Freedom
and Education 21
all-required curriculum composed of introductory, intermediate, and
advanced courses in the regular academic areas.
For elementary school teachers and for high
school teachers who
do not necessarily want to teach physics and mathematics or one of
the country-strengthening subjects, there is a catch-all division in
education called foreign languages, art, music and physical education.
As far as the arts are concerned, that is it. No theater, no dance, no
painting, poetry, sculpture, nothing. Just some educational exercises
in art and music which thus become the educational equivalents of a
foreign language and physical education. Mr. Conant further advises
against graduate study of art and music on the grounds that graduate
work in these fields is not sufficiently well developed to merit further
study. In other words, it has not yet been made into an academic
discipline. In a way, I suppose this is correct. Until now the educators
have not found a way actually to prevent students from painting,
sculpting, composing, acting and writing, except by refusing to give
them academic credit for it.
I cite the views of Mr. Conant, not because they are unusually
wrong, but because they represent the general view of the educational
establishment as to what should be studied, how it should be studied,
and what education is for. Mr. Conant is a good example. He has had
long years of experience in education, his views are typical, and his
methods of research are typical methods now in use. That is, a staff
is assembled of at least half a dozen persons, a large grant is provided,
and visits to a variety of institutions are arranged in order to discover
and record facts which have been in general circulation for some time
but which have, until now, been
ignored.
CONTRIBUTION OF THE ARTS
One of these days I would enjoy enormously reading a book on
education which simply started with the idea that the way to save and
to strengthen the country is to have every one from kindergarten to
the end of college study the creative arts, on the grounds that theater,
dance, music, painting, sculpture, poetry, and philosophy are more
important than anything else in learning to understand life, society,