Who is at the City Gates? A Surreptitious Approach to Curriculum-Making in Art Education

• Published in: Art education (Reston) Vol. 59; no. 6; pp. 40 - 46
• Main Author: Rolling, James Haywood
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Reston Routledge 01-11-2006; National Art Education Association; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Architectural design; Architecture; Art Education; Art teachers; Children; Collaborative learning; Constructivism (Learning); Curricula; Curriculum Development; Design; Educational Practices; Elementary Education; Grade 4; Learning; Lesson Plans; New York; Outcomes of Education; Student Centered Curriculum; Students; Studio Art; Teachers; New York
• ISSN: 0004-3125; 2325-5161
• DOI: 10.1080/00043125.2006.11651618

As a classroom teacher of art, the author questions the definitive ends that often accompany progressive enterprises in education. He questions the pressure he has experienced to reduce curricular possibilities and learning outcomes to the space of a single document. He argues that planning a learning outcome is "not" an architectural exercise. He believes that it is no longer in the best interest of a nation seeking to jump-start its characteristic innovation to perpetuate the rhetoric of a single best system of public educational practices, a nationalized set of quality standards. To attain toward the single best solution in the enterprise of public education, to mandate the same expectations for every child, is to essentialize the character of learning as that of a product. When learning is characterized as a product that educators may be held accountable for, it is an attempt to assure predictable outcomes of learning, outcomes that are easy to standardize, easy to test for, easy to measure, and easy to follow. However, learning is no sure thing and it is not easy to map; there is no accounting for the ways in which children particularize their learning outcomes in spite of the best or worst schooling practices. In this article, the author explores the gateways all learners build between school learning encounters, life experience, and their wandering imaginations. The lesson described in this article is presented as the collaborative adventure of the author and his students. (Contains 10 figures and 1 endnote.)