One of the most effective methods for teaching social studies events, concepts, and issues incorporates the fine arts into lesson plans. The fine arts, such as photography, architecture, paintings, tapestries, and sculptures reflect the core cultural values, political ideals, and religious beliefs of a civilization and offer excellent…

"Teaching Young Adult Literature" describes innovative methods for engaging students in reading, writing, and discussing contemporary and classic literary texts written for adolescents. Centered around the concept of change, the authors present YA novels that span across various disciplines. Each book presented will help students…

Pressures are great upon public school teachers and administrators in secondary school systems to insure their students perform well on state and national achievement tests. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) puts an extreme amount of emphasis on students' performance on subject area tests. NCLB (2002) requires that at least 95% of the…

This paper describes a model education program in art education. The goals of the program are to: (1) encourage higher levels of thinking; (2) increase knowledge of arts terminology, style, and concepts; and (3) develop the characteristics of creative thinking, in students from kindergarten through high school. The teaching focus requires the…

Art plays an integral role in civilizing society and its members. Through the visual arts we can directly comment on the human condition and begin to comprehend the complexity of our species and our multicultural and mutlilayered society. This article discusses how the arts' civilizing power can inform the education of all children. (15…

This article describes the experience of Texas Tech University in its attempts to implement an interdisciplinary doctoral program in the fine arts. Results are presented of a survey taken of students graduating with a PhD in Fine Arts during the ten years the program has existed. (CJ)

The elementary secondary curriculum in the United States could benefit from redefining the arts as a discipline to be interwoven into the school's curriculum. Four essays in this issue explore the question of the arts in education. John Holdren comments in "Will the Band Play On?" that music educators must stress the serious study of music as its…

This paper examines the art of Rene Magritte to illustrate how artworks provide a number of dimensions for realizing experience, for creating knowledge, and for a changed role of interpretation in educational research. The paper argues that works of art provide new gestalts and new grounds for confidence. (JB)

This article describes how to combine painting and poetry by studying famous paintings and poetry of recognized artists from both media. It covers how to design a project, discussing pictures and poems, and giving children a chance to create their own art. A sidebar lists artists and poets that work well together. Includes extension activities.…

This book shows that children innately learn a great deal about the arts. The book argues that involvement and immersion are the ways in which children feel welcome to write, move, create, draw, and otherwise express ideas about art and music. It offers teaching suggestions to classroom teachers and non-specialists so classroom reading activities…

The Blue Ribbon Schools Program designated art as an area for special emphasis during 1989-90 and 1990-91, and the program identified 42 schools that were excellent overall and had exemplary programs in the arts. The schools shared the following characteristics: (1) a philosophy that holds arts education as a basic and necessary component of a…

This fourth and final article in a series about children's story drawings describes a school art program based entirely on the visual narrative in which all art classroom activities and projects are based upon either visual storytelling or upon developing graphic vocabulary and grammar skills needed for visual narration. (Author/KC)

This one-hour documentary on videotape reveals how computer technology and interactive media rely on the languages of the arts--images, sounds, colors, and movements--to engage children in new ways of learning about the arts and other subjects. Students are shown using educational software that encourages development of knowledge and skills in…

This final report describes the objectives, the evaluation design, and the findings of a project which provided training and support to elementary teachers to enable them to integrate drama, dance/movement, visual arts, and music into their daily academic programs. The project had two main components carried out by an arts team with members…

Suggests ways in which the rich resources of African arts--literature, sculpture, music, dance, theater--can be made more accessible to elementary and secondary social studies classrooms. A bibliography of print and nonprint materials is also provided. (RM)