Basically, the basic
basics are the most basic. Basically, basic is an adjective, but as I
just demonstrated, it can be used as an adverb, adjective, and noun.
It can be the direct or the indirect object of a sentence, as well as
the subject and the predicate. Is it any wonder we have trouble when
we move from grammar to definition? The first definition for the word
"basic" in my dictionary is "fundamental: serving as the base or
starting points." Which is more basic: thought or recitation? Action
or echo? Experience or vicarious-ness? We have permitted the
vociferous advocates of "back to basics" to substitute symbolic
representations for reality. Deciphering the symbols, they say, is
basic: verbalizing what is in print is reading, deriving a correct
sum is arithmetic, and putting down on paper a statement that
contains a subject and a predicate with no misspelled words is
writing. That's like saying that the space under the University of
Chicago stadium was the key to the secret of nu-clear fission.
Writing, whether in words or numbers, is a way of preserving a
thought, an idea, an experience, or an emotion to be recaptured or
resurrected by a reader. If reading is merely recitation, then we can
all read dozens of languages, and owning a hammer and saw makes us
automatically carpenters. But the symbolists are in the saddle. They
have legitimatized such pairs of labels as basic frills:
academic/non-academic, required/elective, and, most damning,
cur-ricular/extracurricular Despite John Dewey's consummate dictum
that "education is experience," too many of us have a frilly
mentality. Abstract has become more valuable than absolute. To do, to
experience, or to create is not considered as basic as to passively
decode. Obviously, schools must teach children to decipher, but when
deciphering is considered basic and doing becomes a disposable frill,
there is a deficiency in our definition. That is where the arts come
into the argument. If we are going back to the basics, we are going
to have to elevate the arts., Because the arts are basic. Before we
had reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, even before we had words, we
had art. Our primitive forefathers wailed to each other, and both
language and music were born. By movement, mimic, and example, they
shared the lore of the hunt, and dance and physical education were
sired. To communicate their triumphs and their escapes, they painted
on the walls of the cave. To tell how many, they drew or scratched
one drawing for one animal. As basic as basic can be. Yet, so far as
we know, each of us is born with-out a cultural reservoir. All that
we know, except for a few primitive instincts, is passed on to us in
a process we call education. How can reading about clashing colors
teach us as much as smearing magenta over green? Can you describe
"do-si-do" and elicit the giggles that come when preadolescents bump
bottoms? Can a young girl run home and tell her parents about the
texture of a Van Gogh with the same enthusiasm and pride she radiates
when she shows them her picture of a tree — always complete with
apples? Art is doing, moving, feeling, creating. It enables a child
in seven-league boots to leap from the cave to the condominium.
Watching a child's development through art is watching the entire
evolution of mankind be recreated. Mathematics has been called the
international language, but the arts are the universal bridge. The
arts span cultures, time, disciplines, and ages. Do you know anyone
who hates music? People have widely varying tastes, but I know no one
who doesn't like some kind of music. Give a person a little space and
soon it is decorated with a picture, an artifact, or a
representation. While we may not all dance, who among us has not
engaged in rhythmic clapping and toe-tapping? That's basic! The
back-to-basic movement does not threaten the endurance of the arts.
It only threatens to produce a generation of culturally deprived and
artistically illiterate children. Some will compensate on their own
for our neglect, but others will be left at a primitive stage of
development. Perhaps we should recognize that when history remembers
its arts: the harsh arts of politics, the cruel arts of warfare, or
the uplifting arts of sight and sound, the moving arts of language
and expression. Are the eighties to be remembered as the Dark Ages of
American education?