I’m sharing the INTRODUCTION of my ArtEd Handbook soon to be produced

Art is like a well-written story.

Like a writer, artist starts out with an interesting idea, event or thought. (Glencoe Exploring Art, Mittler, 2005) Expression of moods, feelings and emotions are manifestations of creativity and imagination. According to Krogh & Morehouse in their book The Early Childhood Curriculum, “Art adds richness and beauty to life. It provides children with skills in observation, hand-eye coordination, and methods of communication. Without art the curriculum becomes drier, duller, and more tedious. Thus, schools should provide a curriculum for the development of the afore-mentioned skills.”

003; Burkhart, 1962; Winner, Hetland, 2000). It is indeed a surprising revelation; after all, art is associated most often on the development of emotional dimension of every individual. It is for this reason that not only MAPEH teachers are expected and demanded to carry out the outlook of such development to students. Since art appreciation, according to the mentioned authors, influence cognitive development, it is therefore substantial that all subject teachers are Art teachers.

It is a universal fact that every teachers, not only Art teachers create and utilize visual aids, aside from that, every teachers cannot do away in making learning environment attractive and conducive for learning. In so doing, a school whose teachers amalgamate art in all subject areas is geared to the compliance of the quality school art program of the National Art Education Association.

The following are the nuts and bolts; 1. A quality art program should provide children with an ability to “have intense involvement in and response to personal visual experiences. 2. A quality art program gives children opportunities to “perceive and understand visual relationships in the environment,” that is, to help children become “visually literate” and even “make informed visual judgments.” 3. A quality art program lets children “think, feel, and act creatively with visual art materials,” giving them the same opportunity a professional artist has to transform materials “into a whole work of art.” (Consortium, 1994, p.6) In the Department of Teacher Education (DoTE), College of Education (COE) of the University of San Jose – Recoletos (USJR), the author being the instructor on the course ArtEd (Introduction to Art Education), which is a General Education course to all students taking up Education as a course, is cognizant of the NAEA’s quality school art program. Thus, bring into being a course syllabus that would prepare Josenian would-be teachers not just rationally capable, sensitively stable, communally gracious, piously attuned, bodily clever at the same time artistically in sync.

Making the ArtEd curriculum, above and beyond, a great answer to the USJR’s mission, to provide Catholic Education for the holistic formation of graduates prepared to meet the needs and challenges of the local and global community. Funneled by this conception, the author of this handbook, hopeful that it will be an excellent tool to smooth the progress of the understanding and learning of the topics, competencies and proficiencies of being an ART teacher, instill in their minds the thought pioneered by Geraldine Schwartz that drawing is a natural human response.

Our brain is … programmed to draw. What if this skill were nourished and nurtured for all children? What if it had value as a way to communicate as speech does? What if it were stimulated, rewarded, practiced, trained, and educated? What happen to the brains of human beings so nurtured and so educated?