learning, aesthetics, and schooling: the popular arts as textbook on america

Learning, Aesthetics, and Schooling: The Popular Arts as Textbook on America*

By Donald Arnstine

I. INTRODUCTION

The arts educate. Things as trivial as the value of ready-made hamburgers and as profound as the value of loyalty to one’s group are learned through exposure to the arts and from participation in artistic activities. If we could discover how this happens, we would know a great deal more about art. We would also know a great deal more about the culture in which we live and about ourselves. Art that is characteristic of a culture reflects and promulgates the important values and beliefs of that culture. To that extent then, the arts can serve as a more effective textbook on American culture than anything ever published for such an academic purpose.

The intent of this essay is to offer an account of how the arts contribute to what we learn. While some psychological research is pointedly relevant to the construction of this account, its focus will be on a conceptual analysis of experience that is aesthetic in quality. A second purpose of this discussion will be to see how an understanding of the impact of art on learning can indicate a more appropriate use of the arts in schooling. Schools, it is commonly believed, are intended to acquaint children with the wider culture and to help induct them into it. If art can help people learn, and if there are at hand forms of art which peculiarly reveal the culture that is both the source and the focus of our educational efforts, then the arts merit an altogether different and radically expanded role in schools.

11. THE IMPACT OF THE ARTS ON LEARNING

It is easy enough to say that we can learn from the arts; it is not so easy to see how this works. Most works of art we are exposed to have little impact on us. Like the newspaper headlines, they attract our attention for a short while and then disappear from memory. Often we call such short-lived art “entertainment.” It holds our attention only as we directly confront it. We expect it to help us pass the time pleasantly, but we do not expect it to move us or to have a lasting impression.

On the other hand, most of us can recall at least some experiences of art that “made a difference’’ in our lives. Long after our exposure to such works we continue to think about them, to feel a certain way about them, and perhaps to discuss them with others. Often we return to these works and from our repeated exposure experience new feelings and entertain new ideas.

Because we are not quite the same person we were before we encountered such works of art, it seems appropriate to say that we learned from them. But how does this happen? Why is it that some works only entertain us, but others “teach” us? Some people believe that artists somehow can invest their work with a little of their own genius which is transmitted to us as we confront the work. But this explanation sounds a bit like magic; it raises more questions than it answers. To find a more credible explanation of the learning impact of art we must examine the more compli- cated, but earthbound, interrelationships that occur between a percipient (the person who is watching, or reading, or listening) and the thing called a work of art.

An explication of how art contributes to learning will be facilitated by supposing that artists, writers, and composers arrange materials in special ways and that these arrangements are what we mean by works of art. When the arrangement of the work refers us to things or ideas outside the work itself-when a painting depicts a familiar

~~ ~~~ ~

Donald Arnstine is a Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of California-Davis.

This article is adapted from a chapter that will appear in Culture as Education, ed. Richard LaBrecque and Vincent Crockenberg (Dubuque: KendalVHunt, in press). The writer is indebted to the Graduate Division of the University of California-Davis for its financial assistance in com- pleting this study.

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262 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

person or scene, or when a poem mentions an unrequited love or a favorite fruit-we shall call the art “referential.” When, on the other hand, the arrangement makes no such reference at all, as is the case with most music, much decorative art, and some paintings, we shall call the art “abstract.” Both referential and abstract works of art can have a strong impact on a percipient. In abstract art, the impact is wholly a function of the percipient’s response to the arrangement (of sounds, colors, shapes, etc.) itself-to what is usually called the form of the work. The form of a referential work has an impact too, but so does its reference to recognizable ideas and events. The stained glass in a cathedral window may thrill the viewer because of the richness of its colors and the ordered intricacy of its shapes. But i f this arrangement of glass also depicts people and events that have social, moral, and spiritual significance to the percipient, then this as well has an impact on the percipient.

The impact of the content in a referential work of art needs no special explanation. We expect people to feel strongly about references to things that matter to them. But that people should be deeply absorbed by, or have strong feelings about, altogether non-referential, abstract arrangements is less readily understood. Our task will be to explicate how abstract arrangements-i.e., form in art-can arouse feelings in people; how these feelings can become associated with ideas that are cued by the referential features in art; and finally, what relation this arousal of feeling has to learning.

In order to understand why any particular cue or stimulus should arouse feelings in a person, it is necessary to be clear about the conditions under which emotion can ever be aroused.’ When we are in a situation which is perfectly familiar and in which our action is smooth and habitual, very little feeling is aroused at all. For most people driving to work in the morning is so routinized that they feel free to think about other things than the way chosen, the traffic, or the car itself. It may be redundant to say that what is familiar is taken for granted, but it is worth noting that what is taken for granted is neither thought about nor felt-whether it be driving to work, brushing one’s teeth, or hearing a simple tune so frequently that it recedes to the background of attention where it is hardly perceived at all.

It is only when we perceive something novel within the familiar that our attention is captured. The appearance of novelty thwarts habitual action because a habit can be expected to succeed only when conditions remain fairly constant. The thwarting of a habit-any habit, whether it be one of acting, or talking, or perceiving-is always experienced with some feeling. Usually this feeling is one of slight surprise and mild irritation. Needless to say the nature and degree of feeling is dependent on the sort of habit that is thwarted and on the amount of difficulty, or even the impossibility, of re-instituting the habit. Thus, feeling will be quite strong when one is struck from behind while driving to work. Not only are one’s driving habits interrupted, but one soon perceives that many other habits will be thwarted as well-perhaps for months to come. On the other hand, irritation is only slight and temporary when a ballpoint pen runs dry; one simply reaches for another pen.

