DEPARTMENT OF ART EDUCATION SECRETARY'S MINUTES TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 9, 1907 A joint session was held with the departments of Elementary Education and Manual Training. (For minutes see Department of Manual Training). WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 10 The department of Art Education met in the First Methodist Church. Joseph Scott president of the Board of Education, Los Angeles, welcomed the members of the department to Los Angeles. Miss Mary S. Morse, of Los Angeles, was appointed acting secretary. Eugene C. Colby, supervisor of drawing and manual training, for the state of New York and president of the department, delivered the presidential address on the "Aim of Art Education." The topic of "The Relation of Art Education to Everyday Life" was presented in papers by Miss Katherine L. Scobey of the University School for Girls, Chicago, Ill., who spoke from the culture side; and by Arthur H. Chamberlain, dean and professor of education, Throop Polytechnic Institute, Pasadena, Cal., who spoke from the utilitarian side. The president appointed the following committees: Katherine Ball, San Francisco, Cal. ON NOMINATIONS Frances Sterrett, Los Angeles, Cal. Katherine L. Scobey, Chicago, Ill. ON RESOLUTIONS A. B. Clark, Stanford University. Mary A. Woodmansee, Dayton, O. Emily O. Lamb, San Diego, Cal. The following took part in the discussion of the papers of the meeting: Katherine Ball, San Francisco, Cal.; T. A. Mott, superintendent of schools, Richmond, Ind.; Mrs. Edith Ingersoll, Evanston, Ill.; A. B. Clark, Stanford University, Cal.; Harriet N. Morris, San Diego, Cal.; T. L. Heaton, deputy superintendent of schools, San Francisco, Cal. FRIDAY MORNING, JULY 12 The department met in Berean Hall, Auditorium Building. A. B. Clark, Leland Stanford Jr. University, read a paper on "University Entrance Credits in Drawing." "Object Drawing" was considered in a paper by Edna B. Lowd, teacher of drawing, Los Angeles, Cal. The subject of the "Third International Congress on Art Education" to be held in London in August 1908, was presented by President Colby and discussed by several members. The Committee on Resolutions reported as follows: 1. Resolved, That school boards be urged to require the same preparation in time and quality from art teachers that is required of teachers in other subjects. 2. Resolved, That an important question for consideration next year be the correlation of the subjects of art and industrial education. 3. Resolved, That the art teachers of this department indorse the plan of the exhibit of American art at the International Congress of Art in London in 1908, and that we recommend individual financial support of the same. 4. Resolved, That a committee of three, with power to increase their number, be appointed by the chairman of this meeting to correspond with educators concerned and to recommend reasonable university entrance examinations in art, the report to be made to this department in 1909; and further that an appropriation of thirty dollars for the correspondence expenses of such committee be requested from the General Association. A. B. CLARK, MARY A. WOODMANSEE, At the suggestion of Superintendent W. H. Elson, of Cleveland, O., the following addition was made to resolution 4: "The committee is to co-operate with other committees doing similar work, such as that of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The resolutions, thus amended, were adopted and the following committee appointed: A. B. Clark, Leland Stanford Jr. University, California. Henry T. Bailey, North Scituate, Mass. Miss Florence E. Ellis, Supervisor of drawing, Cleveland, Ohio. The nominating committee reported: For President-George W. Eggers, Chicago, Ill. For Vice-President-Miss Mary A. Woodmansee, Dayton, Ohio. These nominees were elected and the meeting then adjourned. MARY S. MORSE, Acting Secretary. PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS THE AIMS OF ART EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS E. C. COLBY, STATE DIRECTOR OF DRAWING AND MANUAL TRAINING, NEW YORK The evolution of the art feeling in this country has been nourished and advanced by the rise and development of industrial activities. During the war for independence, art was latent among the people, and the dormant germs of art only budded when the new republic looked to its own genius for the production of those things necessary for its advancement. And so the mills and the factories, the foundries and machine shops come into being, calling for the creative faculties of the mind expressed in graphic and plastic art. The builder needed his architectural drawings, the machinist his plans, the household-decorator his designs, and training was necessary to produce them. In the fine arts, the portrait- and landscape-painters, striving for expression, felt the need of training, and were obliged to seek it abroad. There was no real art education among our people in those days of primitive energies. It had not entered into the minds of our educators that this training was so important in the fostering of our industries, and was still more important in developing the conscience and character of our citizens. It has been truly said that Education must prepare the individual for life in society. It must teach him to