black inner city child art: a phantom concept?

National Art Education Association

Black Inner City Child Art: A Phantom Concept?Author(s): Carmen ArmstrongSource: Art Education, Vol. 23, No. 5 (May, 1970), pp. 16-21Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191441 .

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BY CARMEN ARMSTRONG. The inner city is con- tinuing to be scrutinized both by professionals and the public at large. With this escalating tense acknowl- edgment of the inner city, has come belated concern for the educational system and the inner city child's relationship to his school. Concerned educators in each discipline in education, including art, attempt to define aspects of their area which relate to the larger concern. The tendency is to assume similar effects. Assuming that similar conditions influence the child in many situations has merit in that it attempts to draw implications from the findings of other disciplines and seeks to avoid unnecessary duplication or the development of a "personal" terminology for previously defined concepts. On the other hand, to force oneself to apply the observed differences found by one discipline to another may lead to over-generalizing, i.e., glossing over the individual differences or special abilities which exist within a subculture-or over-specifying, i.e., blowing up differences which separate groups of people superfi- cially where, in a specific case, no principal differences exist.

What is unique about the art of black children who make up the largest percentage of the inner city school's population? Many concerned persons hasten to insist that the differences which exist are super- ficial, such as, skin colors and subject matter. The view of apparent similarity, between art work of black and other children does not coincide with the views of vocal groups of black artists who insist that black art has a particular essence and quality of experience to which the black person relates. Is there such a peculiar essence? Is it gained with maturity only, or could it emerge, with encouragement, in art produced by black children in the inner city public schools?

This paper attempts to draw together the findings of reliable research in art education and in other fields pertinent to this topic. Such research may help make some definitive observations about the school age child, particularly the black child living in the inner city. From the research cited and from reports of various experimental programs that pertain to inner city blacks and other economically disadvantaged groups, certain directions and recommendations will be summarized.

Art in the Inner City

Public school art education occurs as a by-product of a culture's estimation of the value of art itself. The challenges to public school education within the inner city are too great to be considered here. However, art educators face a realistic problem when they attempt to design curriculum to meet the needs of students. Needs, as perceived by students, are shaped by community power groups who differ also in their estimate of the aesthetic or immediate practical value of art. The ideas expressed in Symposium 28 reprinted at the time of the "Harlem on My Mind" exhibition at the New York City Metropolitan Art Museum reflect some of the varying viewpoints among those of the black community who value art highly. A summary of many dis- cerning comments made may contribute to our ex- planation of the role of the visual arts in the black inner city community: 16

1) The black artist is unknown in the black community. 2) The visual arts-painting and sculpture-are rarely exhibited in the black community. 3) Locations and facilities where young people or artists-in-residence could come and work in art have only rarely existed.

4) Many black artists were working in the 20's, and 30's, but most remained unrecognized because there was no "audience" for them in the white community. Nor did such an "audience" exist in the black community even though some feel that every black man has certain sensibilities and sensitivities-a total experience or an essence-that comes out and can be detected in art forms. Writer Frank Conroy7 proba- bly was speaking of this essence when he concluded that black people have responded to misery by creating a fantasy as powerful as the pain of their experience. 5) Young black children are not exposed to the art of museums. It is not a customary practice for young black mothers to go to tlre art museums with their children.

6) Scholarship in the black world has been devoted to the social movement. Black writers are known, but critical scholarship is particularly lacking in regard to the visual arts.

7) Renewal of communication between black artists within cities and between cities is needed. Several vital groups of this nature existed during the 1930's. Such communication could lead to organization in bringing the work of black artists to the schools, in establishing traveling exhibits of black art, and in showing black art at community museums.

8) Integration, though verbalized, is not a reality; being separate and making black art may be the answer. However, the compelling need of some black artists to produce an identifiable black art to which blacks relate to create positive self-identity is opposed by black artists who feel that getting hung up in social conditions results in rhetoric.

