Teaching with Art in Mind

In this chapter, we introduce and lay down the basic principles on which the whole book is based. We make claims that not only bring the arts into the mainstream curriculum, but seek to place them right at the centre of classroom practice, in the process dismantling the myth of the 'crowded curriculum' in primary schooling. To validate these claims in terms of classroom practice, we examine the relationship between the arts and the school classroom - what gets taught there, why and how: in other words the pedagogy. We start by distinguishing the characteristics of the school classroom, its timetabled activities and its occupants, along the way making distinctions between today's creative classroom, yesterday's orthodox classroom, and tomorrow's potential classroom.