Week 12 Reading & Reflection

I initially read the article “Art for Sake”. While reading the article, I mostly agree with the view of Winner & Hetland that even if studying art is not strongly related to getting a high score of standardized tests, art itself is valuable and beneficial because it certainly provides a chance for students to learn and develop various abilities and skills which are absolutely important in our life and barely acquired by any other subjects. Besides, as a future art teacher, I could feel the authors’ self-respect and pride toward art itself as an essential subject in an educational system. I also found the evidences which are required when not only persuading others but also convincing myself that art is really valuable for students in a current education even though art has been marginalized by schools, teachers, parents and policy makers. I know many art educators like Winner and Hetland have asserted that art itself is meaningful and valuable enough without being a tool or method for better test’s score or effectiveness of any other subjects.

Since I thought the first article is pretty persuasive to me, I was wondering how the second article argues with the view of Winner and Hetland. Unlike I expected, I was surprised by the author’s strong criticism toward Winner and Hetland’s claims while reading the article, “Why Do We Teach Art in the Schools?”. So focusing on their essential points of view and the reasons why they contradict the claims Winner and Hetland suggested, I carefully read the article. I personally concluded that the art educators of the both articles might agree with this claim that art is very important and beneficial to students in a current educational system but they have different points of view about the reasons why art is valuable and what kinds of benefits our students possibly get from studying art. While Winner and Hetland consider that art wouldn’t positively affect on getting high score of standardized tests or developing language and math skills, Burchenal, Housen, Rawilnson & Yenawine assert that integrating art in the curriculum clearly contribute to students’ critical thinking and measurable academic achievement including high score of standardized tests. I believe the following parts of the first article invite the Burchenal, Housen, Rawilnson & Yenawine’s resistance.  

We found that arts programs teach a specific set of thinking skills rarely addressed elsewhere in the curriculum – and that far from being irrelevant in a test-driven education system, arts education is becoming even more important as standardized tests.

It is well established that intelligence and thinking ability are far more complex than what we choose to measure on standardized tests. The high-stakes exams we use in our schools, almost exclusively focused on verbal and quantitative skills, reward children who have a knack for language and math and who can absorb and regurgitate information. They reveal little about a student’s intellectual depth or desire to learn and are poor predictor of eventual success and satisfaction in life. (Winner &Hetland)

I personally think both articles include fabulous ideas and they both are persuasive enough. The first article could sound good to art teachers since they continually suggest that art is valuable in itself without being cooperated with any other subjects or any other needs. However, I was also relieved that the art educators of the second article have scientific data that proves art and art based curriculum could strongly influenced on developing and improving other skills which are considered significant in a current educational system such as language and math skills. That’s because, practically, it is really hard for art as a subject to survive in school system without scientific evidences of effectiveness and possibilities of integrating with other subjects.