Author: Hoffa, Harlan Edward

Publication Year: 1969

Media Type: Report

Summary:

This study is concerned with the influence of these conferences upon art education and was undertaken for two broad purposes: first, to glean significant recommendations from the conference reports and, by this process, to isolate areas of overlap, instances of shared concern and recommendations which were repeated in reference to seemingly different concerns; and second, to document the history of the arts and humanities program as manifested through these conferences, paying particular attention to its commitment to the developmental activities concept.

Abstract:

This study is concerned with the influence of these conferences upon art education and was undertaken for two broad purposes: first, to glean significant recommendations from the conference reports and, by this process, to isolate areas of overlap, instances of shared concern and recommendations which were repeated in reference to seemingly different concerns; and second, to document the history of the arts and humanities program as manifested through these conferences, paying particular attention to its commitment to the developmental activities concept.

Between October 1964 and November 1966 an unprecedented series of research conferences were conducted for art educators, most of which were supported by the Arts and Humanities program of the U.S. Office of Education. These conferences were directed toward a variety of professional issues, ranging from the teaching of art appreciation to art programs for the disadvantaged and from advanced placement to aesthetic education. Their common denominator, other than that all were concerned with art education, was that each was set up for the sole purpose of identifying research strategies for the solution of particularly pressing professional problems.

Partly because most of the conferences seemed to be incapsulated and isolated from their predecessors and their successors and partly because the sense of a wholehearted federal commitment to the arts began to erode and fade away after the Kennedy assassination, in spite of the fact that the National Arts and Humanities Act and much of the other implementing legislation was passed in the following administration.

This inquiry was launched in an effort to retrieve the conference reports from the academic and bureaucratic limbo where they had drifted for several years and to distill from the bulk of their all-too-thorough reportage the significant recommendations which had been issued. In this process, and in an effort to establish the setting in which the conferences were held, it became necessary to track the convergence of the Office of Education's research program and the federal government's emerging awareness of cultural affairs. This convergence manifested itself, in part, in the establishment of the Arts and Humanities Program of the Office of Education and it was clearly impossible to analyze the impact of these conferences in isolation from the agency which stimulated them, received them and, in the end, allowed their output to languish unattended for several years.

The specific recommendations which flowed out of the conference reports differed widely because the conference topics themselves were so diverse. It was possible to extract four clusters of recommendations which were shared by more than one conference, however. These related to teacher education, to interdisciplinary cooperation, to increasing student contact with bona fide art objects or producing artists, and finally, to filmmaking and other processes whereby visual images can be reproduced, transported, isolated, or compared for educational purposes. (p. 1-2, 90, 91 and 93)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.

Chapter I. Introduction: 

An introduction to the problem. 
Background information. 
Procedural considerations.

Chapter II. The arts, government and education: 

The Cater report. 
The Heckscher report. 
Keppel and Bloom. 
The setting: 1963. 
Taking root. 
Howe II. 
The developmental activities idea. 
The Panel on educational research and development. 
Arts and humanities, 1964-1970.

Chapter III. The conference game: 

How it came about. 
The non-consequences. 
The way it was. 
Differences and similarities.

Chapter IV. The effluent: 

The perpetuation principle. 
Remaking the teacher. 
Breaking up the eggcrate. 
The live experience. 
Multiplying the image.

Chapter V. And in the end there was silence.

Chapter VI. Summing up.

Bibliography.
Appendixes:
     A. Titles of conferences, project directors, contract information and stated
         objectives.
     B. Individual participants at various conferences.
     C. Institutional representation at various conferences.
     D. Tenure of federal officials influencing art education 1961-68.
     E. Subsequent research.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Arts Education