"Teaching the Artist Within Every Student"

At the 2011 Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Conference, Joanne Haroutonian gave a lecture about the ability for students to be artistic. She outlined what she called the "Artistic Ways of Knowing," which describes the artistic process of learning, enhances students' sensory awareness of the artistic process, and explains artistic awareness to people outside of academia. She highlights five basic concepts: 1) Perceptual Awareness and Discrimination, 2) Metaperception, 3) Creative Interpretation, 4) Dynamic of Performance, and 5) Critiquing. She then goes on to explain each of the five concepts in greater detail, and shows how teachers can incorporate each into their lessons. She concluded her lecture with a quote from Picasso: "A painter transforms the sun into a yellow spot. An artist transforms a yellow spot into the sun."

With the popular "An A is not enough" video (also embedded below) being circulated this week, it is clear that the arts demand perfection, and that a 90% clearly isn't enough when it comes to performance. The conductor suggests that other subjects "teach" students to become complacent, and that a "B" is good enough; in fact, "above average". Yet, if each member of an ensemble only performed 8 out of 10 notes in a concert correctly, the result would be horrible. Music and art challenge our students to strive for the best they can be, and teach them life lessons that the regular academic subjects cannot.

We need to really fight to keep music and art programs in our schools, for it gives students an outlet to their imagination and expression, and better prepares them for the real world. Real artistic expression is something that has to be fostered and developed over time, yet when a student realizes the inner potential that they have, the sky becomes the limit.