Sunday, July 20, 2008
By : Charles Fowler, D.M.A.
The arts are windows on the world in the same way that science helps us see the world around us. Literature, music, theater, the visual arts, the media (film, photography, and television), architecture, and dance reveal aspects about ourselves, the world around us, and the relationship between the two. In 1937, German planes flying for Franco in the Spanish civil war bombed a defenseless village as a laboratory experiment, killing many of the inhabitants. In Guernica, Pablo Picasso painted his outrage in the form of a vicious bull smugly surveying a scene of human beings screaming, suffering, and dying. These powerful images etch in our minds the horror of a senseless act of war.
Similar themes have been represented in other art forms. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem gives poignant musical and poetic expression to the unpredictable misfortunes of war's carnage. Britten juxtaposes the verses of Wilfred Owen, a poet killed during World War I, with the ancient scriptures of the Mass for the Dead. In Euripides' play The Trojan Women, the ancient art of theater expresses the grievous sacrifices that war forces human beings to endure. The film Platoon, written and directed by Oliver Stone, is a more recent exposition of the meaning of war, a theme that has been treated again and again with telling effect in literature throughout the ages. The theme of human beings inflicting suffering upon other human beings has also been expressed through dance. One example is Dreams, a modern dance choreographed by Anna Sokolow, in which the dreams become nightmares of Nazi concentration camps.
This theme and many others are investigated, expressed, and communicated through the arts. Through such artistic representations, we share a common humanity. What would life be without such shared expressions? How would such understandings be conveyed? Science is not the sole conveyor of truth. While science can explain a sunrise, the arts convey its emotive impact and meaning. Both are important. If human beings are to survive, we need all the symbolic forms at our command because they permit us not only to preserve and pass along our accumulated wisdom but also to give voice to the invention of new visions. We need all these ways of viewing the world because no one way can say it all.
The arts are acts of intelligence no less than other subjects. They are forms of thought every bit as potent as mathematical and scientific symbols in what they convey. The Egyptian pyramids can be "described" in mathematical measurements, and science and history can hypothesize about how, why, and when they were built, but a photograph or painting of them can show us other equally important aspects of their reality. The arts are symbol systems that permit us to give representation to our ideas, concepts, and feelings in a variety of forms that can be "read" by other people. The arts were invented to enable us to react to the world, to analyze it, and to record our impressions so that they can be shared. Like other symbol systems, the arts require study before they can be fully understood.
Is there a better way to gain an understanding of ancient Greek civilization than through their magnificent temples, statues, pottery, and poetry? The Gothic cathedrals inform us about the Middle Ages just as surely as the skyscraper reveals the Modern Age. The arts may well be the most telling imprints of any civilization. In this sense they are living histories of eras and peoples, and records and revelations of the human spirit. One might well ask how history could possibly be taught without their inclusion.
Today's schools are concerned, as they rightly should be, with teaching literacy. But literacy should not-must not-be limited to the written word. It should also encompass the symbol systems of the arts. If our concept of literacy is defined too narrowly as referring to just the symbol systems of language, mathematics, and science, children will not be equipped with the breadth of symbolic tools they need to fully represent, express, and communicate the full spectrum of human life.
What constitutes a good education anyway? Today, one major goal has become very practical: employability. Children should know how to read, write, and compute so that they can assume a place in the work force. Few would argue with that. Considering the demands that young people will face tomorrow in this technological society, the need for literacy in English language, mathematics, science, and history is critical. But this objective should not allow us to overlook the importance of the arts and what they can do for the mind and spirit of every child and the vitality of American schooling.
Educational administrators and school boards need to be reminded that schools have a fundamental obligation to provide the fuel that will ignite the mind, spark the aspirations, and illuminate the total being. The arts can often serve as that fuel. They are the ways we apply our imagination, thought, and feeling through a range of "languages" to illuminate life in all its mystery, misery, delight, pity, and wonder. They are fundamental enablers that can help us engage more significantly with our inner selves and the world around us. As we first engage one capacity, we enable others, too, to emerge. Given the current dropout rate, whether the entry vehicle to learning for a particular human being happens to be the arts, the sciences, or the humanities is less important than the assured existence of a variety of such vehicles.
The first wave of the education reform movement in America focused on improving the quality of public education simply by raising standards and introducing more challenging course requirements at the high school level. The second wave has focused on improving the quality of the nation's teachers. The third wave should concentrate on the students-how to activate and inspire them, how to induce self-discipline, and how to help them to discover the joys of learning, the uniqueness of their beings, the wonders and possibilities of life, the satisfaction of achievement, and the revelations that literacy, broadly defined, provides. The arts are a central and fundamental means to attain these objectives.
We do not need more and better arts education simply to develop more and better artists. There are far more important reasons for schools to provide children with an education in the arts. Quite simply, the arts are the ways we human beings "talk" to ourselves and to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our anxieties, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, and our hopes. They are the universal ways by which we humans still play make-believe, conjuring up worlds that explain the ceremonies of our lives. The arts are not just important; they are a central force in human existence. Every child should have sufficient opportunity to acquire familiarity with these languages that so assist us in our fumbling, bumbling, and all-too-rarely brilliant navigation through this world. Because of this, the arts should be granted major status in every child's schooling.
