Texas Trends in Art Education, 2001-2002 Page: 34
36 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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the purpose of supporting the arts
and upholding America's cultural
heritage. Major achievements by the
NEA include the sustenance of mon-
etary support from the federal gov-
ernment and provision of access to
private funding. One of the most
important challenges that the NEA is
confronted with today is making arts
education a more beneficial subject
in the school curriculum. According
to the Endowment (1988):
Basic arts education must give
students the essence of our civiliza-
tion, the civilizations which have
contributed to ours, and the more
distant civilizations which enrich
civilization as a whole. It must also
give students tools for creating, for
communicating and understanding
others' communications, and for
making informed and critical choic-
es ... basic arts education must be
taught sequentially by qualified
teachers; instruction must include
the history, critical theory, and ideas
of the arts as well as creation, pro-
duction, and performance .... p.13
For several decades, the NEA has
supported school arts by sending
practicing artists to public schools
to collaborate with teachers in pro-
viding beneficial arts experiences
for students. Some art educators
(Smith, 1978; Bumgarner, 1994)
have cautioned that the NEA's
emphasis on A-i-S may be at the
expense of more productive support
programs for the art curriculum.
NEA's focus on the A-i-S program
makes it difficult for the organiza-
tion to address the broader needs of
the art curriculum from the art edu-
cator's "insider" point of view. The
A-i-S assignments are often based
on short-term contracts that hardly
last more than one week. These
short sessions have not been suffi-
cient for A-i-S to make significant
impact on the art curriculum. The A-
i-S also has structural problems that
make it difficult for the program to
have a major impact on the art cur-
riculum. In reference to an extensive
study of three regional artist residen-
cy programs and six site-specificresidencies in Pennsylvania,
Bumgarner (1994) noted that:1. only a small percentage of U.S.
students, most of whom reside in
middle to upper-middle class sub-
urban and urban communities,
benefit from the residency pro-
gram;
2. residency quality and effective-
ness is greatly dependent upon
the existence and condition of the
host school's related arts program
(i.e., the more intensive and/or
3. the introduction of new media
and production/performance tech-
niques provides the bulk of resi-
dency content -- historical inquiry
and discussion of the cultural
context and ideological and aes-
thetic significance of works of art
were rarely included; and
4. the practice of bringing artists
into schools to teach , create, and
perform rarely results in the sub-
sequent establishment of regular
school arts programs. pp. 8-9
Bumgarner's (1994) summary of
the problems associated with the A-
i-S is indicative of contradictions in
NEA's policy for arts education.
These contradictions have profound
implications for the art curriculum
and they include the following:
1. The A-i-S has been somewhat
selective in deciding which
schools should be assigned work-
shops or residencies. This is
counter-productive to the curricu-
lum goal of providing arts educa-
tion for all children in American
schools.
2. The A-i-S is primarily studio and
performance oriented. This nar-
rowly focused approach to art
instruction is limiting because it
hardly explores art contexts and
meaning.
3. The A-i-S provides school arts
with random support. This irregu-
larity is out of sync with the art
curriculum's methodical
approach to sequential learning
and measurable outcomes.
The Challenge of Funding Arts
Education
Another factor that impacts theamount of support provided for
school arts by the NEA andUSDOE, is the diversity of pro-
grams funded. Federal funds for arts
education are often allocated to
institutional and community based
organizations that utilize the arts as
a means towards the realization of
other objectives. Some of these
organizations are City departments
of Recreation and Parks;
Community Youth Programs;
Community Art Centers; and the
State and Local arts agencies. This
funding policy is based on the
notion that apart from schools, arts
education could be implemented
and experienced in various settings
within society. In a comment about
the disbursement of federal arts
education funds and its implications
for the art curriculum, Bumgarner
(1994) noted that:
... the USDOE does not yet
support a broadly conceived
agenda for arts education .... The
pervasive practice at the USDOE
has been to treat the arts as
instruments through which such
ends as dropout prevention, drug
and alcohol abuse prevention,
and reading skills improvement
might be achieved. The inference
is that the USDOE either does
not consider the study of the arts
to be worthy of support in its
own right, or does not perceive
the support of arts education -
unlike that of mathematics or sci-
ence education - to be its respon-
sibility.... If the USDOE's "poli-
cy" for arts education is to be
defined by the overall character
of the arts-support programs it
funds, then one might suspect
that the department is still not
convinced that the contents of
the various arts is an essential
part U.S. elementary and sec-
ondary education. p. 1 2
Federal policy on arts education
should be based on the perception
of the discipline as one that is wor-
thy of study on its own merits.
While the NEA and USDOE are in
agreement that art should be recog-
nized as a core component of the
school curriculum, they are con-fronted with the challenge of how to
achieve the goal.34
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Texas Art Education Association. Texas Trends in Art Education, 2001-2002, periodical, 2001; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth279689/m1/36/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Art Education Association.