Board 8 > Why do we have k-12 fine art education? It's a useless money sink.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but k-12 art education is totally unnecessary. You need separate faculty members for music, dance, visual art and drama, and all those things require expensive supplies and lots of space. If you eliminated art programs entirely, you'd be able to give people who teach useful subjects a higher salary, and maybe a high enough salary that we'd get some actual competition for teaching positions, which is what we need right now.

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senorhousemouse

You seriously think we're in need of more people trying to be teachers.

Really.

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StealThisSheen posted...
You seriously think we're in need of more people trying to be teachers.

Really.

Yes, because then the slots will be filled with good teachers.

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senorhousemouse

Art.

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what's it like in that fairytale land head of yours

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You actually think we don't have many people trying to become teachers.

I don't even know what to say.

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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Uh, art is a pretty damn broad and important subject to teach.

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While you're at it, why not get rid of literature classes as well. English classes should just teach grammar.

All we need is Math, science and language. Who needs a well-rounded education

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Yeah, down with creativeness expression! And english...who reads books anyways. That can go too. Math? We have calculators these days. Why bother having school at all?!

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School should consist of teaching kids how to deep fry food at McDonalds. At least until some smartass PHD kids from India make a robot that can do that too.

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StealThisSheen posted...
You actually think we don't have many people trying to become teachers.

I don't even know what to say.

What I'm saying is that if we make teaching attractive to everyone, then smart people (rather than just more dumb people) will start trying to become teachers too.

And a big part of the problem is that it's, like, impossible to fire a teacher. You should be able to replace a teacher with a better teacher with very little effort.

The Real Truth posted...
Uh, art is a pretty damn broad and important subject to teach.

Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their art education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their arty-type classes except people who are or were in college studying art.

MaridaCruz posted...
While you're at it, why not get rid of literature classes as well. English classes should just teach grammar.

All we need is Math, science and language. Who needs a well-rounded education

SovietOmega posted...
Yeah, down with creativeness expression! And english...who reads books anyways. That can go too. Math? We have calculators these days. Why bother having school at all?!

Robazoid posted...
School should consist of teaching kids how to deep fry food at McDonalds. At least until some smartass PHD kids from India make a robot that can do that too.



No one is saying any of that. We're talking about classes that are already considered unimportant (no school I've ever heard of requires more than a year of art) and that teach skills that are almost completely non-transferable to other classes or (for the vast majority of kids that don't go on to work in an artistic field) the real world.

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senorhousemouse

Robazoid posted...
School should consist of teaching kids how to deep fry food at McDonalds. At least until some smartass PHD kids from India make a robot that can do that too.

Naw, better to have housing set up around local mcdonalds so that bus fees are not needed. Better yet, have the Mcdonalds BE the kid's homes. That way they can work 24/7 and have nothing better to look forward to!

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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out

No art. For children. Seriously.

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Connecticut Huskies

Leebo86 posted...
No art. For children. Seriously.

Yes, seriously. Why art, for children? Seriously?

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senorhousemouse

WhoopsyDaisy is now in my "Garbage" tier of users, along with Guiga, Whirly, and probably a couple others I'm failing to remember.

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Are we talking about robot children or human children.

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Connecticut Huskies

"Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their math and science education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their math and science-type classes except people who are or were in college studying math and science."

Exactly >_>;;

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From: WhoopsyDaisy | Posted: 12/5/2011 4:56:27 PM | #011
Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their art education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their arty-type classes except people who are or were in college studying art.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Not exactly what you are asking for but it should give you more or less an idea of why art is important.

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SovietOmega posted...
"Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their math and science education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their math and science-type classes except people who are or were in college studying math and science."

Exactly >_>;;

Except... part of being a functional adult is understanding a little bit how math works. Everyone has to be able to add and subtract, if nothing else than to sanity-check what their calculator says. If they had no math at all and replaced all their math with push-buttons-on-your-calculator classes, they'd have to take it on faith that they didn't slip somewhere when pushing the buttons.

Haguile posted...
From: WhoopsyDaisy | Posted: 12/5/2011 4:56:27 PM | #011
Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their art education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their arty-type classes except people who are or were in college studying art.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Not exactly what you are asking for but it should give you more or less an idea of why art is important.

kk, watching

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senorhousemouse

"Except... part of being a functional adult is understanding a little bit how math works. Everyone has to be able to add and subtract, if nothing else than to sanity-check what their calculator says. If they had no math at all and replaced all their math with push-buttons-on-your-calculator classes, they'd have to take it on faith that they didn't slip somewhere when pushing the buttons."

