Linking Colleges of Education and Colleges of Art

Abstract

Colleges of Education and Colleges of Art, are they friends or relations? The only answer to the question must be that they are relations, but relations who seldom see each other and hardly ever write. To further underline the seeming lack of interest by art colleges in education I can quote from personal experience. In my last post I was on the staff of a college of art with its own large department of education. This teacher training department was isolated several miles from the other departments of the college. There was virtually no contact between this department and the Dip AD departments of the parent college and I doubt if most Dip AD students or staff even knew of its existence.

On the face of it Art Colleges and Art Departments of Colleges of Education seem to have a number of things in common. Why is it then that there is so little contact between them? Looking at it purely from the art college point of view there are two basic reasons. First, most art colleges do not regard themselves as having anything to do with training teachers and they often regard students who are interested in teaching as failures. Second, art colleges have been so preoccupied with their own problems in the last ten years that they have become cut off from developments in related educational establishments. In fact art colleges themselves have become divided into Diploma and non Diploma Colleges and more recently Polytechnic and non Polytechnic Diploma Colleges. Any contacts between these various divisions is generally slight.