement and knowledge of the self as a learner who "can". New methods of teaching emphasize instruction in art for every child, not just the talented few. With careful attention to multiple intelligences and developmental acquisition of skills and knowledge in a Standards based curriculum, more and more students are becoming accomplished in the visual arts. The heavy emphasis on visual communication in 21st century culture demands a visually literate population. All students can learn to communicate visually as long as high quality sequential instruction guides them there.
With all the intensive benefits of a quality curriculum in art, it would be educationally sound policy to both support and increase sequential, substantive study in art, taught by certified, knowledgeable teachers.
In yet another community in our state, in the wake of 911 and the Iraqi war, middle level art students are investigating flags and their meanings as visual symbols of beliefs and ideals. All of the school's students are working together to create a large flag for their community made of recycled materials and landscape elements; to do so they are working with town officials and community organizations. This is the face of art education today.
