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The arts synthesize different forms of learning
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ART is a conundrum. It is omni-present, yet nearly impossible to define. It is at once ephemeral, cognitive and universal, yet transcends authentic assessment. It is playful, challenging, social, individual, intellectual, and ridiculous. So does it have a place in the core curriculum?
“The arts humanize the curriculum while affirming the interconnectedness of all forms of knowing. They are a powerful means to improve general education,” said Charles Fowler, an architect from Victorian Britain.
Fowler ruminated the benefits of arts in education as having the ability to synthesize the content of all core subjects into a common form of understanding. The many disciplines that make up the arts have their own structural lexicon. Each can be categorized and qualified against predetermined learning standards. This helps make the arts credible as a discipline of academia, but what makes the arts unique from other subjects is their ability to morph through hands-on manipulation rather than formulaic reproduction, into new knowledge.
Equally unique are the multitude of forms these disciplines can be experienced through, rendering all senses of the human condition capable of learning through them. Borrowing from the formal element of shape in the visual arts, the circle has a starting point “.” called a line, that has infinite possible manifestations. The trajectory of the point that extends its line-ness around, against and through a plane completes its journey crashing into itself to form a perfect, symmetrical ring.
A circle is mundane, while mesmerizing. It is unstable, yet whole. It can act as a portal or a shield. It can be volumetric, or flat. It can model, and organize. It can provoke energy, or stasis.
These statements take the idea of a circle through the disciplines that make up the core of most curriculum subject content. It would appear art has an intrinsic relationship to all other subjects. But there is more than fundamental standards or interdisciplinary links to justify arts in school.
Imagination is often mentioned by executives as an essential skill for the 21st century. It is attributed as the source of innovation. It is functional, entertaining, and innate in humans. It is the subject of numerous cognitive and psychological studies, yet it is elusive to empirical understanding.
What is agreed upon is that the arts foster the development and exercise of imagination. The skills that the arts provide are essential.
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