News Flash: Arts cut from schools

The San Diego school board has issued a Plan A of budgets cuts and has a Plan B in place, which includes eliminating the visual and performing arts across the second largest school district in the state of California. The arts are currently the only curricular area to be cut under Plan B. There is a discussion amongst my circle of colleagues about the ethical nature of cutting the arts. So, here are some thoughts on ethics and the elimination of arts education from public schools.

In both ethics and the law, we create sets of rules (at least in western ethics and since this is the United States, western ethics rule, if you will excuse the pun). I quoted Frank Griswold earlier about ethics being the sets of rules we agree to live by once we decide to live together. Once we set up those rules, we don’t get to break them because it is more convenient to do so. Convenience is not a reason to compromise on our core beliefs.

This extends, of course, to how we educate our kids. We have created essentially a set of rules (in the form of No Child Left Behind) that we have agreed will guide the education of our children. This is part of our ethical obligation to our children. We – America the country, not just American parents - have an ethical responsibility to educate children. In meeting that ethical responsibility we created NCLB (I have no doubt this could be argued about how successfully we met that responsibility through this piece of legislation).

As those of us in the trenches know, the arts are mandated in No Child Left Behind as the part of the curriculum. So in deciding to exclude the arts from the curriculum is in violation of our original agreement about what a child in a public school should expect to receive.

I realize that NCLB is not perfect and I also realize that it is not equitably applied due to high-stakes testing. If we agree as a society that NCLB is not meeting the needs of our children we have an ethical obligation to rewrite it, rework it or throw it out and start again. Nonetheless, we are currently violating our ethical duties by allowing American children to receive less than what we agreed they needed.

Our second ethical failing in considering the arts education cuts is that we are allowing public education to promote a form of illiteracy. By failing to teach our children the arts from the time they enter school through the completion of their high school diploma, we fail to prepare them appropriately for the world they are about to enter. We are promoting a form of illiteracy. This illiteracy translates into fewer skills and less knowledge to solve more complicated problems than previous generations.

How can we rationalize this? We cannot and we should not. One of the great philosophical thinkers, Immanuel Kant, recognized the danger in rationalization and the driving need of humans to do so. Rationalization allows us to excuse ourselves from our ethical responsibilities and we must be careful in this regard. Our rationalization of the elimination of school curriculum teaches our children a number of things – and none of them are good.

Online Resources for Ethics and Arts Education (#2)

Two more examples today of codes of ethics in arts education.

The first is from Iowa State’s Theatre Dept http://www.theatre.iastate.edu/aboutus.shtml). I like this first one for a couple of reasons. It is short and succinct yet it does elaborate on their core values so we can understand what they mean. It addresses faculty and staff specifically (I think you can be trapped in trying to address a code of ethics to too diverse an audience). What I most appreciate about this code is that (from an outsider’s perspective) it appears to reflect who they are. It is not boiler plate but it appears to be unique unto them. From reading this code, I have a sense of their departmental culture as well as well as their ethical guidelines. I believe that is important. Our code of ethics is a way to tell others - and remind ourselves - who we are and what we believe. Interestingly, my graduate students from last fall were not as positive as I am about this (they thought it was too touchy-feely). There you go. Ethics can be difficult to agree on.

My thanks to Maureen A. Gelchion at the Astoria Dance Centre for this reference. The Dance Educators of America has a code of ethics (available on their website at www.deadance.com under “Membership”). It has some similarity with the Music Educators of America code.

Online Resources for Ethics & Arts Education (1)

To get started with online resources and references, here are two to consider.

A doctoral student, Sho Botham, has created a site about ethics and dance (http://www.ethicsdance.co.uk/). She is currently collecting data for her dissertation from professional dancers. She also has a resource page for those interested in ethical issues specific to dance education. These resources consider a variety of issues including body image and physical health of dance students. Much looks interesting to delve into.

The Music Teachers’ National Association has developed a code of ethics (http://www.mtna.org/AboutMTNA/CodeofEthics/tabid/468/Default.aspx). They have divided their code into three sections – “Commitment to Students”, “Commitment to Colleagues” and “Commitment to Society”. Under each of these are ethical tenets. The code focuses on how to treat others and represent one’s self as a teacher of music. I believe that in our codes we also have a responsibility to include our art form in the code. A section entitled “Commitment to Music” might offer interesting possibilities to consider our ethical responsibility to our art form.

What could our “Commitment to Music” look like? What is our ethical responsibility to music or the other art forms?

Getting started

I teach "Ethics & Leadership" in the University of San Diego's Nonprofit Leadership graduate program. My students are working on a code of ethics project and their work has led me to think about the role of ethics in my own field, arts education.

To start, when I talk about ethics, I refer to Frank Griswold's definition. "Ethics is about the rules we choose to live by once we decide we want to live together." I like this frame for a variety of reasons but in part because it involves consensus and choice. I think of ethics not only as regulators (which they are and which we need) but also as inspiration, encouraging us to rise to our better selves.

Out in the field there are a few stabs at codes of ethics in arts education. This led me to wonder if there are some universal ethical principles that might guide all arts education endeavors. Are there some fundamental ethics that could guide and enhance our work in schools and communities?

So, I ask, what might an ethical framework for arts education look like? What tenets or principles might it contain?

Here are some initial thoughts on my part in no particular order. Please respond to these or provide your own.

- Freedom of artistic expression. I suggest that we have an ethical responsibility to our students as well as to our art forms to promote the freedom of artistic expression in educational contexts.

- Sufficient resources for art making and art learning These resources include but are not limited to:
o time allotted to the arts during the school day
o well-trained professionals to teach (both credentialed teachers and professional artists)
o appropriate space in which to make and learn art. The blacktop would not typically be considered an appropriate place to learn math – why would we teach dance there?
o adequate budgets

- Honesty and transparency with donors and supporters. This extends to any nonprofit but it is always good to ask, “Are we using our resources appropriately and in accordance with donor wishes?”

- Authentic criteria for learning and success. Is the use of math and language arts test scores ethical in assessing the arts? Should we consider the ethical ramifications of assessment in the arts? (For full disclosure, one of my current arts education research projects includes test scores as an indicator of student learning. This was a pre-condition of funding the project).


What are your thoughts? I look forward to the conversation.