Karen on Arts in Education

The view from where I stand, is clear and promising mainly because of where I stand and what I’m standing on.

The View - Up ahead I see a momentous transformation of the public school system in America.

Where I Stand - This vision is informed by my life-long career in the arts, forty years of performing and teaching in schools, and twenty years of independent research and study.

On my quest for a scientifically rigorous defense of arts in education, I made a startling discovery. I discovered that my defense of arts in education, has nothing to do with either arts or education and everything to do with how each individual is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

What I’m Standing On - A radical idea. The arts as a wholesome and whole-making pathway to self-actualization and connection.

From where I stand, there is only good news!

The schools are optimally situated to meet the increasingly urgent physical, social, and emotional needs of young people in the 21st Century. Here’s why:

Public education is free.
During school hours, young people are unplugged from video games and social media.
World class artists are even now waiting in the wings to play their indispensable, vital role in the current educational system.

Clay-canstockphoto6258185

Dr. Margaret McFarland invited a well-known sculptor to teach 4-and 5- year olds at her learning center. According to Mister Rogers, "Dr. McFarland said to [the sculptor], ‘I don’t want you to teach sculpting. All I want you to do is to love clay in front of the children.’ And that’s what he did. He came once a week for a whole term, sat with the 4- and 5-year-olds as they played, and he ‘loved’ his clay in front of them. … The children caught his enthusiasm for it, and that’s what mattered.”

EXCERPT FROM: When Fred Met Margaret

The other piece of good news is that the current system is basically fine. It is, however, only one half of a whole educational system, focused on only one half of a whole child.

Formerly, the “other half” of a whole child was developed outside of school and that kind of learning has always been a crapshoot. Some kids go home to terrible situations and thrive. Others go home to optimal situations and don’t. But before technology, young people learned about themselves through natural “call & response” interactions with people, places, and things around them.

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“When I’m outside, I make stuff up. When I’m on my playstation, I play with things that other people make up.”
—Cole, my ten year old neighbor

I do not want to disparage technology. As the saying goes, the genie is out of the bottle and there’s no going back. The good news is that all the so-called “problems” associated with screen addition, are forcing us to understand ourselves better. To understand this “self” is to understand what we need in order to survive.

Since the beginning of time, our survival has depended on belonging. A baby born on a banquet table surrounded by everything its little body needs in order to survive, will not survive. Survival depends on belonging to a group. Later, as the physical body develops, survival also depends on “standing apart” from the group in order to assume a unique role in the group’s well-being. In other words, survival depends on the reciprocity between the individual and the group — the on-going quest for both autonomy and connection — “standing out” in order to “fit in.” I understand that an informed and progressive approach to arts programming in schools, has the potential of meeting these formative needs like nothing else can.

Here’s a striking illustration of what autonomy and connection looks like for young people at a certain age. I call this the Age of Visibility when young people want (need!) to be seen “going to their edge” and shining with the full resplendence of their capabilities.

“I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.”

— Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall"

"We all have a powerful emotional storehouse and we don't necessarily have the language to get at all the power of our feelings. When common language can no longer get even close to what we're feeling, that's where art begins.”

— Murry Sidlin, Conductor

I foresee an educational system in which an active group of parents and members of the local community, raise the funds for every 4th and 5th grader in their district to have an “NDI experience.” Everything is set up for this to happen. All the resources are there. They simply need to be mobilized. Similarly, the miracle of childhood is there, it needs only to be accessed and expressed.

My defense of arts in education is based on how all of us are miraculously designed. I have found that the metaphor of wings illustrates the miracle of this design more accurately and eloquently than anything currently available in the field of child psychology or educational science. This is an early iteration of that metaphor. Soon, I will post a new and improved version, but for now, this will do:

I hold these truth to be self-evident:

That when we use the arts to magnify what is sublimely right about us, what is inherently wrong with us will disappear like darkness in the presence of light.

If peace on earth is possible, it will come through the arts.