By Julie Fay
Contributing Writer
6/12/08

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“It’s awful,” says Turner, who has taught in town for 25 years.
Slodden, who serves as curriculum coordinator for the visual arts, says there’s been a significant impact on the elementary curriculum. “It’s been cut in half, because you only have half a year now. So there are fewer long-term projects. Everything has to be condensed and (the teacher must) distill out the essential, basic elements.”
Currently, elementary students in grades one through five have art for 35 minutes weekly for half the school year, down from a yearlong class in previous years. Kindergartners have art for 30 minutes weekly for one quarter of the year. Sixth graders have one 47-minute art class for every other day for one quarter. Most seventh and eighth graders have art every other day for the entire year, although scheduling conflicts prevent students in strings or honors chorus from taking art class. High school students have a graduation requirement of five credits of fine and applied arts, which translates to an entire year’s worth of visual art, music or other electives such as cooking or sewing. For those students who are interested, a sequential curriculum in visual arts is available at the high school.
Arts programs are often cut when budget considerations call for belt-tightening. Turner unhesitatingly offers the reason why.
“It’s because we’re not MCAS-ed,” she says.
Research studies demonstrate that children who participate in the arts do better overall in school, including higher standardized test scores. But school districts frequently cut arts programs, including basic elementary art classes, in order to dedicate more time and resources to preparing students for those very same standardized tests.
According to Turner, who studied at Harvard during a sabbatical in 1995, children are born with billions of neurons in the brain, which make connections as the child learns and develops. But at age 10, a pruning process occurs, and neurons that have not been used are lost, with significant implications.
“If the brain isn’t thinking creatively by age 10,” says Turner, “kids don’t develop the ability to think creatively. That’s why elementary programs are so important.”
Parent Joan Clifford agrees. When her daughter was in fourth and fifth grade, art classes were conducted in the regular classrooms, to the detriment of the curriculum and the students.
“It was art on a cart,” says Clifford. “And we were tired of it.”
Clifford, along with other parents and Milton art teachers, founded FAVA, or Friends and Advocates of the Visual Arts. Established in 2003, FAVA sponsors fee-based after school art classes at the elementary level. This year, FAVA was offered at Collicot, Cunningham and Glover schools; next year it will be coming to Tucker, as well. That availability to all elementary students is important, according to Clifford.
“Picasso said, ‘All children are artists,’” she says. “Children decide very early on whether they’re good in art or not. We should be giving them more opportunities to celebrate their work—any work that they’re doing.”
Turner emphasizes that arts are valued in society, but that reducing creative opportunities for children now will have long-term effects. “Our goal (in art education) is not training future artists,” she says. “We encourage creative thinking and help children to be more comfortable taking risks. Because when problems arise,”—in school, at work, in life—“knowledge won’t save you. Creativity will.”