And a good chunk of the population has absolutely no qualms about accepting things on faith...

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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out

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##Vote: SHM

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Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.

also, that is a pretty interesting little video there <3

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man shm, you used to be a pretty cool guy, but then you went crazy

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From: WhoopsyDaisy | #019
Except... part of being a functional adult is understanding a little bit how math works. Everyone has to be able to add and subtract, if nothing else than to sanity-check what their calculator says. If they had no math at all and replaced all their math with push-buttons-on-your-calculator classes, they'd have to take it on faith that they didn't slip somewhere when pushing the buttons.

Okay, now what about math after 5th grade?

I can guarantee you that people draw more often than they use anything from past Algebra I.

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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.

WhoopsyDaisy posted...
you'd be able to give people who teach useful subjects a higher salary, and maybe a high enough salary that we'd get some actual competition for teaching positions

lol the free market doesn't work

communism all day every day

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WhoopsyDaisy posted...
Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their art education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their arty-type classes except people who are or were in college studying art.

Consider this: The specific knowledge learned in most math classes past, I don't know, algebra is useless to most people. Then why teach it all all? The answer is that it develops problem solving skills, which is pretty much universally applicable. Similarly, the knowledge you learn in the arts is not typically useful unless you're going into that stuff, but it teaches creativity, which is important.

I do agree that incompetent teachers should be easier to fire, but developing a metric to measure the quality of teachers is pretty difficult ("obvious" metrics like standardized test scores of the students in the teacher's class don't work because that provides an incentive for the teacher to cheat, which is much more common than you would think already).

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SovietOmega posted...
"Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their math and science education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their math and science-type classes except people who are or were in college studying math and science."

Exactly >_>;;

Although I should say that it's correct that most people don't use math and science past the elementary school level.

Ness26 posted...
From: WhoopsyDaisy | #019
Except... part of being a functional adult is understanding a little bit how math works. Everyone has to be able to add and subtract, if nothing else than to sanity-check what their calculator says. If they had no math at all and replaced all their math with push-buttons-on-your-calculator classes, they'd have to take it on faith that they didn't slip somewhere when pushing the buttons.
Okay, now what about math after 5th grade?

I can guarantee you that people draw more often than they use anything from past Algebra I.

Oh, this post came up during the video. Yeah, people draw, but they draw for fun. It's like saying "people play video games more often than they use anything from past Algebra I." There are very few situations in life where being able to draw matters and being unable to draw is a bad thing. Having no sense of the scale of numbers IS a bad thing, pretty much always.

And re: the video, I agree that kids are creative and encouraging their creativity is a great way to help them learn. It reminded me a lot of Lockhart's Lament, a paper by a mathematician about the tortuous process of teaching math to kids and thus killing their interest in it (25 pages, but you can skim it):

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

He talks about how he teaches his students by letting them explore problems while kind of guiding them to the right answers. This model isn't THAT unrealistic; given enough time (which is lacking in our 182-day school year with 2 weeks between semesters and 12 weeks between school years), it would be much more engaging than "the area of a square is the length of one of its sides times itself; I'm going to give you hundreds of squares for you to find the areas of and ensure that you have no fun at all in my class" and it would give them a better understanding of the material since they know not only what works, but also what doesn't, and why.

The point is that the system is broken horribly, and art is an attempt to fix it by throwing money at it. Instead of appealing to kids' love of learning and exploration in every class, the school system is set up to appeal to adults' need to give yes/no answers to the question "is our children learning."

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senorhousemouse

Because one major goal of public education is to produce strong, well-rounded citizens rather than mere economic machines, and having a basic comprehension of art and culture is a part of this goal.

Next question.

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arts are important to the development of humans regardless of whether or not you wind up doing them professionally, this topic is terrible and you should feel bad.

Man, I have so much stuff to say about this topic (agreement and disagreement) but it is the middle of finals week and I don't really want to get into it. Oh well.

*Continues watching*

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Let's not be too harsh with shm, folks. He was hit by a car a few weeks ago. Clearly it has affected his brain >_>

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I wonder if smartmuffin has ever been hit by a car...

LordoftheMorons posted...
WhoopsyDaisy posted...
Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their art education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their arty-type classes except people who are or were in college studying art.

Consider this: The specific knowledge learned in most math classes past, I don't know, algebra is useless to most people. Then why teach it all all? The answer is that it develops problem solving skills, which is pretty much universally applicable. Similarly, the knowledge you learn in the arts is not typically useful unless you're going into that stuff, but it teaches creativity, which is important.

