This document outlines principles for a quality art curriculum. It discusses how art allows students to play, understand themselves, investigate community themes, encounter other cultures, and empower self-expression. The curriculum should bridge what interests students and artistic theory. It also notes art can reconstruct social spaces and teach students they don't know everything. Overall, the principles aim to use art to help students learn skills while exploring their experiences and beliefs.

1. What Is Art?

2. Todays Education System
-Students often focus on one right answer

3. Structuring a quality art Curriculum
-“The essential contribution art makes to our
communities is to teach skills and concepts
while creating opportunities to investigate and
represent ones own experience.”

4. Principles 1 and 2
#1: Playing-Learning begins with play
-Play must be free
#2: Forming Self-Art allows students to
understand who they are, and who they may
become

5. Principles 3 and 4
• #3: Investigation Community Themes-Bring
out ones deepest meaning and empathy.
• #4: Encountering Difference -Multicultural
curriculum allows us to see themes of others

6. Principles 5 and 6
• #5: Attentive Living -Artistic thinking is not
separate from daily life.
• #6: Empowered Experiencing - Help students
understand art in larger context.

7. Principles 7 and 8
#7: Empowered Making -Must bridge gap
between what is “cool” (introduce new artists),
and theory and spontaneity
#8: Deconstructing Culture -Students aren’t
passive recipients of manufactured meaning

8. Principles 9 and 10
#9: Reconstructing Social Spaces -Artists must
construct new spaces in which caring,
courageous communities can emerge
#10: Not Knowing-Students will learn that they
don’t know everything

9. Principle 11
• BELIEVING-Art teachers must believe in what
they are teaching. Must get students to
believe in themselves

10. Activity!
• Divide paper into thirds.
• When songs begin, start painting until song is
over.
• Be sure to paint the emotions you feel
throughout the song

11. Principles of Possibility
• These principles should be used as a checklist
for art educators to test if material is providing
a useful art experience