The Teaching of Art Related to the Home: Suggestions for content and method in related art instruction in the vocational program in home economicsFallgatter, Florence
General
The Teaching of Art Related to the Home: Suggestions for content and method in related art instruction in the vocational program in home economics
Fallgatter, Florence
Art -- Study and teaching; Home economics -- Study and teaching
Not until all girls in the public schools can have their inherent love
for beauty rightly stimulated and directed may we look forward to a
nation of homes tastily furnished and artistically satisfying or of
people who express real genuineness and sincerity in their living.
With the inception of the vocational program in home making through the
passage of the Smith-Hughes Act by Congress in 1917, art was recognized
as one of the essential related subjects. Thus, in the majority of the
schools that have organized vocational homemaking programs, art has
been included as a part of these programs and an effort has been made
to apply the principles of art to those problems in everyday life in
which beauty and utility are factors. The aim has been to develop in
girls not only an understanding of these principles but also an ability
to use them intelligently in solving many of their daily problems.
Therefore the teaching of art in home economics courses is primarily
concerned with problems of selection and arrangement. The girl as a
prospective home maker needs to know not so much how to make a pattern
but how to choose one well; not how to make a textile print but how
to select and use it; not how to design furniture but how to select
and arrange it; not how to make pottery but how to select the right
vase or bowl for flowers. At the same time, teachers of related
art in vocational schools have endeavored to show that true art is
founded upon comfort, utility, convenience, and true expression of
personalities as well as upon the most perfect application of art
principles. Considerable emphasis has been given, therefore, to a
consideration and utilization of those material things that afford
opportunity for self-expression. The importance of such self-expression
is stressed in the following words by Clark B. Kelsey:[3]
The home expresses the personalities of its occupants and reveals
far more than many realize. It stamps them as possessing taste or
lacking it. Thinking men and women want backgrounds that interpret
them to their friends, and they prefer that the interpretation
be worthy. They also want them correct for their own personal
satisfaction.
In art courses that are related to the home, an attempt is made to
build up in girls ideals of finding and creating beauty in their
surroundings and to bring them to the point where they can recognize
fitness and purpose and see beauty and derive pleasure from inexpensive
and unadorned things that are available to all homes.
Mr. Cyrus W. Knouff[4] has well expressed something of the importance
of such a practical type of art training as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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