Teaching art or teaching to think like an artist? | Cindy Foley | TEDxColumbus

Summary

Cindy Foley argues that art education should focus less on teaching techniques and facts that are easy to test, and more on helping students think like artists—creatively, curiously, and through questioning, developing ideas, and play.

She opens with a kindergarten image-word quiz. Her daughter chose “art” for an image whose test-guide answer was “mud.” Foley uses the mismatch to illustrate how art can be open to interpretation, while education systems often favor fixed, measurable answers. She says art education has likewise been shaped by standards and testing, emphasizing the elements of art, art history, and foundational skills.

Foley argues that this emphasis obscures art education’s broader value. She points to research by the Wallace Foundation and Harvard’s Project Zero identifying creative thinking and the ability to make connections as key outcomes of quality art education. She also notes that creativity is widely valued in education, business, and economics, while creativity scores among U.S. children have declined since the 1990s.

She identifies a common cultural misconception: people often equate creativity with artistic skill, such as drawing realistically, or assume that people who cannot draw are not creative. Foley says this messaging makes it harder for educators to teach creativity as a way of thinking.

Three Habits for Teaching Creativity

Foley describes three habits artists use and says art education can help students develop them.

1. Comfort with Ambiguity

• Creative work often begins with uncertainty and not knowing what to do.
• Foley’s audience exercise—making something that represents “metaphor” using an item participants had with them—was designed to surface that discomfort.
• Artists treat ambiguity as part of the process: they recognize it and work through it.
• Art education can prepare students to face uncertainty rather than avoid open-ended tasks.

2. Idea Generation

• Art education should engage students in how artists think, not just in reproducing an artist’s materials, techniques, or style.
• Foley gives Monet as an example: beyond his methods, his questioning of the natural world, perception, and the politics of his time helped make his work distinctive.
• She uses The Lego Movie to contrast following a set of instructions with the open-ended possibilities of a bucket of Lego pieces.
• Students should be “master builders” who develop ideas, rather than merely assistants carrying out an educator’s plan.
• Play—experimenting with materials or exploring ideas—is an important way to generate and develop ideas.

3. Transdisciplinary Research

• Artists pursue research across fields, following their curiosity wherever it leads.
• Foley describes her husband, artist Sean Foley, researching a project about painting and Frankenstein through literature, horror films, natural history, medical history, taxidermy, and museum collections.
• This approach puts disciplines such as art, science, and math in service of ideas, rather than keeping them separate.

Foley calls for educational spaces that cultivate and recognize this kind of thinking, including “centers for creativity.” She concludes that supporters should continue defending art education, but frame its value around ideas and curiosity—not only around protecting arts classes. Her goal is for all students to learn to think like artists, whatever careers they eventually pursue.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Cindy Foley — speaker.
• Jihan Chara — translator credited in the subtitles.
• Denise RQ — reviewer credited in the subtitles.
• Other people, organizations, and works referenced: Foley’s daughter Adeline; her husband and artist Sean Foley; Claude Monet; the Wallace Foundation; Harvard’s Project Zero; Sir Kenneth Robinson; Dan Pink; IBM; the Torrance creativity test; and The Lego Movie.