We feel things when our habitual modes of action are interrupted, thwarted, or delayed, but that feeling need not always be one of irritation. Sometimes it is felt as pleasant. For example, eating meals becomes habitual for most people, and often they get a little tired of their habits. Ms. Jones may go to great lengths to upset the habits associated with eating at home, and she and her mate may find it quite pleasant to do so. “We’re having a roast with a special sauce,” she announces, ”so I thought we’d eat at eight tonight.” Fred can then look forward with special anticipation to dinner and may even decide to put on a clean shirt. Waiting until eight can be made more

1. A presentation of the theory of affective arousal on which the following discussion draws heavily can be found in The Achievement Motive, David C. McClelland et al. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953). The relevance of this interpretation of affect to experience with art is discussed in 0. E. Berlyne, Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), and its incorporation into a theory of music appears in Leonard 8. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956). The relation of affective arousal, experience in the arts, and the phenomenon of learning is discussed in Donald Arnstine, Philosophy of Education (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

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THE POPULAR ARTS AS TEXTBOOK 263

pleasant i f he prepares a cocktail and an appetizer. The couple thus interrupts a great many of its habits, involving dress, mealtime, manners, and the menu itself, and they enjoy both the prospect and the actuality of the events.

The irritation that often accompanies the thwarting of habitual action is absent from the scene described above for two reasons. First, the couple’s eating habits were not just interrupted; they chose to interrupt them and thus remained in control of the events in question. Second, the goals toward which their habits were aimed were not abandoned. Dinner was not cancelled nor was the couple afraid that it might be. It was only being delayed and then presented in a different form. Thus the delay could be felt as pleasant anticipation, not frustration. And this sort of feeling is what can be felt by an experienced percipient confronting a work of abstract art.

Since abstract art refers to nothing outside the work itself, our attention can be given only to the patterns and relationships of elements presented. A pattern, of course, involves repetition, and it takes time for this repetition to be perceived. Occasionally the time is controlled for us, as when we listen to music or watch a movie. On other occasions the time spent in perceiving the complexities and repeti- tions within patterns is under our control, as when we read poems or look at pictures. But why should hearing or looking at a pattern arouse feeling, or be experienced as pleasant or even absorbing?

Most of the time it is not. For example, most wallpaper presents a pattern repeated ad infinitem. In our homes we are quite familiar with the wallpaper; to see a little of it is to know what the rest of it is like. Our perception of it is altogether habitual and that is just why we have it on the wall. We do not want it to arouse feeling in us, because a wall is supposed to function as an unobtrusive background to things, events, and people. The same can be said about the musical patterns softly piped (by Muzak) into restaurants, airports, and dentists’ offices. It too is intended to be unobtrusive, serving as a harmonious background for more focal events. Thus, when a pattern is regular, it quickly becomes familiar and then we no longer even notice it. It is worth noting, however, that if nothing else is around to attract our attention, we do notice these very regular patterns. We find them monotonous, and the feeling is mildly unpleasant. When you have missed your plane and have to wait for the next one, even Muzak is a little aggravating. How different it would be i f you could spend the time at a concert!

What, then, does a concert offer that Muzak does not? In both cases we are presented sounds in patterns. But the patterns in the Muzak are so regular that we know just what to expect; thus we take it for granted. In the concert the patterns are different. The musicians (or the composer, or both) present patterns that are infinitely varied and keep surprising us. In small ways these patterns thwart our expecta- tions-with a melodic variation, a change in instrumentation, a new emphasis in the rhythm, etc. Thus, like a special dinner, music can challenge our habits of perception, and this minimal suspension of habit can, like the dinner described earlier, be experienced with pleasure. As in the case of the dinner, we come to the music deliberately, voluntarily. l’n spite of the perceived novelties, we are secure in knowing that nothing is being denied us.

What is familiar to one person may be quite novel to another, and what is new to a person may become familiar. No work of music is inherently interesting, nor can a person enjoy the same musical work in the same way for an indefinite time. A record played repeatedly is eventually cast aside although one may never tire of live perfor- mances of the same musical work as the variations introduced by the performers are nearly unlimited. It is also worth noting that, other things being equal, the greater the complexity in a pattern, the greater the opportunity for variation and unexpected change: hence, the greater likelihood the pattern will hold our attention for a longer time.

What has been said about patterns in music and the percipient’s responses holds as well for patterns in other art forms-in poetry, architecture, or painting. While all forms of art present patterns, not all percipients can see the pattern. Painting often is referential, but all works of visual art are composed of patterned elements and some (“abstractions”) present nothing beyond such patterns.

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The patterns in a work of visual art may be quite regular and thus be experienced as monotonous by a percipient familiar with that genre. Thus, connoisseurs of oriental rugs pay little attention to the machine-made regularity of a contemporary Bokhara despite its intricacy and its value. On the other hand, they may spend many pleasant hours before a hand-knotted antique Baluchistan whose patterns seem regular only at first glance, when closer inspection reveals an infinite number of surprising variations.

