The Five Faces of Art Education

Abstract

As is likely to be the case with all human enterprise, the study of the teaching of art has many facets. One might with reasonable accuracy design a chronological or geographical map of art education, locating for example, an idea such as creative self-expression in its most characteristic time, the 1920's, or place, Vienna. Such an effort would probably be entertaining, of some use for students as a learning game and even, perhaps, productive of some insights about the development of the ideas which provide structure for the field. However, a more colorful way to identify positions relative to art teaching might be to associate varieties of stance with the people who most vividly exemplify them. Undoubtedly, any reader with even the most rudimentary acquaintance with art education, will quickly relate the haptic-visual dichotomy with Lowenfeld or art as a humanistic study with Feldman, to name the obvious. Thus, instead of a map, we might construct a cast of characters who move across the stage of art education, illustrating, like the actors in a morality play, a spectrum of postures. Obviously overlap of characterization will be more prevalent than singularity of role. Most of our players are complex rather than singleminded, showing a multiplicity of ideas, many of them interwoven with the ideas of their colleagues. Nonetheless, a number of instantly recognizable identifications might be selected, since each of our players is best known for one or two major positions. Unfortunately, this cast of characters must of necessity be chosen from among those who write and publish in the literature of the field. This is not, of course, to say that those who do not do so have less or lesser ideas. Those who

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