The arts are windows on the world in the same way that science helps us see the world around us. Literature, music, theater, the visual arts, the media (film, photography, and television), architecture, and dance reveal aspects about ourselves, the world around us, and the relationship between the two. In 1937, German planes flying for Franco in the Spanish civil war bombed a defenseless village as a laboratory experiment, killing many of the inhabitants. In Guernica, Pablo Picasso painted his outrage in the form of a vicious bull smugly surveying a scene of human beings screaming, suffering, and dying. These powerful images etch in our minds the horror of a senseless act of war.
Similar themes have been represented in other art forms. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem gives poignant musical and poetic expression to the unpredictable misfortunes of war's carnage. Britten juxtaposes the verses of Wilfred Owen, a poet killed during World War I, with the ancient scriptures of the Mass for the Dead. In Euripides' play The Trojan Women, the ancient art of theater expresses the grievous sacrifices that war forces human beings to endure. The film Platoon, written and directed by Oliver Stone, is a more recent exposition of the meaning of war, a theme that has been treated again and again with telling effect in literature throughout the ages. The theme of human beings inflicting suffering upon other human beings has also been expressed through dance. One example is Dreams, a modern dance choreographed by Anna Sokolow, in which the dreams become nightmares of Nazi concentration camps.
This theme and many others are investigated, expressed, and communicated through the arts. Through such artistic representations, we share a common humanity. What would life be without such shared expressions? How would such understandings be conveyed? Science is not the sole conveyor of truth. While science can explain a sunrise, the arts convey its emotive impact and meaning. Both are important. If human beings are to survive, we need all the symbolic forms at our command because they permit us not only to preserve and pass along our accumulated wisdom but also to give voice to the invention of new visions. We need all these ways of viewing the world because no one way can say it all.
The arts are acts of intelligence no less than other subjects. They are forms of thought every bit as potent as mathematical and scientific symbols in what they convey. The Egyptian pyramids can be "described" in mathematical measurements, and science and history can hypothesize about how, why, and when they were built, but a photograph or painting of them can show us other equally important aspects of their reality. The arts are symbol systems that permit us to give representation to our ideas, concepts, and feelings in a variety of forms that can be "read" by other people. The arts were invented to enable us to react to the world, to analyze it, and to record our impressions so that they can be shared. Like other symbol systems, the arts require study before they can be fully understood.
Is there a better way to gain an understanding of ancient Greek civilization than through their magnificent temples, statues, pottery, and poetry? The Gothic cathedrals inform us about the Middle Ages just as surely as the skyscraper reveals the Modern Age. The arts may well be the most telling imprints of any civilization. In this sense they are living histories of eras and peoples, and records and revelations of the human spirit. One might well ask how history could possibly be taught without their inclusion.
Today's schools are concerned, as they rightly should be, with teaching literacy. But literacy should not-must not-be limited to the written word. It should also encompass the symbol systems of the arts. If our concept of literacy is defined too narrowly as referring to just the symbol systems of language, mathematics, and science, children will not be equipped with the breadth of symbolic tools they need to fully represent, express, and communicate the full spectrum of human life.
What constitutes a good education anyway? Today, one major goal has become very practical: employability. Children should know how to read, write, and compute so that they can assume a place in the work force. Few would argue with that. Considering the demands that young people will face tomorrow in this technological society, the need for literacy in English language, mathematics, science, and history is critical. But this objective should not allow us to overlook the importance of the arts and what they can do for the mind and spirit of every child and the vitality of American schooling.
Educational administrators and school boards need to be reminded that schools have a fundamental obligation to provide the fuel that will ignite the mind, spark the aspirations, and illuminate the total being. The arts can often serve as that fuel. They are the ways we apply our imagination, thought, and feeling through a range of "languages" to illuminate life in all its mystery, misery, delight, pity, and wonder. They are fundamental enablers that can help us engage more significantly with our inner selves and the world around us. As we first engage one capacity, we enable others, too, to emerge. Given the current dropout rate, whether the entry vehicle to learning for a particular human being happens to be the arts, the sciences, or the humanities is less important than the assured existence of a variety of such vehicles.
The first wave of the education reform movement in America focused on improving the quality of public education simply by raising standards and introducing more challenging course requirements at the high school level. The second wave has focused on improving the quality of the nation's teachers. The third wave should concentrate on the students-how to activate and inspire them, how to induce self-discipline, and how to help them to discover the joys of learning, the uniqueness of their beings, the wonders and possibilities of life, the satisfaction of achievement, and the revelations that literacy, broadly defined, provides. The arts are a central and fundamental means to attain these objectives.
We do not need more and better arts education simply to develop more and better artists. There are far more important reasons for schools to provide children with an education in the arts. Quite simply, the arts are the ways we human beings "talk" to ourselves and to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our anxieties, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, and our hopes. They are the universal ways by which we humans still play make-believe, conjuring up worlds that explain the ceremonies of our lives. The arts are not just important; they are a central force in human existence. Every child should have sufficient opportunity to acquire familiarity with these languages that so assist us in our fumbling, bumbling, and all-too-rarely brilliant navigation through this world. Because of this, the arts should be granted major status in every child's schooling.
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