Art has been shown from time immemorial to be one of the best ways of presenting as well as storing culture for the future. As such, many art creators always put much meaning into the specific pieces that they create, and which when understood well have the ability to lead a community. However, understanding art is not always easy, more so while appreciating that there are scores artistic styles and movements that need to be understood for one to comprehend a particular piece of art. That thus forms the basis of teaching art to students, a process that must be done intensively for it to be effective as discussed below.
Learning art is a complex process that involves different stakeholders. These include district, site as well as classroom administrators who must all play their specific responsibilities for effective learning. With this regard, while district level administrators are concerned with district based issues such as developing both short term and long term art programs, establishing teachers’ capacity, as well as allocating district resources to all schools, site administrators are concerned with school based functions. These include setting a specific time for art classes, ensuring that schools get adequate art resources, incorporating the taught art to the surrounding society as well as planning for meetings of art teachers for sharing and brainstorming purposes. That notwithstanding, the classroom level art administrator is mandated with responsibilities such as teaching as well as assessing students’ ability to comprehend art studies and reporting the progress to the higher authorities. As such, though the three sets of administrators perform different duties, they are all related in that they work towards making art beneficial to the community.
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Similarly, art is taught to various levels of education in different ways. For instance, the elementary school’s style of learning art involves reading, writing and thinking about the general aspect of art, while at middle school level students are introduced to the different types of art including music, dance, theater and visual art where they cover them to a deeper extent. However, at high school level students interact with the real art in that other than reading it they are subjected to the actual pieces of art. As such, the high school students are thus taken to points where real art is practiced other than reading it in class, so that they can comprehend it well. Moreover, the visual and performing arts content standards for students marry with the CSET in that they both have similar rules regarding the content for art curriculum, the manner in which the curriculum should be developed, and how professionals handling visual and performing arts programs should be developed as well as managed.
In conclusion, the above work has adequately shown that teaching art is not a simple thing and thus requires a serious contribution of all parties involved. As such, the work has reiterated the importance of standards in making art learning successful as such forces all parties play their roles effectively (Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission, 2004; Smith, Dacosta & Princeton Review, 2010).
- Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission. (2004). Visual and Performing Framework: for California Public Schools Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. California Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/documents/vpaframewrk.pdf
- Smith, K., Dacosta, R. & Princeton Review (Firm). (2010). Cracking the CSET. New York: Random House.