Education through the Arts in Secondary Schools
by Stephanie B. PerrinIn 1992 the US Department of Labor published a document called "What Work Requires
at School for Workers in the Year 2000." They identified three categories. "Basic Skills"
incorporates skills such as reading, writing, mathematics, and speaking. The second
category, "Thinking Skills" includes creative thinking, the ability to problem-solve and
make decisions, the capacity to reason and "see things in the mind's eye" (which I take
to mean imagination), and knowing how to learn. Finally, under "Personal Qualities"
they are seeking workers who are responsible, sociable able to work with others--have a
sense of self-esteem, and integrity, are honest, and skilled at self-management.
This report suggests that a technological, service-based and international postmodern
culture requires workers who are flexible, creative, question- askers, able to take action
on behalf of themselves and others. People who are imaginative and critical thinkers,
self-aware and able to work effectively on their own or with others. Postmodern workers
need to be able to function in changing an ambiguous situations and be able to envision
new realities and solutions to problems and act with confidence on their ideas.
Fundamentally, workers in postmodern society will be required to learn all their lives.
From Wall Street to the garage down the street, those habits of mind and heart that
support lifelong learning are what is needed and what schools must help students to
develop. In the "old days", one learned math and, as a byproduct, may have learned
critical thinking. What schools must do now is teach not only content but also the
process of learning so that students emerge knowing what they learned, and, crucial to
life- long learning, how they learned it.
We in America have known for some time that the old models of schooling are not
adequate and that school reform is necessary to meet the demands of this new age. The
only skills from the DOL list developed in the schools of much of the last hundred years
have been, with the exception of "speaking," those in category one: "Basic Skills." If
schools are to truly develop other skills and attitudes, then school reform on all levels is
necessary if we are to prepare students for the world of work in the 21st century.
Many models are being tried and evaluated and it may well be that no single model will
emerge. Rather, perhaps a variety of educational approaches will be found to work, just
as we now know that people learn and must be taught in a variety of ways.
However, when one thinks of educational reform, schools for the arts do not
immediately leap to the minds of the American public; quite the contrary, the arts are
disappearing from public schools at a rapid rate. However, I want to suggest that such
schools do offer a model that does work for many students, educating them both as