If you were in charge of a school district's curriculum, what kind of core requirement would you say "Graphics Art" could go toward fulfilling?

I was thinking computer skills.

As a stand-alone course, it’s so specific, I’d put it under elective. I thought core requirements are more general skills?

More likely it’d be covered under the computer skills course.

I’d argue “art” over “computer skills.”

Yeah, a lot of design work necessitates skills in photoshop and corel painter and all that jazz these days, but that doesn’t mean dick if you don’t have artistic vision.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard: True, but the reverse is true also.

Thanks. My thoughts were either Fine Arts or Computer skills. The student had his one Fine Arts credit requirement more than filled with Spanish as well as some art classes. However, he still needed a computer skills credit. I wasn’t sure, so I asked. According to that particular school district, Graphic Arts didn’t belong in either category. It was an elective. I kinda didn’t get that.

@Dutchess_III I understand why it was considered an elective. It’s not something that every high school kid needs to know before they graduate.

But that doesn’t mean that the kid can’t make an argument for it. I would inquire about the class curriculum.

Is there an emphasis on Photoshop vs colour theory? Corel vs layout?

School districts vary so much in their requirements. They all require the same English, Science, Math and History, but after that it’s anybody’s guess what they’ll call a core requirement. Some require Fine Arts, some don’t. Some require Computer Skills, some don’t. Some require Personal Living Skills, some don’t.

I think it could count for either, or both.

Interesting that Spanish counts towards fine arts. Here, it counts as foreign language, and you need two foreign language credits in order to graduate.

@Dutchess_III That’s because each school district varies on what they believe a high school graduate should know before going out into the world.

I agree that Fine Arts and Computer Skills should be core requirements. I haven’t heard of Personal Living Skills. You mean like Health class?

@augustlan Sometimes they lump Fine Arts and Foreign Languages together. I think it’s just a We-Want-You-To-Be-Culturally-Well-Rounded requirement.

If I were in charge, every kid would learn how to cook a meal, do dishes, do laundry, handle a checking account/debit card and other financial stuff (credit!), nutrition, use hand tools, and more in a Personal Living Skills curriculum. It’d be required!

No @Nimis. Health/PE is one credit. Skills for living is a different credit.

They learn debit cards and banking, but nothing about cooking and cleaning! I think every student should show that they can change a tire too!

@augustlan Agreed! All great ideas.

Augustlan should just be in charge of everything. Except I don’t know how the whip is going to go over with the PTA. :P

@Dutchess_III That’s awesome. I know so many college kids who screwed up their credit their first year in college.

Yeah…I know.

At my high school it was an art class; I think a fair case could be made for computer skills as well though.

Thanks. I kind of wonder of the counselor who made the call knew what “Graphic Arts” is.

@Dutchess_III I’m with you: I would count it as a fine arts class or a computer class.

Are you sure it was the counselor who made the call? Core curriculum and graduation requirement are generally determined by state Departments of Education, by law, while granting local school boards a certain amount of power and control over the curriculums in their own school districts, but even then, I believe it is matter of policy, not someone just “making a call”. The school district’s policy regarding what fulfills core curriculum requirements and what constitutes an elective should be a matter of written policy, somewhere.

Here, for example, is the core curriculum and graduation requirements for the state of Kansas

Graphic arts is kind of a complicated thing now. If it were up to me, if the graphic arts class just covered basic principles of design I would say fine arts but if it also included instruction in computer programs like Photoshop and Corel, e.g. as @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard mentioned, I would make it fulfill both a fine arts and a computer skills requirement, like the modern dance classes where I went to college. A lot of people like myself, who lacked a natural talent and acuity for dance, took the modern dance classes because they fulfilled both a PE unit and an academic unit. We danced, physically, and had specific assignments that were purely dancing, but we also had lectures and had to write papers on things like the history and aesthetics of modern dance. Two birds with one stone.

Yes, I’m sure it was the counselor. They have some freedoms when deciding what to do with some of those dangling credits. If, for example, all the student needed to GRADUATE was a .5 in computer classes, the counselor may make an except to the ‘usual.’

When you finish a class you can only apply it to one or the other. It’s a half credit toward a full credit requirement. You can’t give them a half credit in computer AND art for completing just one course.