Six into One: The Contradictory Art School Curriculum and How It Came About.

This paper seeks to understand the present day postsecondary art curriculum through analysing its history. It found that there have been six distinctive curricula and these are described; they are: Apprentice, Academic, Formalist, Expressive, Conceptual and Professional. As a new curriculum has been introduced, instead of displacing a previous curriculum, it has co-existed with some or even most of what was already there. Most of the curriculum changes have taken place in the last 60 years. During this time there has been a massive expansion in the education of artists and at the same time art schools accommodated first modernism and then post-Duchampian aesthetics. A conclusion is that this has made for a very crowded curriculum. Moreover, despite there being an ever increasing choice of things a student might learn, there is nothing at all which all students have to learn. It can be problematic that one part of the curriculum is in contraction to another part. However it is the lack of a core which raises the greater difficulty, not least because it is impossible to implement a common assessment regime if students are learning different things.