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TOWER
|
Winter 2016
S
omeone has always taught some form of art at
Kutztown University. As she gazed out her office
window and into the past, Dr.Marilyn Stewart, a
professor of art education at KU, noted that in the very
beginning, when students were being prepared to teach in
one-room schoolhouses, they were taught mostly drawing
and calligraphy.
“The assumption was that drawing was something that
teachers needed to do. Drawing was about observing the
world carefully so as to know the world,” Stewart said.
At some point in the history of the university, someone
decided to begin preparing teachers to specifically teach
art. One of the first people involved in this endeavor was
Henry Sharadin, who was originally the director of art at
Reading High School (RHS). He received his teaching
certificate from Keystone State Normal School before
studying in Paris and Rome. He became the director of art
at KU in 1907, and occupied this position when the state
gave the college permission to have a Bachelor of Science
degree in public school art.
“The type of art that would be taught was the art of the
time,” Stewart explains of the regularly evolving art educa-
tion program.
Sharadin was very interested in drawing and painting
but he was also engaged in the less prominent art of china
painting, and taught classes on the subject.Teaching this
art style in this time period was consistent with the idea
of teaching what is current, something KU continues to
promote. Eventually, the program expanded to include
courses in painting, sculpture and crafts, including ceram-
ics, metals and fibers.
A few years prior to his retirement in 1939, Sharadin
recruited Italo de Francesco, another director of art at
RHS. De Francesco, who was born in Italy and studied
at various prominent universities, became director of art
education at KU and would later serve as president of
Kutztown State College from 1959–1967.
Stewart described the program under de Francesco’s
leadership as being “very studio-based, with an idea of
unleashing the creativity of young people.This, along with
the concept of encouraging students to go out and observe
the world, were the values of the time.”
De Francesco, though, also saw a need to communicate
with the wider art education
world.Hewas in contact with
heads of art education on the east coast, and they came
together under the KU-housed Eastern Arts Association
which gathered on a regular basis to share ideas and programs.
At this time, KU was evolving as it changed from Kutz-
town State Teacher’s College to Kutztown State College,
and the world of art education was experiencing changes
T H E H I S TO RY O F
Art Education
BY DALE BOND ’14 M’16