imagine, that is, to form new combinations from the material supplied by observation and reflection, for imagination is responsible for all progress in art or in science, in industrial or commercial enterprise. It must give him a knowledge of what has been done and thought in the past. The child must be taught to see that there is more in life than the mere struggle for existence. He must be given ideals by which he can judge, by which he can guide his own actions, and in which he can find rest from the cares and temptations of everyday life. Until recent years drawing in our public schools was a specialty, unrelated to the other subjects in the curriculum. It was introduced into the schools of New England as a result of an industrial need without any thought of developing the mental powers of the child. In the course of time, however, the necessity for unification in the school curriculum became apparent to educational leaders, and efforts were made to place drawing on an educational rather than an industrial basis and to place it in the same rank with other studies. But the reform was encompassed by many difficulties. It was necessary to develop the aesthetic value of the subject, to bring the child to the appreciation of the beautiful in works of art, nature, and his own surroundings. In a word it was necessary to develop all of the educational possibilities of art instruction and to so correlate it with the other subjects taught as to prove its value in placing the child in a proper relation with his environment, develop his mental powers, and form a solid basis for special work in the extensive fields of pure and applied art. Toward this end we are working at present, and much has been accomplished notwithstanding many obstacles encountered. When the subject was introduced from a foreign country by those who did not understand our conditions and needs, it was looked upon with suspicion by the people, ridiculed by artists, and by many regarded as a useless fad. But these obstacles to the development of art education have, to a large degree, been overcome. Educators and artists have watched the steady progress of new methods in art training with approval, and in response to public sentiment on the subject many well-equipped art schools for the training of teachers have been established. Almost all of our larger cities now have directors of drawing and manual training, and teachers are expected to be prepared to teach these subjects according to the latest and most advanced methods. It is now more generally understood by the people that the ideal art instruction in the schools serves to develop the latent talent for drawing, designing, constructing, illustrating, painting, and also, what is more important, to develop mental power, securing accuracy of observation and power of comparison, the ability to plan new combinations of objects and of thoughts, and the attainment of individuality of thought and expression. It brings the child new ideals and a new sense of the beautiful in nature and in art. Carlton Noyes says, In its essence and widest compass art is the making of a new thing in response to a sense of need. The very need itself creates, working through man as its agent. This truth is illustrated vividly by the miracles of modern invention. The hand of man unaided was not able to cope with his expanding opportunities; the giant steam and the magician electricity came at his call to work their wonders. The plow and the scythe of the New England colonist on his little farm were metamorphosed into the colossal steam driven shapes, in which machinery seems transmitted into intelligence, as he moved to the conquest of the acres of the great West. First the need was felt, the contrivance was created in response. A man of business sees before him in imagination the end to be reached, and applying his ideal to practical conditions, he makes every detail converge to the result desired. All rebellious circumstances, all forces that pull the other way, he bends to his compelling will and by the shaping power of his genius he accomplishes his aim. His business is his medium of self-expression, his success is the realization of his ideal. A painter does no more than this, though he works with a different material. The landscape which is realized ultimately upon his canvas is the landscape seen in his imagination. He draws his colors and forms from nature around; but he selects his details, adapting them to his end. All accidents and incidents are purged away. Out of the apparent confusion of life arises the evident order of art. And in the completed work the artist's idea stands forth salient and victorious. . . . . That impulse to creation which all men feel, the impulse which makes the artist, is especially active in a child; his games are his art. With a child material is not an end but a means. Things are for him but the skeleton of life, to be clothed upon by the flesh and blood reality of his own fashioning. His feelings are in excess of his knowledge. He has a faculty of perception other than the intellectual. It is imagination. The child is the first artist. Out of the material around him he creates a world of his own. The prototypes of the forms which he devises exist in life, but it is the thing which he himself makes that interests him, not its