Junior Sydney Morin signed up for ceramics unaware she would be asked to pay a 30 dollar fee to cover the class’ materials. “I think it would be fair, if it mentioned in the description when you’re signing up for a class, that you have to pay a fee,” Morin said. The course catalogue describes the main focus of each class, “to have students develop an aesthetic awareness of three-dimensional artwork and explore their connection with the clay,” for example, and the varying approaches that the students will practice, “to introduce students to clay techniques in hand-building and wheel throwing;” but it fails to mention the fees that student are expected to pay. Yet despite student’s uncertainty about the desired fees, students and teachers are in agreement that the array of material required to run studio classes just doesn’t mesh with the tight budget, leading the art department to label these fees as necessary evils. Without student fees, the art department has less than $6 to spend on every student enrolled in an art course, which is insufficient to pay for enough clay, paint brushes, paints, photo chemicals and the various other materials needed to run studios, fine arts and music Department Head Jeff Knoedler said. Because of this low funding, the department raises fees to continue running the programs Knoedler feels “the students deserve.” “I know that there’s not a lot of money to go around … I think the next year or two are going to be really tight. I think all departments are going to suffer, but I especially think that the art department is going to feel the squeeze,” Knoedler said. Morin understands that the budget is tight, but said the administration has a responsibility to fund elective courses. “30 dollars is a large sum of money, but I think the [school also has] to ask itself, ‘Why buy clay when you need to buy paper?” Ideally, Knoedler and Art teacher Megan Crist say the school should be able to provide both. “My approach is that, because this is a public high school, it’s really important that art is accessible to everybody,” Crist said. “I would hope that my fees for my class would not be a barrier, that it would be an approachable amount of money,” Crist said. “Of course if any student has difficulty paying, they’re not required to pay. If they feel that they can contribute just five dollars then that’s fine. If they can’t contribute anything, then that’s fine too.” Although the department minimizes fees by allowing every teacher to determine his or her own fee based on the cost of the specific material, Knoedler wishes they could be eliminated altogether. “Philosophically, I believe that we should be providing a free education to everybody, and I think that studio fees for art classes are unfortunate, but in practice are necessary,” Knoedler said. For now, this extra funding is necessary to provide students with classes that enrich them in ways that core classes cannot, according to Crist. “When you’re in an art class, you’re more invested. When you’re trying to find ‘x’ in algebra, you’re not really invested in what ‘x’ is. When you’re working on a project [in art], it’s right in front of you; it’s your design, your concept.” Studies done by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland at Project Zero, an arts education program at Harvard, produced the book, “Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education,” in 2000 that showed the benefits of a fine arts education. “Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments,” Winner and Hetland wrote. At a Boston Arts Academy design class, taught by Mickey Telemaque, students “look through a viewfinder with one eye, so that they lose their depth perception and see the world as if it were a two-dimensional picture with flat lines, shapes and colors.” The New York Times describes this exercise as one that “enables students to grasp alternative ways of seeing.”
James S. Catterall, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles proved in his studies that a fine arts education, and its ability to allow students to practice creative thinking, enhances students’ performances in academic classes.
Sophomore Simone Groper views art as an essential part of South’s class offerings, and its culture. “There’s a whole photo group. All of the people who congregate [in the photo room] take the class. People love what they do … they have a passion for art,” Groper said. Sophomore Victoria Bryan is one of these photo students and values the time spent in the class. “I think we need electives at South because it gives us a break. We would have so many directed studies [without electives] and it would be horrible,” Bryan said. Students in photo classes are required to pay a studio fee, as well as supply a camera, film and other necessities. Bryan said that while these costs are somewhat burdensome, the overall benefit she gains from the class far outweighs the fee. “The art electives are a creative outlet for us during the school day. It lets us use the artistic part of our mind,” Groper said. “It’s a lot of work but it’s worth it if you really like it.” Bryan agrees that the electives “take a lot of extra money to run.” “But I don’t really think anything of it.”