In the article "Black Artist in a White Art World," Patricia Coffin5 describes the work of Daniel LaRue as "brilliantly painted," "enameled wood sculptures," "large metal constructions," and (formerly) "expression of black constriction." However, none of these physical characteristics or the expression of social in- justice can be contributed to the Negro race of the artist. They could describe any number of works by artists of diverse cultural origins. In short, it may be said that LaRue typifies the Afro-American artist who is more "artist" than African or American.

In the issue devoted to "The Arts and the Black Revolution," editor Edward L. Kamarck of Arts in Society seems to concur as he writes 16 that the social dimension is of concern to sensitive artists, but the dichotomy of art of social protest should be considered, "... the pertinent dichotomy is not between art and social protest but rather between creativity and mere craftsmanship, between the construct of an imagina- tively valid world and a pasteboard, bloodless one."

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"Preparation for Teaching Art in the Inner City" Harold Bradley4 indicated that black history in the U. S. had been written via the arts, but constituted as much mythological as factual data. So, it seems that the picture created partly via the arts may need to be reexamined in light of acquired, closer examination and newer interpretations of the "folk process" in black culture, the major vehicle of that culture up to the present time.

The mass media of television, (although overplaying certain child art differences in one case), magazines, newspapers, and recent literary works are presenting more specific pictures of the inner city. The inner city cannot categorically be called "black" although persons who have varying proportions of African blood do dominate these areas. Black children cannot glob- ally be called "disadvantaged," ignoring the richness and variety of people confronting and relating to each other because of compact living. It cannot be assumed that children from these areas are deprived of experiences about which they can communicate in art unless "experience" is defined narrowly as those things a child who is in the mainstream of American culture is apt to encounter. The population of the inner city is main- tained primarily because of prejudice, and the in- habitants' poverty and an accompanying fear of the unknown-of change in accustomed patterns of life. But, it cannot be assumed that the visual environment is "poor" because economic conditions are poor. Look- alike suburbia is often more deprived of visual com- plexity and variation.

The Black Inner City Child: From His Art

Many black artists are insisting that the black experience is revealed in art products-that black persons do respond to a particular quality in art by black artists.

This may relate to Collingwood's 6 idea that an artist presents his personal view of a reality about which he is concerned and to which a hypothetical or real "select audience" can respond. Other writers press for a more interpretive view and incorporate the ideas of per- vasive personality qualities and expression or life styles. If we assume that life styles exist operationally and that any of the art products of a group serve as mirrors accurately reflecting the inner self, then it might be appropriate to turn to a few art products of inner city children to describe the singular character of their art and their psychological nature. A part of the 1968 Bill Cosby summer television program "Of Black America" seems to have concluded from some art work of Negro children such generalized statements as: Negro children's tree drawings are stunted and bare; white children's tree drawings are bountiful and spreading. Negro children draw faceless people because they lack a positive self-image; white children draw happy people. These statements are overinterpretations! It is hazard- ous to use drawings for personality analysis, and drawings are rarely needed to detect a disturbed child. To generalize to whole groups without a backdrop of matched conditions for samples drawn from those groups is to form unreliable conclusions.

Working on a much larger scale than that which led

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to the questionable generalizations above, Dale Harris 11 continued Florence Goodenough's crosscultural studies of the Draw-A-Man test. Very few differences were noted between groups on the presence of features and details. He found that children of the mid-fifties are more successful in handling many body and limb details, but gave less attention to the mouth, nose, and chin than did children of the 1920's. Rather than posit- ing psychological implications, psychologist Harris attributes these differences to change in the philosophy of art education which now is more accepting of body emphasis in drawing.

In these crosscultural comparisons of children's drawings, Harris found that the basic schematic repre- sentation of the human is much the same for all young children. Cultural experience, sex, and education do modify the basic schemata increasingly with age. With- out proper controls for like experiences, attitudes, feelings, facilities, equipment, ability, and knowledge, it would be unwise to draw conclusions about differences in the art produced by black inner city children as opposed to the art of some other group. Therefore, more careful studies of black children's art are needed.

