Recently there’s been a lot of talk from ED officials about the importance of a well-rounded education. In December, we noted Arne Duncan’s promise to make a commitment to the liberal arts a key piece of his revisions to ESEA, and in February we were surprised to hear ED’s Peter Cunningham acknowledge the severity of the curriculum narrowing caused by NCLB. And the Department’s blueprint for ESEA reauthorization argues that “[s]tudents need a well-rounded education to contribute as citizens in our democracy and to thrive in a global economy – from literacy to mathematics, science, and technology to history, civics, foreign languages, the arts, financial literacy, and other subjects.”
Arne Duncan’s speech at the Arts Education Partnership’s National Forum continues this trend of pleasant-sounding rhetoric. Duncan is absolutely right that “[a] well-educated student, in other words, is exposed to a well-rounded curriculum. It is the making of connections, conveyed by a rich core curriculum, which ultimately empowers students to develop convictions and reach their full academic and social potential.” And it’s heartening to hear Duncan tell a national audience that “[t]he case for a well-rounded curriculum begins with a disappointing reality: Many schools today are falling far short of providing an engaging, content-rich curriculum,” a conclusion also reached by the GAO in their November 2009 report on student achievement.
But Duncan’s speech is a disappointment because it lacks specifics. Okay, fine, he’ll be consolidating a bunch of old earmarks into a new, expanded $265 million fund to “strengthen the teaching of arts, foreign languages, civics and government,” and there will be new money set aside for developing assessments in subjects besides ELA and math. But notice who’s excluded from the Department’s “first large-scale survey of school principals, music teachers, and visual arts specialists in ten years”? Dance and theater instructors! Might this be because the 2008 NAEP arts assessment had to drop dance and theater after they couldn’t find enough students who had taken those subjects to assemble a nationally representative sample?
It’s going to take more than pleasant words from the Secretary of Education to reverse the deterioration of liberal arts education.
James Elias