Essentially Creative
From Griffith REVIEW Discussion
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
» Read Edition 23: Essentially Creative
27 May, 2009
Christine Bladwell
(Dee Why, NSW)
Dear Editor,
Specialist Art Education in NSW began in 1944, not 1957 as stated in Joanna Mendelssohn’s article ‘Synergy and serendipity’ (Griffith REVIEW 23: Essentially Creative).
In 1943 I entered Sydney Teachers’ College as a primary teacher trainee, but transferred to the Specialist Art Section when it was established by John Dabron in 1944.
There were six of us in the section and we were all high school graduates. The course, being new and experimental, consisted of three rather useless but enjoyable years at East Sydney Technical College doing short courses on each of the faculties at the college: from classical oil painting to plaster casting; ceramics; fabric designing; life drawing; stained glass design; lettering and more. The idea was that we should be equipped to teach anything at a basic level. Then followed a graduate year at Sydney Teachers’ College after which we were endowed with an ‘Art Teacher’s Diploma’ and ventured out to long-suffering schools to proceed to learn to be art teachers.
In this I was helped greatly by the inspiration of John Dabron who inspected me at my first appointment at Broken Hill in 1948, and by Nita Playford’s much more practical approach when I was at Muswellbrook. (Upon my arrival at this school in 1951, the headmaster told me it was his determination to ‘eradicate art from this school’ as though it was some form of virulent disease. I don’t know if he succeeded, but I soon got a transfer to Sydney).
Throughout my initial teaching career, art was hopelessly hampered by lack of equipment. Most schools (except Muswellbrook) did try to help, but in the main the students had to supply their own materials and usually there was no specialist art room; one had to traipse from one classroom to another carting the materials required. In trying to encourage the children to ‘paint big’, I used to buy large quantities of powdered paint (there was no acrylic paint then), mix it up in old jam jars and spoon it out to the kids. I supplied paper by begging end rolls of newsprint from the local newspaper offices. Water came from the nearest wash-room (and was emptied there at the end of the lesson). All this was ex-school time and largely at my own expense. Art history was not part of the curriculum then, but I taught it by saving articles and illustrations from papers and magazines and making charts which could be displayed in the classrooms, where information was absorbed by a kind of osmosis.
In spite of everything we did much to bring a turn-around in the attitude to art and art teaching and to produce some pretty good work – as well as the next generation of better-trained art teachers.
After leaving for some years to produce a family, I returned as a casual in 1968 and was staggered at the fully equipped art rooms and lavish supply of materials. It was like jumping from the Dark Ages into the 20th century without a parachute. I soon took it all for granted, but not without some cynicism, especially since it required eagle-eyed monitoring to prevent the goodies being ‘knocked off’ by the kids.
It was been interesting to watch, not without further cynicism, the subsequent developments in the art of art teaching and wonderment at what able students can produce in ideal circumstances.
Your truly,
Christine Bladwell
Response from Dr Kerry Thomas:
Joanna Mendelssohn’s recent article ‘Synergy and Serendipity’ (Griffith REVIEW 23: Essentially Creative), offers a lively characterisation of the interests and politics of art education in NSW over the last thirty or so years.
Christine Bladwell’s engaging and informative letter, written in response to Mendelssohn’s article, presents a window on the earlier years of art education in NSW, a prelude to the history that follows. Bladwell emphasises how teachers became qualified as art teachers in the 1940s, extracted from their primary teacher training while she also points out that this boutique group were high school graduates. She describes the resourcefulness of art teachers in their efforts to make art come alive for students, recognising their nous, the physicality of their actions and the odds they could face in sometimes hostile school surroundings – factors that continue to resonate for some art teachers even today. She also highlights the support of the Department of Education Inspector, John Dabron.
