Learning Across the Curriculum in Art Education

Teaching Across the Curriculum The textbook explains many ways art can be worked into the larger curriculum. Such integration of art into the larger curriculum would do more than validate art as a field of study. It would greatly enrich the broader curriculum as well. It is hard to imagine talking about early humans but not about cave drawings, or about Egypt but not Egyptian art. One reason we know as much as we do about ancient Egypt is that the Egyptians told stories by painting images on walls.

Even Egyptian writing was based on drawings -- pictographs that stood for words. This approach, of working art into the rest of the school's curriculum, could be greatly enhanced by making use of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1995). For instance, students in a history class might learn about ancient Egypt. In geography they could study the effects of water on environment. In science they could explore how a delta is formed.

In language arts, they could make up a story that might have occurred in ancient Egypt based on what they learned in history, geography and science. Then they might use artistic skills to create a mural that tells the story. For a written expression task they might make up a way to tell the story using pictographs they create. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences could be incorporated in a variety of ways. The students might make displays that demonstrate what they've learned about Egyptian history, architecture, or culture (visual-spatial).

They could work in teams (interpersonal) or individually (intrapersonal) to give a report on what they've learned. Art could be used to enhance these reports. In his book Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, Thomas Armstrong (2000) talks about crystallizing experiences vs. paralyzing experiences. Crystallizing experiences awaken hidden skills. Thomas used several examples including Einstein, who discovered science after being given a compass, and a famous violinist whose talents were revealed because he went to a symphony performance when young. Those were crystallizing events for those young men.

He also points out that some children are more likely to experience those crystallizing moments because they have certain advantages other children may not have: parents who act to expose them to a variety of experiences, or mentors who take them under their wings and make sure they are exposed to new experiences. He also points out that some home environments lend themselves to certain experiences more than others.

The experiences of a child who grows up on a farm will be very different than the experiences of children who grow up in the city. Both children -- the farm child and the city child -- will have rich experiences, but their experiences will be different.

If a child who would make a great naturalist grows up in a congested city and no one makes the effort to expose him or her to more natural environments, that child may never have the crystallizing experience of seeing fish jump and swim in a natural stream, or of discovering that if you turn over a rock, a micro-environment exists underneath that may be teeming with life. Likewise, the child who grows up on the farm may not get to an art museum or concerts.

All of this is supported by Van Tassel-Baska's (1998) view that education should always be looking for opportunities to develop talent in children (2). So, while it is important for schools to cross-pollinate the curriculum, it may not be enough. Math can be worked into art and music. History and geography are tightly related. Language arts can be connected to virtually any other discipline.

But if we restrict ourselves to making these connections using only linguistic intelligence, we may miss the chance to create a crystallizing moment for those children whose greatest strengths are not linguistic. Art can play an important role in the process of broadening how we teach all subjects because it lends itself to other intelligences. It can be incorporated into kinesthetic, or even naturalist learning styles.

For instance, the naturalist learner might experiment with combinations of clay, straw and mud to figure out a good way to make the bricks Egyptians used for building. This could then be used to ehance that child's linguistic intelligence as he or she demonstrated how to make the bricks to other children. This activity could be used to tie art and architecture together.

The textbook's suggestion that history be taught over several years and in chronological order would make it easier for teachers to incorporate multiple intelligences into whatever they teach, because as the textbook says, the period of time would be settled on. The teachers would know what topics fit into that period. They could work together efficiently. One of the real difficulties with this approach is the current trend in education to teach only that which can be measured on a group achievement test.

While certainly we need to be sure that children are learning basic material, the teachers will be faced with a real dilemma if the Renaissance is covered on the fifth grade test but not taught until the sixth grade. Such circumstance would force a school to teach history out of order, making it harder to integrate subjects such as art into the curriculum, and philosophies such as multiple intelligences into teaching methods.

The textbook does not address this problem directly, but it must be a real concern of educators -- both teachers and administrators -- as they consider how to present materials.

Most teachers believe that a linguistic approach to teaching is most efficient, and teachers worried about whether they will cover everything they need to cover in the year, so their students will perform as well as possible on achievement tests, may see the addition of art into, say, their language arts program, might slow instruction down and put the students at risk of performing poorly on tests.

No doubt Gardner and Armstrong would argue that the fault lies in the tests, which overwhelmingly emphasize a linguistic style of teaching, and they would be.