What Hope Is There for Art Education?

What Hope Is There for Art Education?
What Hope Is There for Art Education?
Written By: A Global Leading News Source, Aristos.org (Monthly)
15-8-09
Categorized in: EdNews Reports
What Hope Is There for Art Education?
by Michelle Marder Kamhi
On one point at least, all who care about art education agree: the future of instruction in the visual arts in our nation's schools is at risk. Arts advocates generally target the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) as the chief threat to be reckoned with. A recent Brief issued by Americans for the Arts, for example, declares that although NCLB includes the arts among the core academic subjects, implementation of the bill has resulted in "the erosion of arts education." Testing under NCLB, its critics argue, has had the unfortunate effect of favoring instruction in reading and math at the expense of other subjects. That view is held by many art teachers, who hope to modify the law when it comes up for re-authorization.
I argue here, however, as I have done elsewhere (see Where's the Art in Today's Art Education? and Rescuing Art from "Visual Culture Studies"), that the most serious threat to education in the visual arts is internal, not external. Such instruction is being destroyed from within by questionable premises and