Students working on a weaving project
Historically the arts have struggled to claim their rightful place in education. The "hard" subjects, assumed to require reason of the head have always trumped the arts linked to emotion, the hands and the heart. Reading, sciences, social studies and math are more easily tested and viewed as being more important than the arts which defy codification and quantification. Dewey (1932) describes the artist as involved in a process requiring the artist to "grasp … the connection between what he has already done and what he is to do next, the idea that the artist does not think as intently and as penetratingly as scientific inquirer is quite absurd" (p. 47).
Eisner (2002) provides a well-articulated description of how and why the arts are viewed and treated with great ambivalence. As a society we don't want to appear philistine and so we give the arts at least a precursory inclusion. Because the arts are now associated with enhancing academic performance, we continue to give them a place at the table, however small. In order to defend the arts and creativity as having a right to be in schools based solely on their own merit, we must provide a backdrop for teacher candidates to value the arts for arts sake, to understand and an appreciate the role of art as expression and as experience that connects us to what makes us human. The arts association with creativity is not intended to limit creativity to the arts, clearly creativity belongs to acts that cut across all subject areas; rather by using the art and creativity in combination, we intend to heighten attention to the validity of each.
Defending attention to creativity and the arts in the time of ultra testing requires understanding the rules of education accountability and using the language of accountablity through standardized tests as a bridge and an appeal to providing education for the whole child that is accessible to all children.