Blog 6 :

Discuss the importance of teaching art as a core subject. Why is it important to ensure that there is time set aside in the cirriculum, resources (teachers with art background, supplies, community resources) and space provided for art as a separate subject?



Teaching art as a core subject provides the students with the chance to view the world in different ways, and a variety of new avenues with which to express themselves. Having art integrated in other subjects can be good (and in fact, might even be essential depending on the student), but it can also be problematic when we begin to lose the value of art as process and exploration. The danger is that art can become the vehicle which "drives around" the other (perhaps viewed as "more important") aspects of the curriculum. What happens when art is only used to demonstrate a social studies idea, or a science concept? It is similar to language arts in a combined Humanities program, where the danger is that the language arts goals serve as a way of representing the social studies program. There are too many lessons and opportunities for growth and exploration in art to have it solely serve the expressive needs of other aspects of the curriculum. In fact, I would argue that sometimes the exploration NEEDS a lack of structure, or controlling idea, for true expression to take place! If we are going to honour those explorations as essential parts of our growth and being, then time, resources, and space must be set aside in our teaching of children for them, just as they are for other aspects of learning we consider essential.