Page 136 - Constructing Craft

programme in Feilding, directed by Sam Williams, a stage designer and teacher

(untrained) and later Acting Supervisor of Art and Craft in the Department of
Education, came about because of the closure of schools in and around Palmerston

North in 1942. Williams set up an art and craft centre in a community hall and
scoured the district for materials to use for pottery, spinning, weaving, and puppet-

making. Beeby noted:

Williams, with his experience in the theatre, was skilled in
teaching the making of puppets, and the final days of the five-
week emergency [generated by the attack on Pearl Harbour]
saw puppet shows and art and crafts exhibitions open to
parents and the general public. Sam Williams’ introduction of
drama, like Smithells’ stress on the aesthetics of physical
education, gave emotional depth to his teaching. Both gave
their subjects intellectual respectability and both had a direct
appeal to the public, who could see for themselves where it all
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fitted into the school programme.

These developments however seemed somewhat tentative. Policy remained largely

undeveloped until after the Second World War when a debate within education

circles took place over whether ‘education through art’ or ‘education for art’ should
be the main emphasis in schools. Those who favoured the first called on handcrafts

to achieve their goals, while ‘art’ as a separate subject, and with less room for craft,
was the foundation of the latter. The former became readily accepted in primary

schools while ‘education for art’ continued to dominate in secondary schools. The
conflict between the different approaches to the teaching of art and craft was a

manifestation of the way that symbolic violence was employed within schools.

‘Education for art’ emphasised the primacy of the cultural and symbolic capital that
art possessed. Craft, on the other hand, was merely a tool to be used to achieve

other aims.

Doreen Blumhardt

The role of craft within schools infiltrated the way that teachers were trained and

affected the degree to which different sectors of the education system were
prepared to embrace the new ideas. Beeby identified Doreen Blumhardt, a weaver

and a graduate of the art specialist training course at Christchurch Teachers’
College, as the most suitable person to trial the system in the primary sector. She

tested the ‘education through art’ concept in a number of primary schools in the Hutt

Constructing Craft