Arts in The NEK

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Created on Thursday, 12 May 2016 14:03

Written by Tim Laroche

WHY IS ART IMPORTANT?

The idea that art would be a prioritized subject has its historical roots. And the pendulum of history has seen art assigned various degrees of importance throughout history.

Education has come a long way since the formal institution of the classical liberal arts in ancient Greece.

The aristocratic class of ancient Greeks considered the liberal arts as the most essential areas of knowledge that a person must know in order to fully participate in a free and open society. And so, the liberal arts were considered the foundation of Greek civic life.

The first institutionalized education system in ancient Greece consisted of two levels of education: a trivium of subjects – grammar, logic and rhetoric – and a more complicated quadrivium of subjects – arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.

Since then, the world has seen periods when education for the populace has been downplayed – such as the so-called Dark Ages, during which the church held most information. Much of the world’s knowledge was held away in monasteries.

The feudal lords of Europe used their publics’ lack of education as a means of control.

But, in contrast, during the Enlightenment period, the classical liberal arts in Europe saw resurgence. Education for rich aristocrats gained traction and prominence, ushering in an era widely regarded as the beginnings of free thought and discourse in the Western world.

When institutionalized slavery was practiced in the United States of America, education was power, and slaves were disallowed to learn about the world outside their reach. The slave-turned-writer Frederick Douglass is often attributed as saying that he first broke the bonds of slavery when he learned how to read.

As Douglass became more educated, his will to improve his conditions became so great that he escaped from the bonds of slavery.

After industrialism rolled its way across Europe, causing a mass migration from the country to cities, literacy rates skyrocketed.

A major Reform Bill in England in 1832 gave voting rights, and therefore, political power, to wealthy citizens outside the aristocracy. A series of reforms followed the initial bill, expanding the voting rights of the citizenry further each time. This is one of the conventional markers of the Victorian era in England.

One of the major Victorian literary and social critics and poets, Matthew Arnold, made his biggest contributions to the literary world of the 19^th century through his critiques of the pre-Victorian educational systems in England.

In Arnold’s seminal essay, Culture and Society, he writes that the balance of power between the major classes in society – the aristocratic “barbarians,” the middle class “Hellenists” and the peasant “populace” – is fragile, and that improving the conditions for any one class without improving the conditions of the other two classes would cause society to break down.

Arnold’s solution to the potential for societal breakdown is public education for the masses.

The purpose of that education, he said, was to acquire “culture” – which he said enables classes of society to overcome the “stock notions” of their time.

Essentially, Arnold made the case that there was a moral and societal benefit to art. His model for education – which was the first system of compulsory public education – put a heavy emphasis on art.

Education, it seems, has been strongly correlated to democratic thought throughout the years. After all, an educated public is capable of governing itself.

But in the ever-changing world of education reform, some subjects have lost prominence.

According to the National Coalition for Arts Standards, the United States had some arts requirement since at least the 1800’s. The system of American education was influenced by the Victorian models of education, and so art played an important role in the education of 19^th century Americans.

The same justification provided by Arnold for the inclusion of art into national curricula has had resurgence in recent years, albeit under different terminology.

Under current educational theory, art is vital outlet for creativity and the development of critical thinking skills.

However, despite the theoretical justification for art in education, many school systems find it difficult to implement the subject effectively.

On September 11, 2014, more than 120 educators, advocates and members of the Vermont Agency of Education met for a summit to discuss the problems facing art educators in Vermont.

The findings of their meetings were compiled into a 37 page document detailing their challenges.

One of their major recommendations towards improving art education in Vermont was that the state should reform its Art Alliance.

The Vermont Art Alliance, which disbanded in 2010, attempted to secure funding and professional development for art educators across the state.

The group was funded through grants from the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., which also funded other state Arts Alliance chapters across the country.

But after the Obama Administration cut the federal funding to the Kennedy Center in 2010, the donor organization had insufficient funding to support the state Arts Alliances, and was forced to scale back their monetary support.

Although most other states were able to cover the costs of supporting their Arts Alliances without the Kennedy Center’s support, the Vermont legislature did not fund their chapter, and the group disbanded less than a year later after several months of unpaid work. Vermont is now one of only a few states that does not have a statewide Arts Alliance.

This situation was just another example of the ways in which Vermont’s art education scene is at the whims of a larger federal landscape.