There is much that can be learned even from abstract art. The more time we spend with it, the more familiar we become with a wider range of styles and genres, the more sensitive we become to increasingly subtle variations within the patterns presented, and the more enjoyment we will find in such perception. But this kind of learning is neither easy nor automatic. It is withheld from the percipient whose posture toward the work is instrumental-who is concerned only to know what it is for, what it means (in a referential sense), or what it is worth.

The posture toward any work of art, especially an abstraction, must be consummatory; the percipient’s concern must be focused on the nature of the patterns he is confronting. Moreover, patterns in an unfamiliar style are often hard to detect. Even the most sophisticated appreciation of Italian madrigals may not help a person first confronting the music of Bali. A work can hardly be enjoyed by a person unfamiliar with the style it exemplifies. Yet, a person’s capacity to enjoy one style of art may provide the courage to tolerate the irritation and confusion often attending initial exposure to another style.

Finally, one’s enjoyment and what he can learn from a work of abstract art is limited by the nature of the work. Because there is comfort and security to be found in what is familiar, many artists and craftsmen produce works that are noteworthy for their familiarity and which offer very little originality or variety in their patterns. This is the major failing of the popular arts, whose rather familiar patterns are sure to capture a large audience but are unable to sustain their attention.2 On the other hand, the formal patterns in contemporary fine art may be so unfamiliar and difficult to detect that audiences may require the guidance of experts. It has been suggested that this guidance is the primary function of responsible art critics3

We can summarize by suggesting that at least three conditions must be satisfied for a work of abstract art to have an impact on a percipient and for a percipient to learn from it. First, the percipient must come to the work in a consummatory frame of mind. He must be prepared to enjoy what is immediately presented to him instead of subordinating it to considerations of utility, worth, or referential meaning. Second, the percipient must have some familiarity with the general style in which the work was executed. Without this he will not know what to look or to listen for and, patterns (let alone their variations) will be difficult to detect. Finally, the work itself must be constructed to present patterns in rich and varied ways. Regardless of the experience and orientation of the percipient, wallpaper is just wallpaper, and potboilers can appeal only to a taste for rarity or nostalgia-not aesthetic quality.

Abstract art has an impact on feelings simply in virtue of the ways in which its formal elements interact with a percipient. Through this sort of repeated and varied interactions, the percipient acquires greater sensitivity and more sophisticated taste. This is a significant kind of learning. But, when a well-designed work of art also presents references to things and ideas beyond itself, the emotional impact can be greater still. The impact of the formal features usually reinforces the impact of the content. While not always apparent in instrumental music, this combined impact of form and content is readily perceived when words and music are presented together (in forms as disparate as folk songs, popular songs, art songs, and opera). Until the twentieth century Western painting has always exemplified the union of form and content, and motion pictures probably offer this union in its most complex and sophisticated form. In a movie an idea can be conveyed in several modes at once: It

2. According to W. J. Howell, Jr., the predictability of patterns is the most prominent feature that distinguishes entertainment from the fine arts. See “Art Versus Entertainment in the Mass Media,” Education 94 (November 1973): 179.

3. See Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication,” in Aesthetics and Language, ed. William Elton (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959).

FALL 1977


may be acted out by actors whose dialogue expresses it another way, while the background music, the lighting, and the filming may add other non-discursive dimen- sions to the idea.

In summary, the form of a work of art-when it is well-made or well-designed- can help focus the percipient’s feelings on the content or the referential meaning of the work enabling the percipient to be confronted with an idea that will immediately be felt and understood. Imagine a person reading a magazine with information on the attitudes of mental hospital staff members toward inmates. Contrast this presentation with seeing the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Mere information has a limited impact, but presented in the form of art, it strikes our feelings deeply, and we do not soon forget it.

But has this emotional impact anything to do with learning? It is not, of course, what we mean by learning. But if the impact on the percipient is strong and if subsequently it results in his thinking over and talking about what has been artistically presented, then we are entitled to say that he has acquired a new concern. Over time the percipient may even exhibit these changes in new patterns of action which would entitle us to claim that clearly he had acquired a new disposition. In this sense we can say that the impact of a work of art can contribute to learning.

Of course, there is reason to be cautious on this point. An instance of learning has not been established until various kinds of evidence have been discovered. It would be pointless to claim that any single event could be an experience of learning without following out some of its varied consequences. Even though an experience was felt strongly is no reason to suppose that any particular learning occurred. However, i f other consequences of certain sorts are noted, then we may say that the experience did contribute to learr~ing.~

Equally important we can say that if an experience had little or no emotional impact then it probably did not contribute to learning. We have already seen that unimpeded habitual action is easily taken for granted and that it is seldom felt strongly. That is why problems are first felt before they are recognized or understood: without warning, they block our habits. Moreover, this is also why people create and seek works of art for these, too, throw up obstacles to our perceptual habits. But experience that is only minimally felt, because it is habitual, is the sort of experience from which learning is least likely to occur. Smooth-running habits are easily repeated and by themselves do not inspire or lead to the kinds of changes that indicate the occurrence of learning.

Thus experience which is notably emotional may or may not lead to learning, but experience which is not notably emotional cannot be expected to contribute to learning. Works of art, and especially those whose form enhances the impact of their embodied content, can thus supply conditions that are necessary for the occurrence of learning but not sufficient for it.

