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Education for its Own Sake: Art at CHS by Margaret Johnson
The main lobby inside of the main entrance of the school sports four giant canvases which display symbolic depictions of elephants, the school’s mascot. A few steps off of the brick patterned floor and onto the linoleum down the main hallway of the school shows even more art, not even school related. Right outside of the main office is a dramatically realistic drawing of a dog’s eye. A few steps down and there’s a painting of an electric guitar, and a portrait of a teenager with a fist raised in joyful victory.
At the end of the 2017-2018 school year, Clara Johnson, an art student at Coventry High School, expressed her dissatisfaction with the school’s heavy focus on careers after discovering that a job shadow is mandatory for graduation.
“The purpose of life and education isn’t to make money!” she said passionately in an animated interview. A shallow exploration of the school’s curriculum might suggest that school administrators disagree with her, but further investigation shows otherwise.
The school is well known for its career and tech program, which attracts students from other towns and cities. During their freshman year, new students are encouraged to join a career program and spend their next three years at the high school learning a profitable skill, like carpentry, cosmetology, or childcare.
The emphasis on career seems to be a response to the modern feeling that school is useless, expressed creatively by popular British youtuber Dave Brown who raps with intense frustration, “I wasn’t taught how to get a job/ but I can remember dissecting a frog/ I wasn’t taught how to pay tax/ but I know loads about Shakespeare’s classics.”
Many people feel that students graduate with unnecessary knowledge and find themselves unable to get a job and support themselves as adults. Moreover, some may feel that art classes are not important.
While several art classes are readily available, this is not an uncommon or special recognition of the value of art for its own sake. Psychologist Louise Comerford Boyes states, “Currently, an increasing belief in the power of the arts to affect change” and that “means that educational advocacy… is permeated with the idea that the arts are the answer to many of education’s troubles.”
Art classes, other than graphic design, are not available through the career and tech program. They offer no job opportunities for graduating students and are not provided with double length periods. This disregard for art seems related to the fact that it is widely accepted that the majority of artists do not acquire well paying art careers.
However, anyone who walks into the school, even without talking to someone, will not feel that the school has a true disregard for art. Someone only has to walk a few steps in through the main entrance of the school to see student art.
The main lobby inside of the main entrance of the school sports four giant canvases which display symbolic depictions of elephants, the school’s mascot. A few steps off of the brick patterned floor and onto the linoleum down the main hallway of the school shows even more art, not even school related. Right outside of the main office is a dramatically realistic drawing of a dog’s eye. A few steps down and there’s a painting of an electric guitar, and a portrait of a teenager with a fist raised in joyful victory.
These works of art aren’t related to good grades or careers. They seem to be in the school because they are beautiful. Further into the building is the library, filled with canvases and student artist displays, and even further into the school are several display cases and murals. Even ceiling tiles are painted.
This is not what a school would look like if its administrators didn’t care about art, and it seems like they care about it for its own sake, because these amateur but beautiful works of art aren’t here to get anyone a career.
The school may not recognize the usefulness of art as a career option, but it does something even better: it recognizes art for its own sake. If it can do that, maybe it can recognize the inherent worth of its other classes too, instead of reducing education to a means to an end.