NIU art professors invited to respond
to UNESCO recommendations for global education

by Mark McGowan

NIU School of Art Professor Doug Boughton is among the leaders of an upcoming global call to keep college-trained arts educators in the world's classrooms.

Boughton, president of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA), is joining the presidents of related world organizations for music and theater in drafting an urgent response to a recent position paper released by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

UNESCO's report recommends that artists not educated for teaching school should, indeed, teach art in schools.

Delegates from Boughton's group will meet in Viseu, Portugal, in March at the InSEA world conference to formally finalize their response on behalf of their respective professional associations.

One week later, Boughton and his colleagues from the International Society for Music Education and the International Drama/Theatre Education Association will address UNESCO's World Arts Education Summit in nearby Lisbon, Portugal.

“Teachers are better equipped to teach arts in schools,” Boughton says. “The power of the arts educator is in assisting students to negotiate the world of visual culture. Artists tend to be people who make specific artifacts in a particular genre. They don't have the broad background to educate a child's view.”

“It's a great benefit for students that UNESCO is giving much needed attention to creativity, but it seems that they are thinking of an art education in a manner that is out-of-date” says NIU School of Art colleague Kerry Freedman, who also has been invited to speak at the UNESCO summit.

“They're not paying attention to the fundamental shift in art education that has taken place in recent years which depends on knowledge about the breadth of visual culture, such as developments in newer technologies, that have influenced the visual world,” Freedman adds. “Students need to understand what it means to create something that influences their lives and the lives of other people. They also must be able to analyze the range of images that come into their home and that they see out in the world every day.”

The UNESCO paper advises principals to “open the school doors” to practicing artists so “the theoretical elements as taught by the teachers and professors can be experienced in a more concrete and living manner.”

“What the artist transmits to the child or adolescent is a concrete and living relationship with a cultural activity, a knowledge and a know-how emanating from a sensitivity, long familiarity and experience,” the paper continues, “whereas school knowledge and its customary restrictions sometimes combine to undo the link between culture and feeling, knowledge and experience.”

Not everywhere, Boughton says.

Adopting such a simplistic policy might benefit schools in underdeveloped nations, he says, but elsewhere it will leave children behind in modern thinking about teaching the arts.

The recommendation also could provide school administrators with an easy excuse to save money on salaries and benefits for art teachers by opting for artists-in-residence, Freedman says.

Boughton and Freedman, a husband-and-wife team, are the world's top advocates for a “visual culture” curriculum in schools. They first held a national meeting of art educators around their kitchen table in 2001; since then, the annual meeting has been held at four other universities in the United States and Canada and has attracted hundreds.

Going beyond the traditional creation of art projects, visual culture enables students to critically interpret the visual culture surrounding them. Art teachers should strive to educate “critically responsive citizens in a democratic society capable of integrating with visual imagery both critically and comfortably.”

Visual culture includes drawing, painting and sculpture, but also encompasses television, movies, video games, toys, comic books, clothes, posters, furniture, advertising and, of course, the Internet.

“The model is one that moves away from exclusive focus on the fine arts to broaden the focus to the arts in everyday life,” Freedman says. “The images are what seduce people. It's why so many people spend so much time watching TV.”

“Kids now are situated in imagery, and in the past they haven't been taught how to read it carefully. Only art teachers are equipped to do that,” Boughton adds. “Kids learn when they are interested in the content, and the popular culture kids are bombarded with and pursue is what interests them.”

It also helps students to understand that not all art deserves automatic or unconditional approval, he says. For example, he says, some works of art are racist or sexist; an analytical eye can tell.

The research on a visual culture curriculum is ongoing and building, Freedman says.

“We're in the schools every week looking at curriculum with a researcher's eye,” she says. “Many of the teachers we've worked with who are doing a good job of teaching visual culture report that their students are much more excited about the curriculum. The students are more invested it and they're taking greater ownership of their work.”

Meanwhile, Boughton is in the first phase of preparing the response as he solicits and collects opinions and ideas from his group's members across the planet.

Despite his opposition to some elements of the UNESCO position, he appreciates the organization's support of the arts in education and the fact that people are talking about art education. “It's not a bad paper, but there are concerning elements,” he says. “It will hopefully progress the debate internationally.”

“It's not as if we don't welcome visiting artists. It's just that one of the important criteria for a quality art education is for the people who work with children to have a broad background in educational practice, and often artists don't come with great knowledge about childhood development, instructional methods and curriculum,” Freedman adds. “We would support many kinds of guests to come into the art classroom, particularly if artists are defined broadly: not just as fine art, but also as popular culture.”

11-21-05