SchoolArts - August/September 2008

All Levels

Human Common _d_aa_rlit_ties _an

Kaye Passmore

It’s a usual day in an American high school. Students spend an hour in a classroom, a bell rings, and the whole school plays fruit basket turnover with everyone moving to another room for another hour until a bell rings and it is all repeated. After memorizing a myriad of facts, students move to another set of courses, and eventually leave school, diploma in hand and a head full of facts. But can they use their knowledge in real-life situations? Can they creatively con- nect knowledge from many courses?

educated students should do more than master isolated facts. They should understand “the connectedness of things.”

Although Boyer celebrated students’ individual differences and the uniqueness of cultures, he knew that humans share fundamental char-

acteristics. He
Boyer considered art to suggested organiz-
be the special language ing curriculum
of children because, even ^thematicallybefore they can speak, they ^around ^eight ^com-_monalities _sharedintuitively respond to color, _by _people _aroundrhythm, and music. the world. By
integrating these
themes, students can understand how
knowledge from each discipline actu-
ally applies to their lives. By studying
other cultures as well as their own,
students learn to value not only their
uniqueness, but also that of others.
Shortly before Boyer’s death in
1995, the Carnegie Foundation pub-
lished The Basic School: A Commu-
nity For Learning, which presented

a model for elementary education. In the book, Boyer recommends that elementary schools become learning communities with a curriculum incorporating eight core human communalities: shared life cycle, symbols, aesthetic response, sense of time and space, group membership, production and consumption, nature awareness, and values and beliefs. These shared characteristics could also become a framework for secondary and higher education. Because Boyer considered the arts to be an essential language, he thought art should be integral to all lessons.

Ernest Boyer Our fragmented education process dismayed eminent educator Ernest Boyer. Boyer advocated building connections in learning by organizing the disciplines differently to integrate subject matter. He believed that well-

Boyer’s Human Commonalities 1. Life Cycle: All humans share a life cycle of birth, growth, and death. Students should learn about their bodies and how to take care of them to maintain health and wellness.