The art department is philosophically committed to the belief that
involvement in one or more of the expressive arts is a broadly
humanizing and enriching experience; that such experience pro-
vides a necessary balance to a present educational bias favouring
rational and linguistic modes of thought, the physical and social
sciences; that all children and young people should be involved in
the arts throughout school and that all future teachers of whatever
subject area should be encouraged to take expressive arts sub-
jects as part of their preparation for teaching.

A most important principle in this department has been that art
teachers must first of all be artists. In studio classes only
incidental reference is made to classroom technique or methods
of teaching. An important question inevitably arises; if one is
preparing artists to become art teachers of the young, does this
call for the same or a somewhat different approach than the pre-
paration of artists for a lifetime of personal artistic production.

A most significant pattern of teacher education is emerging in the
art department. The prospective art teacher is considered to be
someone who will probably devote much of his life to teaching.
To be a sensitive art teacher, however, he must develop the
sensitivities and disciplines of the artist, He must become an
artist in the same sense a child is an artist, or an Eskimo carver,
but in terms true to his own uniqueness, In the first years, there
will be intensive demands made on the student to acquire skills
and new visions, but as he moves into more senior years, he
will be given more freedom and more responsibility to build the
kind of program most suited to him. A faculty sponsor and
committee will give him constant help. From the beginning it is
very important for the student te develop self-reliance, self-
discipline, and breadth of thinking.

eel —ESE—E a

eee

Report from
Margaret Lewis, Chairman of the C,A.C,
Crafts Committee.

To obtain more and better craft courses in this area is the aim of

so working committee of the Vancouver Community Arts Council,