Visual Arts' vocal defense of Music, dance, Film, Photography, DigitalMedia & Drama
by Josephine Cutaran Gibbs on Monday, November 15, 2010 at 10:11am
The Age Newspaper
Dear Editor,
Mr Gill’s article was misleading and an unfair to all art teachers in Australia. Contrary to Mr Gill’s claims, the strong Arts lobby (the visual arts is the most vocal defenders of the arts, usually impugned in schools) defends the autonomy of each one of these disciplines made ramshackle by the national arts curriculum (NAC). I am about to graduate next year but my visual arts teaching specialization will be obsolete if this NAC is imposed.
Mr Gill’s premises were based on the ignorance of the facts. Secondary schools specialise in an art form because parents whose children gifted in a particular discipline will choose a school that have the resources to sustain and nurture those talents. The NAC will destroy the current system and put a strain on the schools’ already limited resources. Expensive instruments and concert tickets cannot be purchased out of thin air while poor students can create visual art with dirt and stones. The arts or schools are not all equal and ought not to be bundled into one neat package based on the whims of gliterratis, not for the needs of teachers and students.
I trained in schools recently and there are facts unknown to Mr Gill. Fact 1, schools cannot employ staff for subjects not on demand. Fact 2, music is costly. Fact 3, as a financially disadvantaged parent, whose unemployment caused by NAC, being coerced by same to buy expensive instruments or I’ll be labelled a bad parent is unjust. Instead of employing more music teachers, schools will just use visual art teachers to teach music after being taught to read music. Can the love of music be taught? Inversely, music teachers will teach visual art, with little or no background training in the theoretically rigorous visual arts history and criticism. This will be disastrous for the quality of visual art produced in this country.
Please remember an economic study done some years ago, which revealed the arts, design and its affiliated creative industries in film, media and advertising are Australia's highest export earner and translate to billions of dollars annually. Mr Gill is blind to this fact and deaf to the passions for which many creative people have devoted their lives, the result of the strong art education (in which the visual arts is the strongest defender and advocate) in Australia. Have you ever wondered why we have many celebrity high achievers per capita to the ratio of our small population? Behind these highly visible art, design, media, marketing and media exports, numerous entertainment, support administration staff and other related events hospitality jobs are threatened just as badly, by this hastily botched national arts curriculum in the long term.
I implore you to listen to the urgent and justified side of this important debate, dear editor. The visual arts lobby is not the 'bad ogres' Mr Gill painted us in his fantasy picture. The visual arts lobby is fighting in a struggle against the structure of the national curriculum, which is undermining the thriving and healthy arts education as it now currently stands. I am also willing to fight and add my voice to defend my passion for art & design, the future livelihood and prosperity of all Australians, whose talents and source of sanity and boundless wealth will be forsaken. We will have a dumb loser, not a smart Australia. Please hear my plea.
Sincerely Yours,
Josephine Cutaran Gibbs
