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ERIC Number: EJ740509
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2005
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-3541
EISSN: N/A
Biscuits and Crumbs: Art Education after Brown v. Board of Education
Quinn, Therese
Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education, v46 n2 p186-190 Win 2005
The question at the heart of this reflection on the Brown v. Board of Education decision is one proposed by the author's former professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, William Watkins. He asked graduate students to keep their attention on "Who's got the biscuits?" And, by extension, to remember to ask, "Who's getting the crumbs?" It may have seemed clearer at the time of the decision how to answer questions about biscuits and crumbs in relation to education--all black and brown children attended schools that were only shadows of the schools that many, but not all, white children attended, when children of color were allowed to participate in public education at all. Many white students were getting the biscuits, and most children of color were getting the crumbs, in education as in other areas of social life. School desegregation seemed like one potent solution to the larger problem of systemic and pervasive racial inequality. Art education is linked to the issue of educational segregation through the problem of the biscuits--of who does and does not have them. The solution always has something to do with racism, but it also has something to do with the lower wages women earn, fights over "gay marriage" and school clubs for queer kids, the prevalence of Christmas trees and Easter bunnies in public school art classrooms, and with all the other ways some people decide and emphasize that somehow other people are not quite like themselves and do not deserve lives quite as rich and supported as the lives they and their children deserve, starting with school, starting with art. What happens to art education is just one indicator of the larger problem of full access in public education.
National Art Education Association, 1916 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191. Tel: 703-860-8000; Fax: 703-860-2960; Web site: http://www.NAEA-Reston.org.
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: Brown v Board of Education
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A