The fine arts have come to play a limited and rather peculiar role in our culture after developing in Europe in the service of religion. A substantial proportion of the population went to church and was confronted by sculpture and stained glass, by murals and altarpieces, and by developing forms of choral and instrumental music. The growth of monarchies provided new patrons and new audiences while the commercial aristocracy produced another group of patrons. For each group-christians and clerics, hereditary and commercial aristocracies-artists gave form to the ideas that commanded the deepest beliefs and commitments. Children learned from the art around them and adults were continually reminded of what was true and what was to be valued.

The role of the fine arts began to change in the last century. As a result of war and commercial and colonial rapacity, art works were removed from their cultural con- texts-from temples and churches, palaces and homes-and deposited as booty in elaborate warehouses eventually opened to the public as museums. A century later many people came to believe that a work of art was a rather precious, unique object

4. For a discussion of the kinds of evidence that would entitle one to claim that learning had

VOLUME 27, NUMBER 4

occurred, see Arnstine, Philosophy of Education, pp. 31-40, 122-27.


intended to be exhibited in a museum to groups of people who promised to speak softly and not to touch.

When the fine arts were thus divorced from the activities of daily living, the ideas and values they embodied became equally remote. A similar fate befell the highly developed forms of music in Western culture. Concerts, symphonies, and opera were performed for increasingly smaller, elite audiences. Indeed, so specialized had these audiences become that contemporary composers who continue to write in this tradition have been accused of writing not music any longer but esoteric, atonal games.5 Literature, too, has lost contact with a wide audience. It is not likely that anyone could support himself at present in this culture simply by writing poems, and even the novel has become a difficult, esoteric art form in the hands of many writers.6 Of the various directions taken by the fine arts in contemporary America, perhaps the movement known as “conceptual art” best epitomizes the wide gulf between art and the public. These works appear to place greater emphasis on an idea rather than on design or formal qualities. Here is an account of conceptual art by one of its critics:

The predominant category in terms of sheer numbers consists of works and activities which are radical to the extreme. Chris Burden, under the sponsor- ship of the Los Angeles County Museum, the Rico Mizuno Gallery of Los Angeles, and dealer Ronald Feldman of New York, has had himself shot in the arm with a .22 rifle, crucified to the top of a Volkswagen with real nails driven through his palms, nearly electrocuted on a garage floor, and has filmed himself crawling barechested over fifty feet of broken glass in a parking lot. Piero Mangoni sent cans of his own excrement to his Milan gallery labeled ”Mierda d’Artista.” . . . Collectors have paid as much as $2000 for photo- graphic documentations of these events.’

However much critics may disagree about the value of the fine art that is now being created, its audience has become quite small. Albert William Levi has con- demned this art for being crassly commercial and charged that nihilistic artists now eschew communication, are contemptuous of the public, and in their writings cry out for their own abolition.8 In fact, and as Marx predicted, fine art has become another commodity in a culture which, with its focus on buying and selling, makes commod- ities out of a wide range of relationships and services. Contemporary fine artists, working with agents and galleries, create in a competitive market for collectors who treat art as negotiable s e c ~ r i t i e s . ~ This seems to be the natural outcome of social and economic processes that were already at work when Georges Roualt, famous for his somber, religiously-inspired canvases, fed hundreds of his works into a furnace in order to increase the monetary value of those that remained.

For these reasons, it may not be worth inquiring into the current social impact of the fine arts. It would be difficult to discover any direct impact at all. It would be equally difficult to tell what, if anything, people are learning from the fine arts.

But the case is different for the popular arts. The audiences for symphony concerts and stage plays, poets and painters, may be slim, but nearly everyone in American culture is repeatedly exposed to television shows, rock music, movies, and advertising art.l0

5. See Gerhard Albersheim, “Ludus Atonalis and the Future of Music Education,” Journal

6. See George W. Linden, “Films and a Novel Future,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 8

7. Richard J. Sclafani, “What Kind of Nonsense is This?” Journal of Aesthetics and A r t

8. Albert William Levi, “The Poverty of the Avant Garde,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 8

of Aesthetic Education 4 (January 1970): 117-28.

(January 1974): 56.

Criticism 33 (Summer 1975): 455.

(October 1975): 16. . 9. Ibid., p. 9.

10. Tomorrow’s historians mav discover that the most characteristic art form in America in the twentieth century was its adverkng, epitomized in the television commercial. Created with infinite care and at enormous expense, television ads often utilize the most sophisticated of formal design properties to convince people to acquire things that quickly get used up.

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THE POPUUR ARTS AS TEXTBOOK 267

While the arts of the mass media must be categorized as popular, the label is not necessarily an indication of either their quality or their significance. Television soap operas and night club entertainers easily may be dismissed as merely popular; they seldom have a serious emotional impact, and it would be farfetched to suppose that they serve as vehicles for learning. But art need not be trivial in order to find a wide audience, as Homer and Shakespeare, Each, Daumier and Louis Armstrong clearly demonstrate. Presently, there is no dearth of works of art that are both widely popular and artistically significant. In this category fall not only the movies of eergman and Fellini, but American films like Nashville and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; television shows like ”Upstairs, Downstairs” and “All in the Family”; musicians like Bob Dylan and John Fahey. Simply to list such artists and their works makes it unnecessary to argue either their quality or their strong impact on broad groups of people.

