A Rationale for Integrating Arts in Education - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages What makes this approach simultaneously traditional and revolutionary in nature is that it proposes a wider sense of self-development and expression of being in human nature and the conception of self than is traditionally permitted in institutions focused on discipline and social control of large and diverse masses of students who must be managed efficiently and coerced into behavioral patterns. The possibility exists that the “discipline and punish” mentality operating overtly and subtly in academic institutions publicly and privately may be more related to social hierarchies, engrained power structures, systems of status, and the needs of capitalist production facilities than a genuine valuing of the human being as a unique and free individual, as the work of the French Philosopher Michel Foucault suggested. If in recognizing this deeply engrained structural bias, educators feel the need for systemic reform in education institutions, one possible methodology to implement on a theoretical basis in managing educational institutions is an Integrated Arts approach. This methodology relates also to extensive research in Humanistic and Integral psychology, which additionally posit a fundamental paradigm change in education that represents a broader and multi-dimensional conception of the human being and the respect for the essential freedom of human life found in Natural Law and Human Rights theories. Critical to the success of the Integral Arts approach is the cultivation of creativity in all aspects of life, problem solving, learning, and self-development. Encouraging Learning Styles and Multiple Perspectives Public institutions in a democratic and egalitarian society should be tasked with protecting the interests of all of society’s members equally. In education, this should fundamentally apply to serving the needs of all students equally. It can be further argued that the ranking, grading, evaluation of students, and distribution of grades operates on a standardized model that contains both cultural biases and discrimination against students who have different learning styles or forms of self-expression. Integrated Arts methodologies in education management can theoretically eradicate these engrained structural biases by eliminating or changing the way students are tested, “valued”, promoted, etc. As Gallas (1991) wrote in “Arts as epistemology: Enabling children to know what they know,” “they [the students} will show you what they know and how they learn best, and often that is not the teachers way.” (Gallas, 1991) In forcing the students to conform on a fundamental level to the authority and rules of the class, a type of bias in education may arise that teachers and educators should address through education theory. An Integral Arts approach is designed to address this bias by de-emphasizing the authority structures that are presented in traditional models of classroom ...Download file to see next pages Read More