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problems to the pupils in the classroom, to the teachers at building meetings, to the parents at the parent-teacher association meetings.

The handling and arranging of actual materials beautiful in hue, texture, and form never fails to excite interest.

In addition, the children make class visits to museum and art galleries.

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Many teachers have reported increased activity in schoolroom decoration as a phase of art appreciation study. In some communities carefully matured plans for room decoration have existed for some time, but unfortunately in too many instances, beyond the problem of general selection, nothing vital has been done. Pictures and sculpture, like literature and music, are of little practical educational value unless properly and adequately presented. A skyed " reproduction of a Donatello or a Raphael is about as useless as Stevenson or Grieg on the library shelves. Art, to be appreciated, must become intimate and mentally and spiritually possessed. This requires a proper setting and location for study and observation. Chicago, under the influence and generous support of Lorado Taft, is at last beginning to tackle this problem in a big and fundamental way. Ably backed by the school authorities, Miss Lucy S. Silke says:

Interest in schoolroom decoration is more widespread, with greater willingness to seek the advice of experts in the selection of pictures, etc. The work of the Chicago Public School Art Society is a potent influence in this field. Recently the board of education, on the recommendation of the superintendent, authorized the setting aside of one room in each new school building for an art room, and a large space in the front of each classroom free of blackboard for the display of a fine picture at the level of the children's eyes.

Indianapolis also is giving attention to the problem of proper exhibition space for pictures, "down on the eye-level" instead of above the blackboard, but finds it difficult "except in the back of the room." As a rule, blackboards could be narrowed without serious hardship, providing some care were given to their efficient use. Ordinarily teachers fail to apply art principles to their work on the blackboard. Attention to better writing and better arrangement would tend to economize space and make for legibility. Then pictures could be lowered and even set into the upper part of the boards. Better still, when walls are designed for their actual use, instead of mere roof supports, the question of pictures will have some consideration.

Relative to picture study Indianapolis is "beginning the study of pictures in connection with music, the approach being from the emotional side or from the standpoint of the expression of the idea." Mr. Dillaway, in Philadelphia, a musician and painter as well as art director, uses his flute most effectively in a popular interpretation of pictures with the children.

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Reference was made to the orderly use of the blackboard. Undoubtedly orderly habits and artistic skill have received emphasis during the past few years. Growing recognition of the values of art education on the part of the more recently graduated men and women from the stronger teachers' colleges has brought encouragement and support to the art supervisor in her efforts to make art principles, the elements of order, carry over into the child's life. Art expression requires careful, thoughtful procedure. Efficient results in any field require the same habits and mental attention. To seek to develop right habits and skill in designing a booklet only to forsake the effort in writing the history lesson is not good general education. Art ever seeks its expression in the best, the most beautiful way. It therefore enters all the efforts of the child, in school and out.

The project method has both hurt and helped the art training. When the right sort of cooperation is obtained, when all forces are working harmoniously for the common good, the art work is found to be rather fundamental in its bearing upon the situation. When, however, the art teacher is used only because she knows how to paint or construct a part of the project expression; when sloppy results, crude effects, and garish discords are overlooked in the enthusiasms of a project plan, then art education becomes a farce and a frill.

During the past two years the art departments have unquestionably strengthened their positions because of the project method, but until the art specialist is recognized as a necessity throughout a given project, that particular project is a failure. For this reason orderly. habits and artistic skills are receiving more and more emphasis as objectives in art training.

Real teachers of art have used the project method for many years without knowing it. Realizing how art enters all expression, they have quite naturally utilized any and every means at hand to assist in their teaching. For years they were more or less alone. Not until modern thought on general education sought to bring together all school subjects in a common effort to develop the brain did teachers of other subjects realize the value of art teaching to them and their work. They found the art teacher capable and ready, and then the child began to enter the realm of school education with some understanding and delight. Not everywhere, but in some places this is true. The past few years have seen greatly increased understanding.

Broader points of view relative to art education, and the attending general methods of utilizing subject matter which involve studies of the human race through food, shelter, clothing, records, utensils, etc., have tended to give emphasis to industry and commerce; and some

art educators have sought to compass the whole field under the term "industrial art." More recently the term has been enriched to fine and industrial art. Other educators have from the first maintained that art education is an all-inclusive title and have tried not to be carried too far away in their efforts to teach within their field the elements of art, the essentials of good design or order. Recognizing this as a basic law in all expression, they have felt that there is a distinct and definite place for its study, at the same time noting its universal application.

Boston stresses particularly this point of view, and has for some years. Other places take a middle stand, allowing forms of handwork and applied design to enter to some extent the so-called industrial art field. Minneapolis and Seattle, possibly, exemplify this middle ground, while Baltimore marks the other wing in its contemplated new outline. Leon L. Winslow, formerly State director in New York, states that in building the new course outline they-expect to make use of the valuable related information already embodied in the outlines for arithmetic, geography, history, and music. The art course will give considerable emphasis to this related information which it will organize under the topics of food, clothing, shelter, records, utensils, tools, and machines.

Not until the present healthy and scientific trend in research and investigation develops more fact-finding information will art educators be able to assemble stable arguments in one direction or another.

