English and the Arts

Ten years ago relating the arts in an English class might have been considered a very unnecessary frill in many high schools, but the climate has changed markedly since then. Humanities courses have popped up in schools all over the nation, and probably most teachers realize the values that can be achieved by bringing the arts into English classes: it would seem unnecessary to defend the practice. Yet perhaps some of the projects that I shall discuss may be novel ones. I think all of them can be adapted to any grade or intellectual level. Some of the projects are major units and some are only incidental, but all of them have been tested for at least three or four years.