Values Across the Curriculum

Peter Tomlinson, Margret Quinton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000639377
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The background to this book, first published in 1986, and its underlying concern lies with those aspects of education which relate to values. Amongst these, moral and social values are often thought of as central, and they are the title's primary concerns. The study also deals with the value aspects and implications of the major areas of the sec

1
Values Across the Curriculum — Specific Areas

Values in Art and Design Education

Brian Allison

Throughout history all cultures and societies have manifested their attitudes, values and beliefs in visual forms. Visual forms can be taken to mean all man-made objects and images and includes everything from pictures to cathedrals, bicycles to aeroplanes, jewellery to statues. Each culture or society produces images and forms which are unique and peculiar to it and even when similar images or forms are common to more than one culture or society they almost invariably have different meanings or values attached to them. To greater or lesser degrees, visual images constitute not only an embodiment of a society's attitudes, value and beliefs but are also a major means by which they are actually formed and realized. A good example of this can be seen in the very influential role played by the visual arts and architecture in the formation and maintenance of religious and spiritual values in all societies since prehistoric times.

It is not only in the formation and realization of societal attitudes, values and beliefs that visual imagery plays a significant role but also in their transmission from one generation to the next. Moral and spiritual teaching has always relied heavily on pictorial imagery and the development of patriotic attitudes has been underscored consistently by banners, flags, medals and other commemorative paraphernalia, statues and a variety of monuments, buildings and dedicated spaces. More covert, but nevertheless equally intentional, attitude-forming images proliferate in newspapers and magazines and through film and television as was clearly identified by Packard (1957) in his influential book The Hidden Persuaders.

Almost every aspect of art and design activity, including art and design education, is an epitomization of social or cultural values. In England, for example, the training of artists and designers; the location and organization of colleges and departments of art and design; the complex network of studio and industrial production; the system of art and design marketing; the choice and location of art and design works in homes as well as in public places; the sponsorship and selection of images and other visual man-made forms at local and national govenmental levels all represent a particular value system which exemplifies and recognizes the role and function of visual imagery in people's daily lives.

There is no aspect of the diversity of art and design activities, objects, images and experiences which could truly be described as value-free. Even the amateur 'Sunday painter' who makes a drawing or a painting for no other reason than personal pleasure and pastime can do so because it falls within an accepted and recognizable social value system. Without intending a pun, in this instance of applied values, 'the medium is the message', to use the McLuhan (1964) aphorism.

As with any other subject in the school curriculum, art and design as a school subject owes its existence originally and principally to its role and presence in the social, economic and intellectual affairs of society at large. A primary responsibility of schools as socializing institutions is to introduce the young to the various codes, symbol systems and areas of knowledge such as, at a basic level, developing an ability to read, write and understand number, which will allow them to participate in the society in which they are growing up and to be able to draw upon the experience of those who have gone before. Additionally, and in order to contribute to as well as to benefit from societal development in a dynamic sense, the responsibility of schools can also be taken to include the provision of possibilities and opportunities for the young to question, challenge, reinterpret and consider alternatives to that which already exists. Eisner (1972) described these two particular responsibilities as having 'instructional' and 'expressive' functions.

In practice, of course, the extent to which a school subject corresponds or relates to that 'subject' as it exists in society outside of, and beyond the walls of, the school depends on the ways in which the 'subject' is mediated by teachers and school systems. How 'real', for instance, are or could be the issues raised or the activities provided in, say, a school science lesson in terms of the role and contributions of science and scientists in and to the life of a society and its people would depend upon how the science teacher mediated the 'subject' of science in its broadest sense. As, again to greater or lesser degrees, all aspects of life are value-laden, one measure of the validity of a school subject seen in this way might be taken as being the extent to which it reflects and refers to the range of values which are implicit as well as explicit in the subject field as it exists in life outside school.

Whilst this would certainly be a useful way of looking at schools' curriculum content, it could be argued that it represents a rather simplistic view as there are a variety of pressures and influences which can alter the conception of a subject as it appears in school from that which exists in the world outside school. More often than not, however, it would seem that differences can be traced to either the inevitable and understandable difficulties which teachers have in keeping up with developments in society or, more problematically, to the progressive development of the school subject simply as a school subject in an autonomous sense. Either way, they result in curriculum decisions, such as what to include and what not to include, what strategy to adopt and what not to adopt, and these are, in themselves, decisions of value. It is, perhaps, inevitable, that it is often these values which are learned or acquired by young people rather or more readily than the range of values characteristic of the subject in the outside world.

It will be clear that the view of schools as having a primary responsibility to, in a sense, induct the young into social and cultural systems represents a particular conception of the roles and purposes of education. This conception is based on the notion that the teaching of a subject is to provide children with access to a body of knowledge and experience, which has, to a large extent, its origins and existence outside of the school and forms part of social and cultural life. In this conception, the variety of often conflicting values which characterize the subject field as it exists in the world outside school is an essential part of the subject of study. This is implied in the use of the term 'the subject centred curriculum'.

An alternative but important and prevalent view, which has its origins in the child-study movement earlier in this century, sees the acquisition of particular knowledge through what has been termed 'subjects' as being, in a sense, incidental to the growth and development of the child as a living, human organism. In what has been termed 'the child-centred curriculum', the subjects of study and subject knowledge become means to ends and not ends in themselves. It follows that the value systems implicit in the 'child-centred' approach are primarily related to individual growth and differences.

