Entry 2: Quality Art Curriculum

What makes a quality art curriculum? I feel there are a number of things that can contribute to the quality and usefulness of an art curriculum, all of which offer numerous variations and room to maneuver in between. The four main points given by the Spiral Workshop in Chapter 9 of our text (Real World Readings in Art Education) firmly and succintly set up a strong foundation to build upon, and they quite accurately reflect my feelings on the subject.
First and foremost, the immediate requirement for any project is to grasp the students' attention, much like a hook for a sales pitch. Of course, you cannot build an entire program or lesson on student interest, but if a student feels no connection whatsoever to a project, it will be difficult to further build upon that lesson.
Second, the project should be tied to an aspect of art history. Whether utilising an artist or artwork that is ancient, classical, modern or bleeding-edge new, the connection tells the student that what they are participating in is part of something bigger than a class project. It tells students that art is an important part of our world, and has been for most of human existence. While I do feel that it is important to expose students to the work of current, practising artists, it is just as important to present more historical works and then tie the past to the present. In this way, we can show that no single artistic form or style exists in a vacuum, and that all artwork can be seen as a part of a greater whole.
Tied in with these two points is using student interest and other artists' examples to then create a connection with a particular social or cultural issue. By choosing a topic that a student feels strongly about, you can then show examples of how other artists from the past and present have used their artwork to express their opinions, feelings and reactions to issues that affected them. This also helps to illustrate the impact that socially- or culturally-linked artwork can have on the artists' world.
Finally, the introduction of a new or advanced technique, method or art media should be included, for a number of reasons. Students need to encounter and try out many kinds of art media and materials, as the more they are familiar with, the more they will be able to draw on for later use. Different skills and approaches can be brought into their prefered methods of expression, but only if they are open to experiment with them and stretch beyond their comfort zones. Also, if you have already established socio-cultural, art historical and/or student interest connections with the lesson and the new method or technique is linked with those pre-existing connections, the majority of students should want to give it a try and express themselves in a similar manner.
Again, these are simply my ponderings on the approaches given in our text. In the actual classroom, some or all of these aspects may not be present, but they should all be relatively achievable in many cases.