The popular arts always reflect aspects of the culture from which they emerge, but the more powerful of them teach as well. Susanne Langer makes the point this way:

. . . the arts we live with-our picture books and stories and the music we hear-actually form our emotive experience. Every generation has its styles of feeling. One age shudders and blushes and faints, another swaggers, still another is godlike in a universal indifference. These styles . . . are largely unconscious-determined by many social causes, but shaped by artists, usually popular artists of the screen, the juke-box, the shop window, and the picture magazine.ll

If the term, ‘teach’, is too strong, it is still reasonable to say that many people learn from the popular arts. And while a half-hour or hour long television show, by itself, may not contribute to very much learning, it must be remembered that most television shows appear as serials. The protagonists return weekly to confront a new situation. In some television serials the characters grow older and change over the months and years; situations and subplots separated by weeks and even months are seen to be interconnected in various ways. Thus a television serial may function as an epic. What is learned from each event, or from each episode, may be difficult to specify, but the impact of the whole epic, or series, may often be tangible.

It is for these reasons that, when considering the educative impact of the arts in contemporary America, one must attend primarily to the popular arts. For the same reasons, when considering the planned use of the arts for their contribution to learning, one must again look to the popular arts. However, this reasoning is not very compatible with current practices in art education. According to Kenneth Lansing, art education is almost moribund:

. . . art instruction in American elementary schools is not significantly better than it was thirty years ago. Teachers still require their students to color drawings furnished by the instructor; they still have their pupils copying or tracing pictures from books; and they still have them follow step-by-step procedures that end with all the products looking exactly the same.’*

If students are not coloring in the drawings, they are hard at work trying to learn to ”appreciate” the fine arts. The belief continues to operate that if generations of critics agree on the worth of a work of art, then it must be good. And if it is that good, it should be put in the school curriculum for young people to be exposed to and thereby acquire some taste. In summarizing the views of several prominent writers on art education, Evan Kern concluded by urging “the education of a student who is a

11. Susanne Langer, “The Cultural Importance of the Arts,” Journal of Aesthetic Education

12. Kenneth Lansing, “Art Education Today: Its Nature and Its Needs,” Art Education 24

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1 (Spring 1966): 11.

(February 1971): 30.


connoisseur-gourmet-collector of visual aesthetic experience-a proper function for art education in the seven tie^."'^

In practice schools continue to depend largely on the fine arts (or pale imitations of them) as vehicles for learning. It is little wonder, then, that the arts have in secondary schools declined to the status of marginal elective courses. Theorists may perceptively write that “we must acknowledge [students’] widespread indifference or outright hostility to traditional culture and what we call ‘fine’ art,”14 but the schools continue to use traditional materials acknowledged to be “classics,” and (not inciden- tally) non-controversial and therefore safe.

We have seen how the arts can contribute significantly to learning. We have also seen that the popular arts in a culture are those from which widespread learning is most likely to take place. Although schools are intended to promote learning, they neglect a rich resource when they omit formal consideration of the popular arts. This oversight calls for a remedy. The case for the use of the popular arts in schools has been put so reasonably and so forcibly by Vincent Lanier that it is worth quoting at length:

. . . it can be said that even the poorest of our youngsters as a group are truly not “disadvantaged” in not having aesthetic experiences in the visual arts, but rather that the domain of their art experiences is significantly different from that of the almost invariably middle-class teacher and of essentially middle-class school curricula.

Anyone who requires documentation for this point might observe some of the popular visual arts to which our children have access, from preschool to high school years. Motion pictures, television, photography in popular magazines. . . all of these possess in small or large measure not only some art qualities, but also those art qualities art teachers have been taught to revere. But. . . these popular visual art forms exist only outside the school. Inside the art room, the models of artistic worth are Massacio. Mondrian, Motherwell and-occasionally-Kenneth Noland . . . . For as we teach, we tell them, in effect, that the rich life of the popular arts they enjoy outside of school is worthless. For many thousands of our school children, this attitude must be another intolerable indignity. We teachers do not like their speech; we don’t like their dress or their grooming . . . and we don’t like their taste in the arts. If they don’t submit to this barrage of hostility, of course, we call them “alien- ated youth,” subtly transferring the burden of guilt to the children.

Part of the cure might be to focus our attention on the popular visual arts as content for the school art class. Perhaps we can use what our pupils see as the arts to teach them why and how they enjoy what they already appreciate. From this knowledge may come the ability to transfer some insights to the fine arts.15

1 1 . THE ARTS IN THE SCHOOLS

The inclusion of the arts in educational programs has usually been intended to fulfill two aims: to develop creativity and to improve taste. But the foregoing discussion leads us to consider another aim for education in the arts: the critical awareness and understanding of one’s own culture.

If only the traditional fine arts are found in schools, it is not likely that students will see a relation between the arts and their culture. Most of the exemplars of the fine arts express the values and beliefs of other cultures in other times and places, and a mature examination of these arts surely leads to some understanding of those cultures. But school children are far from a critical understanding of their own culture. It

13. Evan J. Kern, “A Proper Function for Art Education in the Seventies,” Studies in Art

14. David W. Ecker, “The Structure of Affect in the Art Curriculum,” Art Education 24

15. Vincent Lanier, “The Teaching of Art.as Social Revolution,” Phi Delta Kappan 50

Education 12 (Fall 1970): 9.

