Education Reform in and through the Arts

William W. Staton, Member, North Carolina State Senate

A few years ago, a legislative study committee of the North Carolina General Assembly was charged with assessing the effect of tourism, historic preservation, and the arts on the state's economy. Public hearings were held throughout the state, and the resulting report concluded that these three activities were important to the economic health of North Carolina. After the report was filed, it was declared by legislative enactment that the state of North Carolina would seek to improve the quality of life for its citizens through the arts. This principle has become one of the basic elements of North Carolina's economic development policy.

In recognizing the arts as a means to improve the quality of life, one can quite naturally turn to the issue of arts education as a catalyst for national education reform. In North Carolina, increased media coverage comparing the achievement level of its students with that of students in other states and other countries caused the general population to authorize the state to do whatever is required to improve performance and to do it as quickly and economically as possible. While there is disagreement within the state as to how this goal can best be met, there is consensus about the degree of reform being sought. "Kicking around the edges" will not result in the level of improvement that North Carolinians are demanding.

There are two ways in which to look at reform as it affects education. The dictionary gives the first definition of reform as "to improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defect," which would imply making changes in an education system that already exists. This is the view behind what appears to be the conventional education-reform wisdom. But the second definition given is "to be formed again." This would imply conceiving of an entirely different system of education.

Education reform in the state of North Carolina provides some interesting lessons for those who would attempt to conceive of a new way of viewing educational systems. In North Carolina, as a result of the Elementary and Secondary School Reform Act of 1984, the state's Department of Public Instruction engaged in an extensive audit and revision of the curriculum throughout the summer and fall of that same year. The resulting North Carolina Standard Course of Study and the North Carolina Competency-Based Curriculum created a detailed and integrated basic course of study for all subjects at all grade levels. In response to constituent demands, the general assembly fully financed the program.

At the very heart of the legislation was the desire to equalize educational opportunities for all North Carolina students, regardless of where in the state they resided. The state confronted the fact that, within the educational system, some of the major differences between the "haves" and "have nots" were in the instructional programs such as second languages and arts education. The Standard Course of Study has made a difference in North Carolina by equalizing access to such programs. In this instance, North Carolina dealt with education reform in the traditional manner of improvement "by alteration, correction of error, and removal of defect."

But, despite the importance of additions to the curriculum, increased numbers of teachers, and more money for educational supplies and materials, these improvements alone are insufficient to achieve the level of improvement deemed necessary for North Carolina students to compete in the world's marketplace. Educators and politicians must be prepared to make the hard decisions about the way we use our resources. It is around these issues that we must do our most creative and innovative thinking if we are to get the job done.

If the debate on education reform continues to focus simply on which subjects of the curriculum are the most important, and how many minutes of the school day must be devoted to each in descending order of importance, we will miss the opportunity for education "to be formed again." The big question is not what we teach, but how we teach. And we should care about the kind of people our students will be once they leave the school system. If we can come to some agreement on these questions, we can then look at curriculum as a way to achieve those goals.

In North Carolina, after passage of the basic education program, the state legislature began hearing complaints about the curriculum being too full to work into the school day. So, within the state, we again had the great curriculum debate. And this is where we are today. This is what happens when people cannot conceive of doing things differently. Too many educators are reluctant to make changes in their methods. If integrated teaching is to work, then educators must let go of their sacred schedules in which x number of minutes is devoted to a single subject in isolation from other subjects. We must be innovative, and we must be flexible.

The North Carolina legislature has declared that it believes all children can learn. If we are to teach all children, then we must accept the fact that not all children learn in the same way or at the same rate. Schools must change to accommodate differences among our students. The arts provide models for this kind of education, but their effectiveness has not been well articulated. It must be demonstrated that arts education is flexible enough to fit into the many different patterns that educators may use as their primary methods of instructional delivery. For example, if a school administration decides to teach based on thematic units, then it should build arts education into those themes. If a school decides to follow an outcome-based design, then it should clearly demonstrate how the arts can help students reach those outcomes. In the education reform debate, we must focus on how the arts foster learning in all children. To win the political debate, we must not argue for the arts in isolation from other subjects but, rather, argue for the arts in relation to other subjects.

Across the country there is much constituent support for challenging students to a greater degree. There is recognition that schools need to teach creative and critical thinking skills, encourage independent thinking, and foster self-confidence to raise the can-do attitude that has been so essential to the development of our great country. While, of course, business and industry are seeking employees who can read and write, they also seek people who are creative, innovative, flexible, and able to envision alternative solutions to problems.

Second only to the question of the economy, the issue of education reform is the most important issue of our time. It is constituent-driven at the local, state, and national levels. If arts educators fail to recognize this, then the push to reform education will fail.

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