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Arts education has
been transformed, is
crucial to learning,
speaker says

By Crystal Kua
Star-Bulletin

Remember the ceramic bowl you made as a Mother's Day gift when you were a kid in school? Or the finger painting you took home as a kindergartner?

Arts education is more than that now, a leading art educator says, and it's increasingly becoming an indispensable part of a well-rounded education for all children.

"Within the past 15 years, there's been a tremendous change in the way the arts are presented to kids," said Phillip Dunn, University of South Carolina professor of art education and the 1999 National Art Teacher of the Year.

"The arts used to be recreation, a break from the rigors of schooling -- but now we have strengthened the content of arts education."

That's the message Dunn is giving today in a keynote address at the third annual Governor's Conference on Arts Education 2000, at the Koolau Ballrooms at the Koolau Golf Club in Kaneohe.

Entitled "Arts First/Arts Last: Educate the Whole Child," the statewide conference organized by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts is bringing together teachers, artists, parents, school administrators, students, and government and political leaders.

"One of our major goals is to provide opportunity for artists, art educators, administrators, arts organizations to meet to discuss our common goals and challenges that are ahead of us," said conference organizer Elaine Zinn, coordinator of the foundation's Arts-in-Education Program.

"There are some things in the schools today in the arts in Hawaii, but there's so much more to be done."

The arts -- visual, drama, music and dance -- used be a subject taught outside the regular classroom, Dunn said. "It usually had something to do with a holiday."

"Traditionally, what people think of as arts education is children coming to the art room and making something in a brief period of time with little time for discussion or putting it into any kind of context," Dunn said.

"The arts is a study. They have a body of knowledge that surround them and we are including them in curriculum for the first time."

The arts are also in the forefront in changes in how children learn in general, Dunn said.

"What used to get you through school was a good memory. What the arts do, then, is provide opportunities for higher-order thinking skills that schools say they want to develop," Dunn said. "Children are being asked to analyze, synthesize, criticize when given problems with an infinite number of correct answers."

The arts were the first to use portfolios of work to measure performance, an avenue being considered more and more in gauging how well students meet academic standards.

"I think the arts always serve as glue with the curriculum. The arts have to be an equal partner. They can't be a handmaiden to the core subjects."

Hawaii's cultural diversity is a good springboard for arts education, Dunn said.

"If you think about it, the arts is one of the ways different people can communicate instantly," Dunn said. "It allows us to be more tolerant of differences in all forms."

And Hawaii could look to tourist dollars to help fund arts education, he said.

"We (in South Carolina) have a history of adding arts positions and keeping them. If we can do it, anybody can do it."