In a study of the developmental drawing characteristics of culturally disadvantaged children, Eisner9 found that an advantaged (middle income level) group of children achieved a higher degree of development than disadvantaged (low income level) children in all four (1, 3, 5, and 7th) grade levels studied. The drawing scores, which correlated with reading vocabulary scores at the fifth and seventh grade levels, showed greatest variance between advantaged and disadvantaged groups at grade one, gradually diminishing with increased age.

The Black Inner City Child: From Other Sources

Considerable research on the Negro subcultural group as a whole or on the black inner city child has been conducted by persons outside the field of art. Differences which do suggest the need for special cur- ricular considerations have been found. For example, anthropologist Edward T. Halll? has found that Afro- Americans have a particular capacity (culturally in- fluenced) to relate to others in a deeply significant way. They, in turn, feel that their white counterparts have an absence of the capacity to humanize daily routine, and they find this impersonality repugnant.

Jensen14 believes that even good teachers with high motivations may be unsuccessful in teaching inner city Negro children. He attributes this difficulty that teachers have had, to early educational experiences of the children. Many met repeated, inappropriate, and un- rewarding situations and inflexible requirements in earlier school situations.

However, the differences of Negro inner city children are both environmental and genetic according to Jensen. Race has substantially contributed to the variance in numerous research studies. Jensen rejects assertions that intelligence potential is distributed the same in all racial groups. He feels that research seek- ing to identify varying patterns of individual differences such as that conducted by Lesser, Fifer, and Clark19 has merit.



The study by Lesser, Fifer, and Clark found a wider difference between Negro middle and lower class groups on measures of ability than were evident between the same classes in three other ethnic groups. Children of each ethnic group-Chinese, Jewish, Negro, and Puerto Rican-demonstrated distinctly different patterns of ability. The lower class Negro scored lowest of any group in spatial ability, numerical ability, and as low as lower class Puerto Rican children in reasoning ability.

Rennels24 found a predominance of field-dependent orientation of his Negro inner city subjects. His sam- ple differed from subjects tested by Rouse25-white middle class children of approximately the same age- who were predominantly field independent. The Em- bedded Figures Test used by Witkin29 in his study of perceptual orientations to space was used to assess the field orientation in the Rouse and Rennels studies. Although definite conclusions cannot be drawn from a comparison of the two studies, there does seem to be some connection between cognitive and perceptual modes of behaving with implications for methodology which facilitate perceptual learning.

The Lesser, Fifer, and Clark study suggests similarity to a recent study in inductive and deductive reasoning by Renick23 and the study of spatial orientation by Rennels.24 Renick found Negro children to be behind white children of the same social class in deductive and inductive reasoning at each of the (third, fourth, or fifth grade) levels at which the study was conducted. Rennels found that his sixth grade Negro inner city students responded differently according to sex in half the tasks and more favorably over all to inductive teaching than a deductive approach. This finding would seem to concur with the direction of the fourth to fifth grade loss in deductive ability of the Renick Negro students.

I. Q. is one traditional measure which is being ignored more and more by teachers of low socioeconomic status children. Jensenl4 maintains that it does not measure their ability accurately. Other subculturally influential factors limit the child's ability to display his strengths.

Kinds of interests, experiences, and values of economically and socially disadvantaged children were surveyed and summarized in 1965 by McFee.20 She found that: 1) most students spend their leisure time passively talking or watching TV or movies; 2) few gave any indication that they were aware of why they were in school; 3) pertaining to values, 60% checked "Be Happy," "Work hard," "Use your head," "Help others," approximately half checked "Do what the family wants," "Work when it is quiet," "Use your feelings" and "Enjoy life," least valued was "Working when it is noisy" (which is understandable considering the difficulties presented by compact living conditions); 4) few saw art as related to beauty or design; rather, the production of pictures was viewed as "fun"; and 5) common re- sponses to what is beautiful were unqualified, non- described categories of nature.