(January 1971): 29.

(February 1969): 315.

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is no easy task to achieve this understanding, and it certainly makes little sense to begin by examining the arts of remote cultures.

It is not being proposed that the fine arts be excluded from study. However, the popular arts should be included, since there is reason to expect more valuable educational results from creating and studying them than from focusing exclusively on the fine arts.

Not long ago the National Art Education Association published a “position statement” detailing what the Association deemed to be a “quality school art program.”l6 While the utilization of the popular arts was not explicitly rejected neither was it ever mentioned. The place of the fine arts in such programs is, of course, assured. Failure to mention the popular arts is a clear indication that art educators did not judge them important enough to be worth mentioning. The result of this omission is that students fail to become reflective about the very works of art with which they have the most contact. After having interviewed students in art classrooms in New England, Al Hurwitz concluded:

Oddly enough, there were very few questions from the students about what one might consider to be the art of their own time and place, that is, about films, commercial art, or industrial design. These things are just not taken seriously, not because they are not pervasive in the lives of the students, but because teachers apparently reserve the serious side of art for the big three: painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is my own theory that this reflects a kind of status aspect for curriculum ~1anning. l~

Vincent Lanier’s remarks (cited earlier) indicate reasons for focusing on the popular arts m schools. These reasons will be understood more clearly if we group them into three broad types: 1) those dealing with the enhancement of aesthetic taste; 2) those dealing with the development of creativity; and, 3) those which focus on the development of a critical awareness of one’s culture. Each of these types of reason will be elaborated briefly.

When the improvement of taste and aesthetic judgment is at issue, it would seem reasonable to focus on art works familiar to young people. It is easy to praise Wordsworth and Keats and to denigrate Rod McKuen and Simon and Garfunkle. But young people have a notion of what the latter poets are talking about. If teachers could help pupils understand why they enjoy some contemporary poets and lyricists, and why they don’t enjoy every popular artist who comes to their attention, then taste will gradually be improved. It is not likely that all the students will come to appreciate and enjoy Wordsworth and Keats by the end of the year (or by graduation time), but some of them will. And just a few such students would be more than the schools now produce.

The arts have traditionally been seen as the primary means for developing creativity in children, and some persons have seen the arts as the sole means to this end. Accordingly, they have justified the teaching of other subjects (e.g., math, history, the sciences, etc.) as if they should merely be transmitted without any creative participation by students. The consequences of this position are a disaster. School studies known as “solids” remain forbidding and inert, and students find that originality and creativity is narrowly limited to what they can do in standard art media culturally significant centuries ago. Thus it is no surprise that school crafts programs-e.g., in jewelry making, pottery, textile design, etc.-are far more popular, and more heavily enrolled, than school arts programs.

The remedies for these misconceptions about what helps to develop creativity have been elaborated by many writers. Student participation in planning the goals and activities of academic studies has been a central tenet of generations of progressive educators. When attention shifts to the arts, student participation again becomes

16. See National Art Education Association, “The Essentials of a Quality School Art Pro- gram: A Position Statement by the National Art Education Association,” Art Education 21 (January 1968): 28-32.

17. AI Hurwitz, “Issues Relating to the Curriculum of Senior High School Art Programs,” Art Education 21 (April 1968): 16-19.

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focal. All young people are regularly exposed to television and the movies, and it is difficult to imagine anything more natural than that many of them should find it fascinating to produce their own motion pictures and videotapes. Portable videotape recorders and cameras are relatively inexpensive for schools to own, and according to some experts are “so easy to use that anyone can become an expert in a matter of a few minutes, and then begin to be productive.”ls The use of such equipment and techniques brings into play an enormous number of interests and abilities (acting, filming, editing, narrating, composing, costuming, etc.) and normally has the advan- tage of instant replay, live feedback, and erasable, reusable tape. By way of preparing students for work in these media, Lanier suggests that cost factors are of little consequence when considering the advisability of replacing crayons with photography in the school arts programs in the lower grades.19

There is little question that an acquaintance with forms of art will enable people to better understand their culture. But for a very long time the emphasis in school art programs was on the development of personal taste and creativity. These emphases led in turn to the selection of exemplars from the traditional arts since they exhibited both the creativity of their makers and the taste of the critics who selected them. What was ignored was the fact that exposure to the arts of remote cultures is unlikely to help many pupils gain insight into their own culture.

It should not be necessary to argue that young people have a need to understand their culture, and that the need is more urgent the more rapidly the culture changes and generates social conflict. The question, then, is not whether it is worth inducing an awareness of and concern about cultural problems and cultural change, but rather, how schools might go about this.

Pervasive cultural values are embodied in the popular arts. In the most popular of these art forms, e.g., high rated television shows and top box office movies, these values tend to be traditional ones failing to suggest any action which might deal effectively with the fundamental changes transforming the culture.2o On the other hand, many works of contemporary art, while a little less widely popular, raise questions about these traditional values by showing the problems that result from acting on them (the movie, Joe, for example, or f ive Easy Pieces). Acquaintance with the popular arts not only reveals underlying values in the culture, but can also help to put into focus some of the major problems and issues that students must, sooner or later, confront.

