Arts Education
In difficult budget times the first thing to disappear from classrooms around the country may be the arts. When school boards and state boards meet to make necessary budget cuts, they often go for the elimination of programs that allow students to grow and prosper in creative ways. The four core subjects are safe: math, social studies, science and language arts. Part of the reality is that these subjects are tested and included in legislation for No Child Left Behind. They are inside the accountability bubble and they count because students in these courses are tested and tracked.
Arts education is continually marginalized and made to be the poor step sister in the curriculum world. Music, art, theater and dance are perceived as peripheral subjects without much value but research has shown that this is simply not true. Art is simply not just painting and drawing. The arts strive to instill critical thinking and reasoning skills that compliment and support the core classes. Cognitive and social skills also allow students to grow to become vital human beings. A well developed arts curriculum completes the picture and educates the whole child.
In recent research from Harvard Graduate School of Education authors Lois Hetland, Shirley Veenema, Kim Sheridan, and Patricia Palmer found that art education students learn many skills that are critical to life. They studied the student-teacher interaction in art classrooms and defined these critical skills.
Students develop craft, or an ability to determine what is needed to do certain tasks. They learn to use tools, materials, and experiment with the various ways they can be employed. They are also taught to care for materials: brushes, pencils, charcoal, canvas and paper.
Students are taught to engage and persist. When teachers present projects that are long-term, students learn to focus on far reaching goals, sustain an activity for an extended period of time and develop inner-directedness. In short, they are taught not to give up, to work through frustration.
Students are taught to envision. They are asked to generate images in the mind. Art students had to go beyond the obvious to detect the underlying structure of a form.
Students are asked to express or to put into words feelings about a piece of work. They must process their personal vision about their work and convey it.
Students must observe. They are continually directed to look more closely, to listen more intently and to discern patterns, shapes, sounds and styles.
Students are asked to become reflective, to think and explain their work. They must analyze not just how they completed a project but why they made choices that led to the end product. This helps students to become more introspective.
Students must evaluate their own work and the work of others. They must determine what works and what does not.
Students are taught to stretch and explore, to go beyond what they already knew, to take risks and to learn in the process about themselves. Teachers push and prod them to explore new techniques and to expand thinking.
This Harvard study pointed out that arts education supports the learning of many critical life skills. In reality, the arts are an important part of the entire learning landscape.
