Pen portrait - Cameron

This is a rather difficult task and one that does not necessarily reflect knowledgably on a particular school because I changed schools so frequently during both primary and high school that I could not obtain a proper understanding of a dominant philosophy.
My own experience of arts in school seems to follow quite closely to O’Toole’s Art, Creativity and Motivation, where the arts was simply stuck on to other lessons if they were used at all.  In Physical Education in both high school and primary school dance was taught for only a few weeks of the year, mostly by male staff.  It felt as though it was looked on with as much dread by the teachers as it was by the students.
Art, particularly at high school, was a class in its own right, the same as MDT  and in these we copied what someone else had made or was controlled by the teacher.  In both of these classes, where perhaps there should have been a scope for creativity, the teacher viewed the lessons and activities as things which could be ticked off a list.   In these classes things were made rather than created.
A school’s dominant philosophy in my experience was about giving students the skills to join a specific workforce or to boost basic literacy and numeracy skills and the arts were viewed as completely separate classes without a terrifically high priority.