The burgeoning of art education in NSW occured in the late 1960s and in the following decades, at least to a considerable extent, as a consequence of the tactical intelligence of John Dabron and his colleague Nita Playford and the wise moves of the later Department of Education Art Inspectors. Federal and state funding, especially during the Whitlam years, was channeled into infrastructure support and professional development and offered a way to keep the faith, an incentive and scaffold. By 1978, when I became an art teacher, there were four Department of Education Art Inspectors and ten regional art consultants across NSW. Today there is nothing comparable, to the chagrin of many. The aptitude and artfulness of the growing critical mass of highly committed art teachers, and a state curriculum structure with ‘core’ art introduced in the Wyndham Scheme in 1962, coupled with the agency of the Inspectors and consultants and growing public interest, facilitated the growth of art.
Students were drawn to the subject in increasing numbers. By 1987, when a Visual Arts syllabus revision gave prominence to students learning to express their ideas and feelings about the world, more students opted to choose the subject as an elective. Comparably better resources and changing technologies offered new possibilities. Syllabus revisions such the 1987 revision were anticipated by teachers. Professional development took place over a ten-year period in preparation for this syllabus. Teachers were supported through conferences and related programming publications which were often produced by the Inspectors, consultants and talented art teachers. The relative autonomy of the art syllabus committees, by today’s standards, also meant that their decisions about how the subject should be represented in the curriculum tended to be respected, even if some committee members were viewed as a little eccentric.
By the late 1990s, following the McGaw Review, these same kinds of committees were stripped of much of their authority as curriculum change became increasingly politicised. Nonetheless, further reconfiguring of the subject was still possible, notably through the introduction of the Body of Work in the 1999 Stage 6 Visual Arts Syllabus.
The Higher School Certificate examination in art also played a very real part in how art teachers were mentored and inculcated into the values of the subject. When I had responsibilities as Supervisor of HSC Visual Arts Marking in the late 1990s, 200-300 art teachers each year were part of the examination process. They assessed the artworks and essays of HSC art students and common values, although sometimes healthily and hotly contested, were able to circulate amongst the profession. These in turn affected the curriculum choices that teachers made as they took back ideas from HSC marking to their classrooms.
By the mid 1980s the annual blockbuster ARTEXPRESS, which built on the historical precedent that dated back to the late 1960s, nurtured the aspirations of would be student artists while further building the profile of HSC art students and their teachers locally and internationally. Though the 1970s primary teachers continued to convert their qualifications to teach art in secondary schools while art teachers were trained in greater numbers. By the early 1980s a Bachelor of Art Education replaced the earlier diploma and many art teachers took the opportunity to update their qualification from diploma to degree at the then City Art Institute. By the early 1990s a Masters in Art Education was available by coursework and research at the College of Fine Arts. Today a small number of art educators pursue further Doctoral study.
When I began teaching it was difficult to imagine that there had been a time that art had not being taught or that art had existed as a half subject. As a young teacher, what was what I now see as a reasonably short-lived status quo had become so naturalised. I was a beneficiary of this history and recognised that while the greatest commitment to teaching art involved assisting students to understand artworld concepts and to take risks in the making of art, it also involved defending the subject against the snipes that art couldn’t be taken too seriously. I, along with my contemporaries, and others with a commitment to the same purposes and goals, vehemently opposed this view. It is a view that continues to hold some sway, frustratingly. Questions continue to be raised about art’s economic value, job prospects, and perhaps more obliquely expressed, the extent to which intelligence matters in art. The subject is still treated with some suspicion while it also intrigues. To some extent this uncertainty is understandable because art involves a kind of trickery in how representations are fabricated.
Since Mendelssohn’s article, the Arts have been accepted as forming up part of the Australian Curriculum. The history of art education in NSW is worthwhile remembering at this time because history tells us that curriculum development and its assessment is a deeply politicised practice and artefact. It can be assumed that the visual arts will form a key aspect of the arts mix. Nevertheless, it would be reprehensible if the potency of the visual arts in NSW were sacrificed through a national curriculum construct that prioritised participation across the arts in the name of equity.
Dr Kerry Thomas
Senior Lecturer
School of Art History and Art Education
College of Fine Arts
University of New South Wales
Vice President, Visual Arts and Design Educators Association NSW (VADEA), State and National Issues and Special Projects.
(Previously Inspector, Creative Arts, NSW Board of Studies).