Another research finding suggests that varying child- rearing practices may influence the child's response to art media. What lower socioeconomic level children may not question, middle class children often reject as

"dirty." This study by Alpher and Blane 1 would suggest that some children of the inner city may not experience discontinuities between home and certain art activities that can operate as "hang-ups" to the expression of ideas by middle class children of suburbia. One would expect generally favorable response in the inner city to art materials, including the use of clay, scrap materials, tearing paper, and finger paint, depending upon the home emphasis on middle class values of cleanliness, for example.

Why the Inner City Public School Curriculum Should Include Art

According to Woodruff,30 a preliminary rule which teachers should follow in formulating objectives is that they should expect a student to learn or to produce only something which he wants to learn or produce. So for a person to proclaim a definite, immediate answer to the heading of this paragraph would be presumptuous if he is not versed in the values, experiences, and attitudes which contribute to the wants of people in the inner city schools. Various movements such as the Harlem Cultural Council, spirited voices for community-run schools, and leaders of revitalized inner city art museums such as the Dusable Museum of Afro- American Art and History (Chicago) and the Harlem Museum (New York City) speak clearly. Black persons in the inner city who are attuned to art want to bring about an awareness of art as a part of the culture of the inner city. Art education is being pushed in connection with these various out-of-school endeavors. Their success in even a limited way can contribute significantly to creating the "want" which makes the "should include art" a moot point. Only time will tell what emphasis on the purpose of art, if any, will be effected in the inner city schools.

Carolyn Lawrence 18 reports on an instance where two such emphases-an attempt at developing a cultural and self-identity-are being made. Particular emphasis is given to a study of the arts of Africa and communication of ideas in high school art classes. The type of response to such an approach can speak for what the student and community want from an art education course in the public schools.

Particular Emphases in the Art Experience Can Contribute to the Education of the Inner City Child

From numerous studies on sensory discriminatory abilities, Cynthia Deutsch 8 hypothesizes that "an early noisy background impedes the proper development of auditory discrimination." It seems equally as logical that the complex visual stimuli could have a similar affect on the child. Visual awareness (not visual ability), to present knowledge, has no correlation with genetics, or cultures. However, the child in the inner city may "turn off" visual stimuli that would be relevant to learning in the formal education system or that could aid in organizing visual information, and subsequently, concepts. The shutting off of stimuli may be protective in order to have the rest or quiet to work that the McFee 20 subjects valued.

Art education could call the attention of the children

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(by direct observation, discussion, and problems presented) to the visual values of their environment-the similar and varying characteristics of lines, textures, colors, shapes, rhythms, relationships, spaces, and the ways they are or could be organized. The environment of the inner city is not void of subtle variations in color, of objects which make imprints, or children who have thoughts to put into form.

Before idealistic generalizing becomes a temptation, it must be recalled that Witkin 29 found differences in orientation to space and in ability to organize in a complex visual field between boys and girls. This suggests that children will likely respond to their visual awareness education to different degrees even though they do feel the worth of using their experiences and visual observations. Still, given an understanding of how to analyze the components of the complex visual environment of the inner city, given practice in the process of selection and rejection of elements that aid or hinder communication of their intended personal response, and given the encouragement to synthesize-to use the facility gained through art to organize and present an idea visually-one could expect more, exciting, and unique aesthetic creations in visual art products from the inner city.

The study conducted by Doris Barclay3 also demon-

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strated that disadvantaged children could increase their visual awareness and the ability to order visual stimuli into aesthetic productions. Such an increase in organization of visual stimuli should not be too surprising. Although it is not known that the subjects in the Bar- clay study had strong identification with any subcultural or cultural art forms, it can hardly be over- looked that much African art beautifully demonstrates a dramatic organization of lines and forms. It is con- ceivable that enforced leisure time due to technological changes could present the opportunity for training to increase visual organizational abilities and result in increased activities of artistic expression and enhance- ment in the inner city. Given the perceptual and organizing aides, equipment, and supplies, groups having the desire to produce creatively could operate. An out- standing example is the Watts Writers Workshop, a creative writer group in Los Angeles. The fascinating evolution of this group was related by Bud Schulberg 26

at the Conference on the Role of the Arts in meeting the Social and Educational Needs of the Disadvantaged.