These two, apparently dichotomous approaches have been de scribed, albeit rather sketchily, because they usefully illustrate the ways art and design in schools is currently being provided. For the last thirty years at least, art and design as a subject in schools has been characterized by the 'child-centred' position and epitomized by Herbert Read's Education through Art, which took art as a facilitator for the develop ment of human sensibilities. Similarly, Victor Lowenfeld's book, Crea- tive and Mental Growth (1947), which has been enormously influential on art education in the United States and most English speaking countries, placed the total emphasis on child development, which was defined in terms of intellectual, social, aesthetic, creative, emotional and physical growth. Given the value-laden nature of art works, it is interesting to note that Lowenfeld placed great emphasis on the warning that encounters with, for instance, adult art works might inhibit children's healthy development and growth. For Lowenfeld, all the potentialities for growth were seen as being latent and growth itself was a kind of 'unfolding', which needed to be nurtured by the teacher. This view in some ways resembles that of Herbert Read who saw the teacher as being a kind of 'psychic midwife' who assisted in the releasing of profoundly internal ideas and feelings and, more recently, that of Robert Witkin (1974) as expressed in The Intelligence of Feeling.

The instrumentalist approach implicit in child-centred education has been an extremely potent force in primary schools, particularly in the early school years, in which major purposes for engaging children in the use of art materials have been to develop their sensory awareness and provide opportunity for expression or, more specifically, self expression.

There is a wide range of values and value systems implicit in art activity arising out of the child-centred approach. In the first place, there is the valuing of the self, that is of the child as a person and an individual. In this valuing, efforts are made by teachers to help the children feel that what they do is worthwhile and that they each have a personal and individual contribution to make. Whilst variations in children's abilities in other aspects of the curriculum are often painfully evident, the instrumentalist use of art in schools gives more or less equal recognition to the outcomes of children's efforts and achievements through the application of evaluative criteria which are not art-specific. Even on those not infrequent occasions when a child is not satisfied with what he or she has produced, invariably some supportive comment can be made about some aspect or other of the work in order to help the child recognize some value in his or her own efforts. Putting children's work up on the walls is also considered to be a strong contributor to the development of children's self-esteem and worth.

An extension to the children's valuing of their own efforts is that of the valuing of the efforts of others. Displays and exhibitions of children's art work are considered not only to be ways of developing a valuing of what the children themselves and others have done but also as a useful means of promoting a sense of responsibility towards its care and preservation and so discourage vandalism because of being able to identify personally with the work.

Because of the emphasis in child-centred art and design programmes on individual growth and development, the art and design work which is displayed around the school is almost invariably that produced by the children and this tends to act as a covert form of values teaching. In an indirect but very influential way, the art work put up on display by the teacher gives children a very clear notion of what is approved and acceptable and, reciprocally, what is not. The children also learn in an indirect way that what a teacher puts up on exhibition is as much a reflection of the teacher's taste or preference as it is a choice based on objective educational or aesthetic criteria. As part of learning the value system, children very quickly get to know what needs to be done in order to succeed but they also come to recognize the paradox of the stress on individuality when, at the same time, the learning environment prescribes, to a large degree, what they can, and what is appropriate for them to express.

It is evident, of course, that what art and design teachers do in schools is influenced in a number of ways which are often beyond their control and these affect and, in some cases, determine the values which underpin, either overtly or covertly, the art and design curriculum. The expectations of heads and other teachers about, for example, the display of work around the school, the making of sets and costumes for school theatrical productions, the design and production of posters and school magazines and the entering of children's work in competitions and awards schemes, all contribute to the formation of children's values about art and design in a general sense and about their own art and design activities. One of the most direct influences on the values formed as well as those encountered in art and design in the secondary schools is that provided by the external examinations.

In almost all the external examinations for the GCE or CSE, imaginative interpretation of the topics or themes is encouraged and in many cases there is a requirement to show how ideas were developed through the presentation of working drawings and sketches. However, although there appears to be some attention to contextual matters, formalist criteria tend to predominate when it comes to giving grades or marks. In general, the examinations have not been underpinned by any overt suppositions that the production of artistic images or designs might be, in itself, a value-forming or value-exploring activity. In some GCE 'A' level art history or art appreciation papers, however, there have been occasional opportunities offered to discuss contemporary issues which are value laden but, even then the concerns have tended to be with broad matters such as for example a consideration of the role and effects of the Arts Council.

When the art and design programmes in schools are oriented towards activities such as product or environmental design, there tends to be a firm emphasis on what is described as 'the design process', by which is meant a relationship between elements such as problem solving, materials, technologies and production, or, in other words, the strategies and procedures leading to solutions rather than the values associated with the solutions themselves. Whilst any designing task is almost invariably concerned with problems which have value associations, whether it is concerned with, for instance, meeting some material need such as packaging or a broader issue such as environmental pollution, the criteria for the evaluation of the solution tend to be related principally to the adequacy of the strategy adopted and the procedures followed rather than whether or not the activity or task und...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 Values Across the Curriculum — Specific Areas
• Part 2 Values Across the Curriculum — General Issues
• Index