Chunchi Hu

Professor James Phillips

ENG 170-01

31 May 2021

Rhetorical Analysis Essay( draft 2)

  Art helps humankind feel beauty, express beauty, and create beauty, and it can also help humanity express its ideas and attitude towards the surrounding world. Therefore, starting from a newborn, how is a person gradually exposed to the art? Lullabies may be an answer. The baby’s hearing is basically fully developed and mature when they are about one month old, but it takes a much longer time for the vision to develop. Usually, family members will sing lullabies when they try to coax their children to sleep, so lullabies may be the earliest art form that people have contact with.

While moving ahead with art, art education has also become a heated topic. Danny Gregory, a writer, an art lover who has participated in school art projects for almost two years, wrote an article named “Let’s get rid of art education in schools.” In this article, the author re-examines the current art education curriculum in the United States public schools as an art worker. Although this article is not academic, Danny Gregory also put forward some thought-provoking points in the article.

“Let’s get rid of ‘art’ education and replace it with something crucial to the future of our world: creativity” (Gregory). Aiming at giving front-line educators and education managers proposal about art education, Gregory used a lot of data and examples as well as people’s stereotypes of children studying art to try to convince readers the fact that art education in the public education system has been devastated in recent years and provided some moderate suggestions with educators to help children acquire new ideas by cultivating children’s creativity and help children gain the ability to explore, understand, and solve problems.

Here comes the question: when many people admire art, why is art education being mistreated? At the beginning of the article, Danny Gregory successfully used the example of art education for children to obtain higher SAT scores to confirm the essential habits of art education. In a separate paragraph with the word “awesome,” the author opens his perspective on current art education in a unique way. The background of the author writing this article is also mentioned naturally and fluently by the author at this time，the Washington government has successively proposed two bills on education, the Common Core State Standards and No Child Left Behind, which are intended to promote equal and comprehensive development of education throughout the United States. Apparently, according to Gregory’s words, “Arts programs were the first victims.”

The above is the background of the author writing this article. According to the current state of art education, what did the author propose? Breaking away from traditional art education and cultivating the development of K-12 students’ creativity is the author’s core point of view. The author clearly and meaningfully used a large number of examples in the article to try to confirm his point: children can explore the world in the process of teaching creativity, understand the world and have the ability to solve practical problems. And these abilities are more capable of guaranteeing children’s future development potential than “empty art.”

Gregory’s article is clear and well-developed. People can understand the author’s intentions by reading this article from the beginning. So, how does the author present this article to readers? The headline is often regarded as the eye of the article. A good headline can often attract the reader’s attention and stimulate the reader’s desire to read. In this article written by Gregory, he chose to name the article “Let’s get rid of art education in schools.” Some people may think that this kind of headline is too absolute. This kind of straightforward and simple expression may make many readers feel that the author of this article lacks in thinking. Is this the case?

Although this article is not very academic, it is about education, and the author may have two intentions in the headline. First, filter out those sloppy thinking because the topic of education requires long-term thinking and careful consideration to get a proper answer. Therefore, in this way, the author is able to avoid the readers who are too reckless to read this article. The second point is to attract readers’ attention. Headlines that are easily offensive and uncomfortable tend to attract readers’ attention to the greatest extent. Since the author believes that changes in art education are imperative, it is excusable to hope that readers can resonate with him in this way.

Additionally, when we read through the complete text, we will find that this article is narrated in the first person, and the whole article, unlike other academic essays, is full of “I” and “We.” In writing, many people think that adopting the first-person writing method will have too many subjective emotions and cannot maintain an objective attitude towards events. In this article, the author’s writing in the first person is more in the hope that readers will resonate with him. The reform of art education and pay attention to the cultivation of children’s creativity should not be just an individual idea, but the whole society should act on it.

As Gregory puts it, “Creativity is not a ghetto, not a clique, not something to be exercised alone in a garret. Nor is it a freak show of self-indulgent divas and losers. ” Creativity refers to a person’s ability to discover new things, generate new ideas, create new things, and solve problems. The essence of art is creation. Only with human ideas of creativity can be called true art. A successful work of art connects the creator’s own creativity with the object, from the thinking to the production process to the presentation to the audience. Although the author uses the title “Let’s get rid of art education in schools,” I think what the author really wants to express to readers is that creativity in art education is the most beneficial to children’s growth.

Going back to our wicked question, “How important is formal education in the arts?” I think Danny Gregory seems to have given us the answer. Real, formal art education involves more than just drawing, musical instruments, dancing, and so on, which people can quickly think of. The real purpose of art education is to foster the development of children’s creativity. Teachers will not provide children with a “rigid template” but provide children with an environment where they can develop their creativity and solve problems through free play and imagination.

Like the childhood songs that people listen to when they are young, do parents and teachers only teach their children songs to sing? The song “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” brings children unlimited imagination about the sky, inspires them to think and explore; the Turkish childhood song “Dandini dandini dastana” helps children there to understand the cultural customs and religious beliefs of the society in which they live; the Chinse childhood song “Song of Newsboy” tells children about the sufferings of old social life and the expectation of a better life in the future; the Japanese childhood song “Rabbit and Turtle” tells children to do things down-to-earth and don’t give up halfway. The meaning of art education has far surpassed the word “art” itself; like the author always trying to tell us, creativity in art education is significant to children.

 

Work Cited

Gregory, Danny. “Let’s Get Rid of Art Education in Schools ” Kappanonline.org, 10 Dec. 2020, kappanonline.org/gregory-lets-get-rid-art-education-schools/#tab-0.

 

 

PPT