Silverman27 found that art experiences contributed to a significant improvement of disadvantaged seventh graders' ability to make rapid visual discriminations, with more improvement being made by lower socioeconomic students. Spatial orientation and vocabulary were improved by the experimental art experience where teachers had 1) information about the disadvantaged and the structure of art, and 2) a variety of teaching media, a special textbook, two and three dimensional reproductions, and other teaching aids. Other benefits, as mature reaction to stress and more favorable attitudes of boys to rules, were effected by various interactions of the variables.

The more successful inductive or analytic instruc- tional method of teaching perspective found by Ren- nels 23 with sixth grade Negro children was structured as a self-reaction learning situation. Attention was drawn to principles through on-the-spot demonstrations and photographs taken by students of the scene. Size relationships were presented by using moving objects and strategically placed people. Drawing was done directly from the environment, and the use of cameras likely contributed to an immediate, direct, and meaningful experience. Special perceptual training, then, seems to need relevance and immediacy for these students to learn most effectively.

The conclusion of the study by Renick,23 of the perceptual and reasoning abilities of black and white children, reviewed the response of each subgroup of her study to the various measures. She then made recommendations for emphases which would be re- medial, or at least, serve to balance the tendency to reason in one extreme or the other. For example, where deductive reasoning for grade three Negro children was found to be below the mean, Renick suggested activities involving a mystery where clues for a solution were sought, such as, speculation (after some clay experience) as to how a ceramic horse was made. It seems logical that the suggestion of the clay experience which would be direct and manipulative, should precede and hopefully help lead into, the attempt at encouraging deductive reasoning.

Implications for the Teacher of Art in the Inner City

Faced with the broad range of individual differences, kinds of experience, and particular abilities in an inner city classroom, the teacher has an additional challenge. Children reflect the rapidly changing attitudes of their community and are apt to be particularly sensitive, depending on their age partly, to teacher-pupil relationships. In discussing this topic Grace Porter22 empha- sized the importance of the consistent attitude of the teacher: "I am here because I have something to give- to teach," "I see these students as human beings, all kinds of human beings." The teacher structures the art learning sequence-questions, situations, and introduc- tion of concepts so that the child is motivated by the kinds of experiences and successes he has had. To be sure, the teacher cannot do this without being very familiar with aspects of the experiences of her students and must accept the visual statements which derive from their values and experiences as valid. It is the same in any teaching situation. Preconceived ideas of end outcomes or interpretations the child should make to the teacher's questions do not fit into a classroom atmosphere which pretends to value divergent thinking, individuality, and creative production. These modes and characteristics are encouraged in many art classroom, wishfully, all of them. A small book, The Me Nobody Knows by Stephen M. Joseph 15 provides evi- dence from one situation in language arts of how children will produce meaningful, personal, creative expres- sions when encouraged to do so.

Since Hall 10 found that the Negro succeeds at work which he feels really matters, Negro students should respond to art learning situations which allow them to communicate about what really matters or which provides skills and techniques for which they see a use in their daily lives. A teacher who listens can learn what really matters to his/her students. Hubbard 13 considered what would be meaningful to inner city students in the high school curriculum plan he organized for that type of situation. Such nontraditional art projects as creating order among or enhancing common home objects have value. They consider the experience of the inner city student, value aspects of the existing environment, and recognize possibilities that exist within the student's environment. Warren Anderson's 2 book of art learning situations built on sixteen well-considered objectives, presents an approach which could easily be adapted to the special needs of the elementary inner city schools.

McFee suggests helping students learn about art by be- ginning with what is familiar to them and using art to communicate about themselves, their clothing, homes, and environment, pointing out the visual elements and principles which operate around them. This analyzing approach leads naturally to the possibility of creating a new synthesis or order by manipulating the available forms. A feeling of the worthiness of each individual's personal view of reality is vital and basic to having the tools, skills and materials to carry out an idea.

Presenting the art lesson in terminology that is not distractingly different from what is understood by the

Continued on page 34 21



black inner city child art: a phantom concept?

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