An Agenda: What Should We Expect?

The potential of the arts to transform and improve education has been documented sufficiently to establish them as credible and effective learning strategies. R. Craig Sautter, a poet and writer at the School for New Learning at DePaul University, believes that reformers and schools have overlooked this favorable track record, and he objects to the arts continuing to be treated as “merely pleasant diversions from the core academic basics of schools”. He wants to know what would happen “if we spread the arts across the curriculum of the middle school years, when many students so dramatically...

The potential of the arts to transform and improve education has been documented sufficiently to establish them as credible and effective learning strategies. R. Craig Sautter, a poet and writer at the School for New Learning at DePaul University, believes that reformers and schools have overlooked this favorable track record, and he objects to the arts continuing to be treated as “merely pleasant diversions from the core academic basics of schools”. He wants to know what would happen “if we spread the arts across the curriculum of the middle school years, when many students so dramatically lose interest in classroom activities”. To come to terms with what a school district's arts program ought to be is a matter of choosing among a number of alternatives. No two school systems or communities are alike. Cultural resources that are plentiful in one community may be nonexistent in another. State and local regulations differ from locale to locale.