original in nature. His play is his expression. He creates; and he is able to merge himself in the thing created. In his play he loses all consciousness of self. He and the toy become one, caught up in the larger unity of the game. According as he identifies himself with the thing outside of him, the child is the first appreciator. If the child is the first artist, how needful it is for us to make his acquaintance in the early stages of his education. In the past decades educators have closed their eyes to the broad fields of budding geniuses, have failed to realize that among the teeming masses there are multitudes of children in whom are the seeds of creative ability which only need the fostering care of experienced teachers to bear the most precious fruitage. In view of the foregoing, the aim of art instruction in the public schools should be to lead the pupils to observe, to think, and to study for themselves; to train the eye to see form, color, and tone values correctly; to develop the imaginative and creative faculties; to cultivate a taste for and appreciation of good art; and to give the hand skill that the children may express their ideas on paper and in material. In a word that they may be able to create, to draw, to construct, and to appreciate the useful and the beautiful. The need of drawing as a foundation stone in education should be apparent to every thinking individual. There is no other study in the school curriculum that has a more important bearing on a pupil's future career than drawing. There is not an important industry in our great country that does not depend largely upon the creative faculties of the hands and minds of art-trained operatives. The foundries and machine shops all over the land depend for their prosperity upon the creative powers of the men at the draughting boards. Without design there could be no beauty nor usefulness expressed in metals. In the manufacture of textile fabrics the same rule applies to a wider degree, for without design there can be no beauty. Turn in whichever direction one may in the industrial world and it will be seen that the draughtsman is the soul of all enterprise; without him the factories would cease to hum the merry note of prosperity. And the importance of the man who can draw and create thru his imagination increases as the years roll on and the industries of our wonderful land become the more and more colossal in their scope. All the great undertakings of our time are carried on by inventive skill. Our modern system of industry depends entirely upon the skilled training of a vast and ever-increasing army of workmen. The effect of industrial training as pursued in the school curriculum is apparent everywhere in the United States. It is thru this influence having its root in the drawing and manual training in our schools, that commercial interests, especially the cotton, textile fabric, and mechanical engineering industries are increasing with such rapid strides. Honorable Carroll D. Wright says very truly, Invention and the development of the industrial arts have raised those coming under their influence to a higher intellectual level, to a more comprehensive understanding of all that makes for the best culture. Every new machine marks some progress in useful art, and it usually embodies something more than mere utility. There is a beauty in the movement of mechanical powers that has a reflex action on the beholder. The highest creative art enters into all these constructions—not an art, it may be, that paints a great picture or decorates a cathedral, but an art that bespeaks no less clearly the divine attributes of the mind that conceived it. Art instruction in the schools has a practical aim. It is to develop talent, mental power, character, ideals, and standards. More than this, the mission of art instruction is to exercise a moral power over the homes and lives of the people. As Dr. Münsterberg says it is to bring us that rest which is not fatigue from work, or-another desire of the ever dissatisfied mind-the rush of amusement; no, that rest which is complete harmonization of all our energies, complete fulfilment of our real personality. It is to meet demands of an industrial progress never paralleled in the world's history that art must be elevated in our educational system to a higher plane by its unification with the school curriculum by which the children of our mighty republic may be developed into useful, well-rounded, practical, and intelligent citizens capable of taking a part in solving the problems of our wonderful age. THE RELATION OF ART EDUCATION TO EVERYDAY LIFEFROM THE CULTURE SIDE KATHERINE LOIS SCOBEY, UNIVERSITY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, CHICAGO The slogan of the century has been sounded; from the armies of laboringmen and from the armies of professional men alike the cry resounds; from the civil, the social, and the educational classes it echoes with almost equal persistence. The challenge that meets one on every side demands, "Is it practical ?" and demands it with an imperiousness that brooks no evasion, and that is satisfied with no other answer than absolute, convincing proof. The social settlements thruout our land are answers to the call for practical help to the poor. The bureaus of charity found in our large cities are responses |