Being Attentive at Lincoln Center Institute
On July 17, 1982, a short notice appeared
in the "Briefs on the Arts" column of The New York Times announcing
two grants to the Lincoln Center Institute, enabling the replication of the
Institute's program in four other cities, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and
the Albany-Saratoga area. Already in operation, the news report stated, were
operations in Nashville, Bowling Green and Toledo, Ohio, and Houston. Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and Tulsa were said to have programs in the
planning stage. The unique idea behind the Lincoln Center Institute has taken
root and is thriving.
The Lincoln Center Institute was created by the Center in
1975. Its purpose is to help schools provide young people greater opportunities
to encounter the world of the arts and to discover the aesthetic experience
this world has to offer. "Frequently viewed only as vocation or avocation,"
the Institute's descriptive brochure states, "the arts all too often
tend to be isolated from the mainstream of education or set aside as an area
of concern only to the demonstrably talented. The Institute believes that
the capacity through which people create and perceive beauty is one which
young people need to explore in their formative years and that understanding
and valuing this capacity in themselves and in others is a critical part
of learning and, in fact, of life itself. It is the Institute's belief that
aesthetic education, as it has come to be called, should be part of the school
life of every child and that artists and teachers are natural allies in bringing
this about. This alliance of artist and teacher is at the heart of the concept
of the Institute."
When the program began, the enrollment included 45 teachers
from 11 schools. In 1982, there were over 400 teachers from 163 schools of
32 school districts in the New York Metropolitan area. Teachers enroll in
all-day, three-week summer sessions held in the Juilliard building at Lincoln
Center. Enrollment in a summer session is the entry to participation in the
Institute's program. During this training period, teachers work with "teaching-artists"
who specialize in theatre, music, and the dance. As a second step, drawing
upon what they have learned in summer sessions, teams of teachers in each
participating school work in partnership with the Institute's teaching-artists
in planning programs for their students during the school year. In the final
step, the teachers, working on their own and with individual teaching artists,
introduce aesthetic education units of study to their students.
Institute Director Mark Schubart spoke of its musical aims:
"We decided that what is important is not so much the activity of teaching
kids about Beethoven, but teaching them how to listen, so that they can make
their own decisions about what to listen to." The many performances
offered by the various Lincoln Center constituents could be methodically
reinforced in the regular classroom curriculum if regular classroom teachers
could be involved. "The purpose of this program," Schubart wrote,
"is not to train teachers, but to reach kids more effectively. And our
relationships are not with individual teachers, but with schools and school
systems. Each school sends us a team of four, five or even ten teachers,
who go through the course and then work together developing a total program
for the students in their school. We've found that most of the teachers who
attend the program are English, social studies, math and language teachers,
as well as those on the elementary level called 'teachers of self-contained
classrooms.' Only five to ten per cent of our teachers are music and art
teachers." Schubart intuited that if teachers could have a glimpse of
artistic experiences themselves, their understanding of the arts would be
sufficiently enhanced to make communication of these experiences to their
students easier, even if the teachers themselves were not experts in each
artistic field.
Also working with the teachers is Dr. Maxine Greene, Professor
of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, whom
Schubart refers to as "our resident philosopher." Dr. Greene clearly
takes the problem-solving approach, urging the teachers to notice in particular
ways, to set the ordinary and the everyday at a distance, to dare to enter
into illusioned worlds. "It seems so evident that we, as teachers, must
keep our questions open the thronging questions about particular art forms
and about art itself and about the place of art in human life. Only if we
do so are we likely to become clear with respect to what we hope to bring
about in our classrooms, whether we call it enhanced awareness, heightened
understanding, enlightenment, or a new mode of literacy ... the arts must
be understood to be modes of sense-making. Perceiving as we have learned
to do, using the symbol systems (or the languages) of the various arts, we
extend our knowledge of the world."
In assessing the Institute's effects, Mark Schubart says:
"You can measure in terms of whether kids go to concerts, whether they
like it, whether they read books, and what they say. But ultimately there's
no real measuring stick that can be used. And the important thing
is that we're teaching a process, not an event. The teachers in the project
who have come back year after year tell me that it was really only after
the third year that they felt confident that they were being effective in
the classroom. It takes a long time, and a lot of perseverance."
And back they come. Schubart points to a 60% rate of return,
with some teachers having completed their fifth summer session. Some of them
write about their experiences. Rita Solow, Supervisor, P.S. 85, District
10, Bronx: "Now, to the most important element of all, the children's
reactions. On all levels, they have been fantastic responsive, open letting
us, the adults, see their almost limitless potential to perceive, to understand,
to move, to communicate, to go from the literal to the abstract, to interpret
feelings and thoughts, to express themselves." Renee Darvin, Assistant
Principal, Beach Channel High School: "We were tentative students the
first year and we brought our insights back to our school in similar manner
as unsure of our youngsters' responses as we were of our own reactions.
The second time around brought new understandings and confidences: we graphed
a music phrase and moved our bodies through the space of a dance with assurance
(and in half the time). Working with new teaching-artists refined what we
had already experienced and added new dimensions to our budding aesthetic
literacy, and we came back to our school with a renewed sense of direction."
About half the funding for the program comes from the schools,
the other half coming from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Institute's own endowment fund, and various private and corporate donations.
A spokesman for New York State Commissioner of Education Gordon M. Ambach
recently stated: "In our view, music and the other arts are equally
as important as the basics reading, writing, math in the overall development
of the child. And where a school cannot afford a separate arts program, the
Lincoln Center approach this is, having teachers of other subjects incorporate
a sensitivity for the arts in their courses is certainly a realistic and
valid approach." The grants announced in The Times must be interpreted
as a sign of encouragement and support, both fiscal and philosophical.
Dr. Maxine Greene: "There can be no adequate summing
up of a Lincoln Center Summer Institute. There can be no packaging of what
has been experienced here, what has been learned. Indeed, the very notion
of packaging like the notion of a finished product is antithetical to all
that aesthetic education has come to mean. We have discovered that, the more
informed our encounters with the arts become, the more perspectives open
for us on the works themselves and on our lives. We have not only seen more
and heard more as the days have gone by; we have (almost without realizing
it) discerned new shapes, new rhythms, new significances in the ordinary
world. And, if we are attentive, if we are lucky, all of this will continue
on."
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