Public Policy and Arts Administration (PPAA) Column: Fall 2023

What Might It Take to Shift Perceptions of the Arts in Education?

Column by: Clare Murray

In my work ensuring all children everywhere have access to the myriad benefits of museum-based learning, I often ask people—decision makers, donors, partners, and other stakeholders—what they remember about their first museum experiences. Sometimes, too, I ask about their early arts education. I have a hunch that tapping into one’s memory promises a greater sense of the power and importance of the arts and museum experiences. When we talk from experience and reflect on our own lived experiences, we may be more apt to feel connected to an issue, such as equitable arts education. While many districts and states are doing tremendous work integrating the arts and ensuring they are a key area of their accountability systems, 31 states still do not consider the arts a key area of their accountability systems (Americans for the Arts, n.d.). Thirty-seven have not completed a statewide report on arts education in the past 8 years (Americans for the Arts, n.d.). Further, our last comprehensive national arts education report was conducted more than 13 years ago (Americans for the Arts, n.d.). The Public Policy and Arts Administration Interest Group is committed to ensuring all children have access to quality arts education across the United States, and we propose thinking about the potential of memory to help stimulate conversation and change in the direction of a more equitable arts educational landscape.

There is a field of research that looks at the potential of memory for understanding children’s arts education experiences. In 2003, Philo introduced the idea that we also access the inner worlds of children’s perceptions through the memories of adults. Many scholars follow in line with this proposition (Chang-Kredl & Wilkie, 2016; Harris & Valentine, 2017; Maynes, 2021). Maynes (2021), in particular, presents a unique arts-based approach, exploring the process of remembering and representing childhood in autobiographical, graphic memoir forms. Maynes posits that how we reconstruct and document our memories of childhood arts education experiences visually represents an essential version of those experiences. However, he notes this distinctly differs from our original childhood perceptions. Soto (2001) elaborates that our memories of childhood arts education are constantly being shifted and refined, just like our intertwined identities. Soto poignantly demonstrates this in their recount of an experience bringing a group of graduate students to an art gallery filled with pieces like Roger Shimomura’s painting of a birthday cake with three candles—his earliest memory in life is his third birthday—to explore how our memories of birthdays over time perhaps are tainted by our present-moment affects of our identities and implicated in our work as educators. Similarly, Chang-Kredl and Wilkie (2016) are careful to note that educator memories are important to separate when it comes to disentangling imagined, remembered, conceptualized, and actual childhood experiences of arts education experiences so that no educator, for instance, is projecting their own experiences on others. While studying memory still cannot completely communicate children’s perceptions of their childhood arts education, the potential for layers of information, reflected upon and reconstructed over time, is interesting.

Regardless of how proximate we can get to understanding children’s arts education experiences through the lens of memory, we can get policy makers thinking about the place of the arts in their lives. And the more we can get them thinking about the arts, the more we can plant the seeds for a more equitable future for the arts in our children’s education and lives. So, go ahead and ask your local leaders what they remember about their early arts education experiences.

References

Americans for the Arts. (n.d.). 10 arts education fast facts. https://www.americansforthearts.org/by-topic/arts-education/10-arts-education-fast-facts#:~:text=As%20of%202020%2C%20only%2019,is%20over%2010%20years%20old

Chang-Kredl, S., & Wilkie, G. (2016). What is it like to be a child? Childhood subjectivity and teacher memories as heterotopia. Curriculum Inquiry, 46(3), 308–320.

Harris, C., & Valentine, G. (2017). Childhood narratives: Adult reflections on encounters with difference in everyday spaces. Children’s Geographies, 15(5), 505–516.

Maynes, M. J. (2021). Visualizing the spaces of childhood in graphic memoirs. In Children and youth as subjects, objects, agents: Innovative approaches to research across space and time (pp. 47–68). Palgrave Macmillan.

Philo, C. (2003). “To go back up the side hill”: Memories, imaginations, and reveries of childhood. Children’s Geographies, 1(1), 7–23.

Soto, L. D. (2001). Childhood memories. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 32(1), 104–112.

Beth Dobberstein, President
Nina Unitas, President-Elect
Susan Buss, Communication Liaison
Phyllis Roybal, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Commissioner
Amanda Galbraith, Critical Friend
Clare Murray, Critical Friend