California Superintendent Torlakson Declares Support for Media Arts Standards

On August 26, 2016, I received a public communication from California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, that he is committed to "working with the legislature next year to ensure the explicit inclusion of Media Arts in California’s visual and performing arts content standards.” And just now, August 27, this was updated to state that that message “has been conveyed to the Governor (Jerry Brown).”

This is a momentous and historic occasion in the development of Media Arts Education, and will be celebrated by the many people that have long been working for and cheering on this movement, both in California and nationally. This will lead to the galvanizing of our diverse community of practice and support, the development of state standards, and the eventual implementation of the discipline. We are grateful to the Superintendent for his forward-looking vision and dependable character for this assurance. We have much work to do as this is actually a new beginning, but at least now we have moved into a phase where that work will have lasting results. And this work will have national, and even international significance, given California’s leading 21st C media centered culture, and our massive $300 billion Creative Economy, as a significant part of the 6th largest economy on the planet.

This provides substantially greater endorsement and momentum for Media Arts Education than it has experienced since it was initiated in Minnesota in the early 90s. For over 10 years, California has been slowly and haltingly making progress towards this point. In LAUSD, we had been able to achieve multiple concrete milestones of its officiation, including a specific Media Arts Adviser position, the implementation of multiple Demonstration Media Arts Classrooms for regional support and teacher-led development, and an illustrious Advisory Committee under former Director, Richard Burrows. And then the adoption of K12 Media Arts Standards within the Instructional Division, a Board resolution, numerous higher-ed and industry partnerships, its personnel categorization in HR, and the de facto declaration of its establishment of our other former Director, Robin Lithgow.

Yet those points of progress were met with severe setbacks. Primarily due to the economic devastation of the Great Recession of the late 2000s, which caused the division to be completely cut and all of its programs decimated, media arts lost its momentum as a consolidated and focused project. Current LAUSD Arts Ed Director Rory Pullens has been making great efforts to support media arts schools with industry partners and specific professional development for film teachers. But its designation and representation has been split between Theatre (film) and Visual Arts (media), which diffuses its development.

With the National Core Arts Standards finally published in 2014, and since then in the process of adoption by many states across the U.S., there is breathtaking progress for media arts at a much larger scale. In California, there have now been two bills that passed through Congress in order to revise our old VAPA standards. The first bill, SB 975, which occurred in 2015, had stated that California’s VAPA standards revision would refer to the entire National Core Arts Standards document, implicitly including “Media Arts”. Near final passage, it was suddenly gutted to be used as an emergency vehicle for changes to the High School Exit Exam.

I had glanced at the second bill, AB 2862, early in the process when I first heard about it this past July.  I assumed then that it was the same text and watched over time as it progressed through both houses, unopposed. Just two weeks ago though, I was alerted to the fact that “Media Arts” was actually missing from the wording, just before the bill began to pass both houses. When I read it more carefully, I realized that the NCAS arts disciplines were discretely listed as Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, all except for “Media Arts” . It appeared that someone had gone to the trouble to list these disciplines with the deliberate intent to void one entire discipline.

It is currently unclear how this came to be as no reasoning was in the bill, nor in the analysis. And I am not now interested in investigating it. There were weak reasons shared by the writers, that “there was no credential” and that “media arts wasn’t in the original framework”. Seriously? But the responsible parties had violated the intent of the bill itself in its description of a validating, public, inclusive and transparent process in using the NCAS as the reference in developing state standards. These few people, with no stated expertise, had essentially pre-determined the future of arts education in California prior to opening it up for public discussion.

With that flaw, I could question the bill’s validity, and rally the media arts education community in California that we have been building for this decade. But the bill had already rapidly and unanimously passed through both houses. Once again, it seemed media arts would not happen in California. Apparently, the community's voice was effective. I was just beginning to stage a next, desperate phase of advocacy, when I received Torlakson’s communication. Suddenly, what had been another detrimental hit, became an opportunity to forge a community and ascertain the discipline. Torlakson’s bold endorsement not only corrected the bill's error in allowing media arts to be considered, it placed media arts securely in equal status with the other arts in the standards development process.

With this declaration, media arts is primed for full establishment in California. And this newly initiated and invigorated media arts community is forming in order to serve the next generation of students in the development of this innovative and promising discipline! Many, many thanks to all who raised their voices and made this historic event happen! We’re now supporting the passage of AB 2862, and looking forward to much substantial progress in the months and years ahead!

Please join us as we use this galvanizing moment to form a "Coalition for Media Arts Education" in order to promote and establish this promising and beneficial discipline in California, and across the United States! Stay tuned for an announcement to that effect!