Mr. Winslow analyzes the art-education situation in the Department of Superintendence Third Year Book of the National Education Association, Chapter XIII, as follows:

The ideal elementary-school course of study is, perhaps, one in which the entire curriculum is administered on a plan of perfect articulation of the various subjects. In such a course the inspiration for handwork is adequately furnished by the other school subjects. The mission of the subject of art in such a scheme would be very largely the providing of illustrative and creative handwork. There is no race, no political division, no literature, no history, no science which is not intimately associated with the topics about which such an elementary art course is organized. In the elementary grades, at least, art as a subject is at the disposal of all other subjects.

The importance of the work of the elementary school in the scheme of art education is sometimes underestimated. If the secondary-school courses in art are to function as they should, it is essential that a foundation be laid in the elementary schools. A subject designed to meet the æsthetic needs of the elementary curriculum has already earned a place in many school programs. This subject attempts to combine drawing and construction and to substantiate and reinforce this drawing and construction by a content closely related to the industries.

Plans for elementary art education consequently include elements from the fields of manual training and fine arts, so called, and they aim to provide con

See p. 18, Bul., 1923, No. 13, Bu. of Educ., Dept. of the Interior, Washington, D. C.

tent and experience which shall be of the maximum educational worth. The strength of the best programs consists largely in their adherence to the belief that all work in drawing and construction should contribute to the pupil's personal and social efficiency at the time when the instruction is given.

Since the teaching of art in the schools can not cover effectively the whole field of art but must concentrate on problems of immediate value to the pupils, it follows that such teaching must function largely through the projects that the pupils undertake. An art project consists of a lesson, or a complete series of lessons, which has taken into account the necessary thought content, handwork, or appreciation, or all three, to the end that the general development of the pupil is assured. Expression should be the result of a definite purpose calling for it. The selection of problems and of activities should always be made on the basis of the general educational values as opposed to the restricted training values.

A proper use of the project method presupposes training on the teacher's part, and it often includes such things as problems, investigations, assignments, reference reading, lesson plans, and textbooks. If other subjects are worthy of systematic organization and of sustained intellectual effort on the teacher's and the pupil's part, the subject of art is also worthy of them.

Intelligent investigation takes time and human energy. While studies are made, teachers and supervisors must maintain their classes and carry on their work. It therefore must be of rather slow development, this newer and more scientific presentation of art in education.

ART INSTRUCTION IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS

The past two years have emphasized the differentiation in the work of the junior and senior high school and the grades. Probably there has been less change in subject matter than in point of view; and, as in the lower grades, clearer aims and objectives have become apparent.

As a rule art is a required subject in the junior high school but is still elective in the senior high school. There is, however, a growing tendency to urge the requirement of a general art appreciation course for all freshmen in the senior high. This being the year when the greater number leave, and also the period of unsettled conviction as to the final course to be pursued, most supervisors feel that all students should receive some understanding in the art principles which they will continually use throughout their lives. In the New Trier Township High School, Kenilworth, Ill., such a course is required in the sophomore year.

C. Valentine Kirby, director of art for the State of Pennsylvania, has prepared an art appreciation course for his State, covering three years of the senior high school. This includes many of the subjects covered in briefer, less comprehensive courses which separate high schools offer throughout the country.

7 Published in the Pennsylvania Course of Study in Art Education

Both junior and senior high schools are placing considerable emphasis on the question of art appreciation, and in so doing there is a growing tendency to urge the actual manipulation and creation of forms studied. Teachers and students are no longer content to read about art or merely to see it. True educational experience carries with it the doing of things.

Professor Whitford writes: 8

Actual production assists greatly in teaching appreciation and the true worth of the objects studied. Exercises may be undertaken in this connection in drawing and design, pottery and tile work, bookmaking, wookwork, leather, metal, cement, or in any of the crafts or industrial arts. Carefully selected historical material should also be studied wherever possible for comparison, enlightenment, and a knowledge of the evolution of art objects and processes and the effect which these have had on modern products. Assigned reading and study should be carefully planned to open up an industrial, historical, and social outlook with regard to art and to present important selected facts to the pupil in an easily assimilated form.

Studies by Prof. Max Farrand, of Yale University, covering 14 centers, Atlanta, Berkeley, Birmingham, Cleveland, Decatur, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City (Kans.), Los Angeles, Okmulgee, Pittsburgh, Rochester, St. Louis, and Somerville, and devoted to the question of present practices in the administration of subjects offered in grades 5-9, inclusive, indicate that "General Art Appreciation" and "Taste and General Culture" lead all other art education courses. In referring to the situation," Mr. Winslow, of Baltimore, remarks that:

We may fairly conclude that at the present time most junior high school art work is being offered professedly for the sake of the development of general art appreciation, taste, and general culture.

At the same time most teachers of junior high schools recognize the special aptitude or vocational objective as essential to the junior school program. This is the "try-out " period, and in all art courses, for appreciation or otherwise, the teacher is alert to the capacities and capabilities of the students in this field of study.

The new junior high-school buildings are making special provision for the art departments; and in the larger cities more especially opportunities are offered for expression in various kinds of crafts. The effect upon the general education situation appears to be threefold: (a) The school authorities become alive to the importance of art in its manifold applications in the junior high school program and begin to realize for the first time the far-reaching effect of edu

8 Whitford, W. G., University of Chicago, The Problem of Differentiation and Standardization of Art Work in Modern High School, II. Sch. Rev., vol. 32, Nos. 5 and 6.

Winslow, Leon Loyal, The Significance of Art as a Junior High School Subject. Educational Administration and Supervision, November, 1924.

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