Research Survey Of U.s. Elementary School General Art Education Practice

American Art Education in this thesis is the general elementary art education for all the students. Art and art education play an absolutely necessary role both in the human history and our ordinary daily life. Art education is beneficial not only to the students but also to the whole society. It provides special curriculum value in the aspect of creating beauty, appreciating beauty, emotion, aptitude, culture and application. In China, the art education in middle schools and elementary schools has been already a part of the basic education and quality-oriented education and there are many related rules of law and policies constituted by the government. But in fact, it hasn't been regarded as important as it should be thus it is still a very weak part in the whole educational system. "It does great good to education through learning from the others". The study took the status quo of American basic education and the history of the art education reform as well as the current situation of art education as the background, and chose the public elementary schools in Manhattan, Kansas to be the object of the observation in which the makeup of students, the ratio between the teachers and students, the setup of the art curricula and organization of art classes take on the characteristics and examples of American basic education and art education.The domestic studies about art education mostly focused on the national policies and analyzed it from the theoretical point of view, which is lack of the field trip to the schools and art classes, so they seldom discussed the real practice of the theories and distinct characteristics. Furthermore, the former studies paid great attention to the superiorities of the American art education, but ignored the problems existed in the process of its development. The author collected much materials and statistics from the local and official websites, and in the meantime, joined in the art classes by auditing, participating in the teaching, students' questionnaires and teachers' interview. The research shows many characteristics of the American elementary art education practice as follows: 1^st, pay attention to both the inner value and exterior function of art ; 2^nd, art learning focuses on humanism and students' character; 3^rd, proper academic and evaluation standard; 4^th, emphasize on the individuation of learning and education for all the students; 5^th, the students' principal part in education is demonstrated in the cultural environment of art classroom; 6^th, respect the cultures from the other parts of the country and the world; 7^th, attach importance to the modern technology and educational media; 8^th, stress on the reasonable relationships among all the subjects and the art curriculum is oriented to integration and diversity. These characteristics root in the compatible historical tradition and pioneer spirit, educational ideas of pragmatism, the combination of scientific thoughts and humanism, and the school running principles commonly accepted by the schools. However, it presents some problems such as the great differences of the student's interest toward the music and art, the impulsion of vision infotainment technology, the loss resulted from the students' self-determination and freedom, and the insufficient support and attention from the government and school administration for which the art education doesn't carry out well and completely. An analysis on this study is certain enlightenment to our art education research and practice. The end of the thesis is to offer spaces and suggestions for further studies.