It may be argued that children are already exposed to the popular arts out of school and have little need for more of the same in school. In a sense, this is true. There is little justification for noon movies except as a diversion to occupy the attention of otherwise raucous youth during the lunch break. What is proposed here is the selective use of the popular arts (since some are artistically empty, and others are rich) in the constructively critical climate established by a teacher. This climate cannot be found out of school except, accidentally, by a very few people.

The focus on cultural understanding shifts attention from the emphasis on individuals found in most school arts programs. Genuine creativity and taste cannot be developed apart from social interaction yet they are often treated in schools as if they were purely personal acquisitions. In consequence, the arts are treated as a sort of therapy-as an escape from the social realities that bear upon personal life. This is debilitating to both the arts and the individual personality. Both are diminished with their separation from the concerns that bind people in communities. As communities are threatened by change and the interests of groups seeking their own aggrandize- ment, both art and individuals suffer and become narrow in their isolation. With these concerns in mind, Ronald Neperud wrote of a social role for education in the arts:

18. Kern, “A Proper Function,” p. 12. 19. Lanier, “The Teaching of Art,” p. 316. 20. See Donald Amstine, “Learning Without Teaching: Aesthetic Impact and the Popular

Arts,” in Culture as Education, ed. R. LaBrecque and V. Crockenberg (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt), for an empirical study and analysis of values embodied in popular television shows and motion pictures.

FALL 1977


. . . while personal development remains central to art education, the exercise of social responsibility via criticism in the arts cannot be wishfully left as a chance outcome of art education. . . . Education of the individual to assume an active critical role in his environment . . . would appear to be one of our most insistent priorities, taking precedence over an individualistic search for the ‘interesting’ and for hedonistic gratification. Either we actively assume such a role and begin to design an environment on thoughtful foundations, or someone else will program our life.21

It is not being proposed that education in the arts become a mere instrument for the advancement of social criticism and social programs. Such a treatment of the arts is more in keeping with a state in which a single social and political ideology is dominant: “Under Marxism/Leninism, art education encourages people to participate in the shared objective reality. Its purpose is to instill in the individual an obligation to shape society to socialist ends.”22 Indeed, this approach to education in the arts can be understood as the opposite of most American schools, where “art education promotes social detachment in order to facilitate exploration of private realities.”*3 But this detachment is not just idiosyncratic. It is, in fact, socially irresponsible insofar as it helps blind the student to his society and transform his creativity into mere therapy or simple decoration.

In a society where a single political ideology dominates, art education becomes a tool for its reinforcement: “Esthetic education of the masses [in the U.S.S.R.] is not an end in itself, but a means for molding communist convictions, an instrument in moral upbringing . . . .”24 So conceived, art education becomes primarily instrumental to ends that are extrinsic both to art and to individual personality. However, the alternative is not to separate the arts in schools from consideration of social realities and social problems. Rather, it is to make manifest to students the intimate connection between the arts and the social values and social institutions from which they spring. This can be effected both in the study of art and in its creation. As subjects of study, the popular arts can be initially understood and enjoyed by students. The popular arts also present interpretations of society and social values that can be discussed, analyzed, and criticized. In creating art that utilizes contemporary media, students can easily be encouraged to react to and to express themselves about their society.

The orientation toward education in the arts that is proposed here suggests a need to re-examine the entire school curriculum. Perhaps the strongest and most enduring criticism aimed at the standard subjects in the public schools is that of remoteness. We adults know, or think we know, that math and history and physics could be useful to children if they would only take the trouble to learn them. But children can’t seem to see any connection between their academic studies and the world outside. The arts, too, have suffered from this school-induced (and, of course, culturally-induced) disconnection from society, its institutions, and its problems.

The standard remedies for this disconnection and the resultant loss of children’s motivation and interest have been two, either: 1) dispense with academic studies altogether, and encourage children to pursue their own interests; or, 2) “make” the academics “interesting” by dressing them up with fashionable teaching techntques, electronic pedagogical machinery, field trips, contracts, and sophisticated rewards and punishments. In the former case we risk abandoning all efforts to help young

21. Ronald W. Neperud, “Art Education: Toward an Environmental Aesthetic,” Art Educa- tion 26 (March 1973): 9.

The citation of contemporary thought on this issue is not intended to slight the long tradition of concern, in Western civilization, for the social role of education in the arts. See Herbert Read, Education Through Art (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1943) and, to go all the way back, Plato’s Republic, II. 376-Ill. 412b.

22. Tom Halsal, “Toward a More Effective Art Education Curriculum: Comparing American Art Education Theory with Marxist/Leninist Art Education Theory in the German Democratic Republic,” Art Education 27 (September 1974): 2.

23. Ibid. 24. V. K. Skatershchikov, “Leninist Principles of Esthetic Education and the Contemporary

Era,” Soviet Education 12: 113.

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people engage in serious learning, while in the latter case we trivialize education by focusing the attention of students on its superficial accompaniments (the classroom games and pedagogical gimmicks) and its accidental consequences (grades, eligi bil- ity for athletics, etc.).

If the problem with standard school studies is their remoteness from the lives of children and the life of society, the solution is neither to abandon the studies nor to coat them with sugar for easy ingestion. It is to re-institute the studies’ connection with the students’ world. To achieve this, progressive educators emphasized problem-solving and the project method. Confronted with his own real-life problems the child, it was held, would be encouraged to think productivelyand acquire information in hypothesizing and testing his solutions. Groups of children could work together on projects which would focus not only on their own shared problems but also on problems in the wider society.