I do agree that incompetent teachers should be easier to fire, but developing a metric to measure the quality of teachers is pretty difficult ("obvious" metrics like standardized test scores of the students in the teacher's class don't work because that provides an incentive for the teacher to cheat, which is much more common than you would think already).

Art classes don't teach creativity, though. They'd like to, but there's still basically one right answer. The only thing they do is not mark you down if you suck or do a bad job of absorbing the lesson on perspective or whatever.

And I agree that it'd be difficult to develop a measure for the quality of a teacher, but once we have it then we can quit writing new standardized tests every year and focus on teaching.

SubDeity posted...
Because one major goal of public education is to produce strong, well-rounded citizens rather than mere economic machines, and having a basic comprehension of art and culture is a part of this goal.

Next question.

Are you suggesting that being able to draw, dance, act, and read music is a prerequisite for being a well-rounded person? If someone can't draw, are they not well-rounded?

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senorhousemouse

WhoopsyDaisy posted...
And I agree that it'd be difficult to develop a measure for the quality of a teacher, but once we have it then we can quit writing new standardized tests every year and focus on teaching.

Any system for checking teacher quality can be "played" though. When you tie teacher performance to kids performance on standardized tests, teachers have kids practice standardized tests all year (which is absolutely awful and soul-crushing as a form of education, and provably produces worse students. Students in areas with lots of standardized tests throughout their education actually perform worse on the SAT on average, even though the SAT is ANOTHER standardized test. Nevermind anything creative...).

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Because school isn't just about teaching knowledge, it's about learning how to think. Many subjects play a role in forming a well-rounded brain.

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Are you suggesting that being able to draw, dance, act, and read music is a prerequisite for being a well-rounded person? If someone can't draw, are they not well-rounded?

Who are these people who "can't" draw? Can you hold a pencil? Can you put it on paper? You may not be able to draw well, but I know that drawing diagrams is a necessity for communicating ideas where I work, which is in the software industry. Exercising your brain in different ways at a young age is important. If you can't relate what you see in your mind or in the world to something you can express as a drawing, even just with stick figures, you're going to be in trouble.

Also, the software industry has user interface design and art jobs. I wonder who would fill those with no creative classes?

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bump

also "can't" draw doesn't mean literally can't draw like "can't" add means literally can't add.

And tons of software developers have never taken a k-12 class; why should art be any different?

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senorhousemouse

I can't believe you actually bumped this, how embarrassing.

And tons of software developers have never taken a k-12 class; why should art be any different?

The education of software developers is awful, so please don't use that as your paragon.

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smitelf posted...
And tons of software developers have never taken a k-12 class; why should art be any different?
The education of software developers is awful, so please don't use that as your paragon.

sorry your coworkers went to bad schools

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senorhousemouse

I'm sorry, that was mean. But you can't say that because in your experience the majority of people doing a job are awful, the training is awful. It's possible that it's just a really hard job, or a job that requires a particular kind of intelligence. I could go to the best art school in the world, and I'd never be very good. I'd definitely improve, and I'd learn good technique and theory, and my brain would probably absorb the lessons pretty well, but I would never be a professional-level artist.

Everything the fine arts teach (outside of the actual theory behind acting, drawing, dancing, and music) could easily be explored in our other classes, while teaching skills that are applicable to basically everyone. So what if when our students express themselves through the medium of drawing, it doesn't look very similar to the real-live model of what they drew? They will have learned to express in a different, more applicable manner.

Also we're kind of in an economic crisis right now and we need to take any opportunities we can to reduce the cost of education and increase the tangible monetary reward of education.

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senorhousemouse

Someone irl brought up an interesting counterpoint: her school's music department paid for its own instruments and uniforms. I could see that working if the department was self-sufficient.

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senorhousemouse

derp

Education in the arts is given to children in schools because without it, they'd just be engaged in routine memorization. Not every kid winds up being an artist, true. Not every kid winds up going into sciences/math either though. It gives people the option to explore what the hell they want to do with themselves, and how they want to develop themselves and their skills; which is what any good schooling out to be aimed towards.

While arts isn't about teaching creativity, it gives you a great place for kids in school to practice and develop their ability to be creative. They study other people's methods of HOW to be creative, and get graded on it too. Later on though, they get to pick who's style they follow, and move on from there.

For a kid to grow up and actually be a useful member of society, they need to learn their hard facts from sciences and maths. They also need to learn how to use their brains creatively, and not just barf up pre-memorized facts. Just look at historys greatest scientists, they usually specialized in arts, philosphy, subjects that encouraged thinking creatively.

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