So, I am looking over the agenda, and lo and behold, I see a roundtable discussion titled: “Arts Education vs Arts Integration.” It’s the second time in the past six months I have seen this odd and infuriating distinction, which appears on the surface to part of an attempt to define learning “through the arts” as something other than arts education. Okay, call me paranoid.
I don’t know about you, but I have always understood, rather clearly, that the larger field was arts education, of which arts integration or learning “through the arts” was one approach.
So, what gives? WTH? WTF? WMD?
Have the counterproductive, time wasting, obtuse battles between those who embrace arts integration and those who don’t expanded to an attempt to rewrite the lexicon?
I hope not, for it would be another instance of the arts education field shooting itself in the foot, while an economic and accountability storm gathers having the potential to send the arts in the schools back to very dark days.
“Learning in and through the arts.” The way it is.