This manner of organizing students’ activities is arduous, requiring originality, patience, courage, and perseverance by teachers. But there is an additional way of initiating school studies that makes manifest the connection between the lives of students and the world outside. This way is through the study of the arts.

The effectiveness of poetry and film, television and rock music lies in their capacity to arouse feelings in the audiences and focus those feelings on issues and ideas of consequence. As these arts are perceived out of school, their impact is largely accidental. But conceived as serious educational resources, the arts can deliberately be selected on the basis of both artistic merit and social significance. Then, they can be introduced and critically discussed in schools. The intention is twofold: first, to enhance students’ enjoyment of the arts by helping them exercise their critical abilities on works that are initially familiar and enjoyable; and second, to help focus students’ attention on both personal and more broadly social problems through examination of the content presented in works of art. A work of art cannot, of course, solve problems. But all works of art are intended to attract and hold attention, and the popular arts often focus that attention on what matters to young people:

Aside from the hypnotic beat of much pop music and its virility of invention, the lyrics are often highly relevant and provide a sort of Baedeker for gut issues of the moment. The words of the popular songs of earlier generations spoke of romantic love. The lyrics of today’s pop songs cover sex, drugs, race, war, poverty and, occasionally, romantic love as well. These musical statements . . . appear to provide an aesthetic vehicle by means of which young people speak to each other and to themselves of what they conceive to be relevant, vital issues. Those of us who are middle-class professionals may discount the artistic stature of this music (though musicologists such as Leonard Bernstein do not) . . . . But we cannot ignore its power to stir those age levels many of us attempt to teach-starting at least in junior high school and holding all the way into the college years.25

The point can be made clear with an example. As a school study, biology is typically presented as a more or less complete taxonomic system, beginning with single-celled organisms and ending with the complex structures of mammals. As an inducement to study, this organization of material has little appeal-even to the children who have an interest in plants and animals. Yet the particular organization of knowledge known as biology is a rich and indispensable resource for anyone who wants to inquire into a nearly limitless range of personal and social problems: con- traception and population control, dieting and nutrition, the use of cigarettes, alcohol, and other dangerous drugs, the effects of pollution and radiation on organic life, and so on. To be sure, each of these problems may send an investigator beyond the resources of biology and into other fields, such as sociology, history, economics, and political science. But what matters is that these disciplines will be seen as functional after students have become concerned about the issues to which they serve as resources. The arts-especially the popular arts-can arouse and focus this concern.

25. Lanier, “The Teaching of Art,“ p. 316.

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At present, the arts have a great although unmeasured impact on people outside of school. In school the use of the arts has traditionally been specialized, idiosyncratic, and peripheral to central curricular concerns. Thus, the impact of art in schools has reached only a minority of children.

In this essay I have examined the manner in which works of art affect people, how works of popular art reflect and sometimes implicitly criticize the dominant values of a culture, and I have suggested that schools deliberately expose students to works of popular art and encourage student creativity in the popular arts media. To do this may enable schools to enhance the enjoyment and the critical and creative abilities of students, and it might also breathe life into the entire curriculum itself.

Serious problems in our society are often so complex, so frightening, or so concealed as to elude the consideration of responsible adults, let alone school chi\- dren. The arts present these problems with force and impact: One cannot ignore the message when Bob Dylan sings about school dropouts who can’t find jobs, and one cannot avoid considering what air pollution means (as well as its differential impact on the poor and on the rich) after seeing the film, Soylent Green. In sharp contrast, the curriculum of most schools remains a collection of separate disciplines, maintained by tradition, defended by appeals to an abstract ideal of the well-educated man, and sampled without enthusiasm by coerced students. The consequence of my proposal is that these separate disciplines no longer be considered as constituting the curriculum but instead become resources (but not the only resources) for students who have undertaken their own inquiries. These inquiries will often emerge from students’ thoughtful consideration or production of works of art.

The arts, then, become the heart of general education. Without them study has 3ecome routine, lifeless, and irrelevant to what students care about and what the society desperately needs. Without the arts school has become literally anaesthetic, putting young people intellectually and morally to sleep. But a focus on the arts (in connection with the intelligent solving of genuine problems) is a prime means of helping students to see why it is worth pursuing studies in the several disciplines. A specialist, to be sure, needs no inducement to immerse himself in history or mathe- matics; he is already comfortable in his discipline. But students in school are not specialists. They will approach the study of various disciplines with intelligence and concern only insofar as the disciplines are themselves attractive or as they offer help to students in pursuing serious inquiries of their own.

Because the serious consideration or making of works of art leads naturally into other concerns, the program of schooling needs to be turned upside down. School studies that are usually required, called “solids,” are merely impenetrables. The arts are usually electives, but they should be made available to all students. There is much to be gained in such a change, if only the enhancement of students’ immediate experience. But it is likely that the feelings and concerns aroused through the arts will encourage students to try penetrating the solids themselves. Under these conditions of inquiry, “scholarship” would no longer be seen as the obedient pursuit of isolated subjects, but would instead become a genuinely concerned inquiry into problems and issues that matter to students and to the society in which they are already functioning.

VOLUME 27, NUMBER 4

learning, aesthetics, and schooling: the popular arts as textbook on america

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