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| 1 | Why do some people give the arts so little respect? Why do they say you'll never make a living doing it, so it isn't worth studying? How many students who are in your math class will eventually earn incomes as mathematicians? How many people in your biology class will be biologists? It is worth asking, "How many of these children devoting so much time to athletics will earn livings as professional athletes?" Yet we can all understand the value of a healthy body. It makes as little sense to say art is not valuable because nobody gets a job doing it. Like math, athletics, and biology, it integrates into life in many ways, and will provide information, growth, and experience that will enrich the student's life. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Why can we not see the value of a strong and creative mind? We think people are just born creative, but creativity can be taught. Not only that, but people really do earn livings doing jobs in the arts and related fields. Advertising, architecture, interior decorating, website building, and feng shui are all arts-related areas of employment. Experience in the fine and performing arts improves academic performance in school. It is unsure whether the improvement can be objectively measured, if at all. My instincts and experience tell me that abstract thinking skills, which are enhanced by art experience, will help in all areas of life. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | How did I learn to plan and execute a many-layered painting so it would come out the way I visualized it? How did I learn to immerse myself in a philosophy to the extent that at a young age I could understand and formulate answers to questions in that philosophical context, even though I knew little about it culturally? How, if not through extensive arts-related reading, problem-solving, role-playing, project planning, etc.? I've heard it said that "art is 90% thinking" (Mark Smith, drawing instructor, last month in class) and it's true. Learning to think can't be bad, can it? The arts help educators to teach advanced thinking skills. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Art education is necessary and of merit in itself, needing no excuse or justification. Arts education does, however, help prepare people for the transition to work (Hanna). Even working in a grocery store, you could become a valuable resource when the boss realizes you are a good signmaker. In my long and illustrious career working at low-paying jobs as a youth, most of my employers had me painting signs, arranging window displays, or illustrating ads, eventually. It didn't pay more, but it was a lot more enjoyable than the regular work I was hired to do in the first place. Eventually my artistic talent led me to my present job as a self-employed small publisher. My husband and I make books, doing everything from authoring and illustrating some, to editing works of other authors, to assembling and binding, to wholesale mail-ordering. We have produced about fifty soft-bound books in seven years. Now I'm back in school seeking a Master's degree so I can go on to another career as a college art and graphic design instructor. My art skills, academic achievement, leadership experience, and community service work have garnered three out of three scholarships sought so far, and hopefully will pay for a large portion of my advanced education. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 5 | Many educators believe the arts can be justified as a core subject in schools by being used to teach other subjects. Where the arts are being used as teaching tools, educators are asking how they can boost academic test scores. The problem might be that educators are asking the wrong questions. Educators are asking how the arts can help academic achievement in non-art areas, when the question is really much more complicated than that and the answer is many-faceted. Elliot W. Eisner, in his article entitled "Does Experience in The Arts Boost Academic Achievement?" asks why people don't reverse the question. Why not ask how academic skills enhance arts performance? Reading, for instance, can help a performer improve her dramatic skills. Listening intently can help a singer improve his pitch. A class in geometry can help an artist design a product package. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 6 | Arts education helps in areas directly related, such as performance and support occupations. The arts also help in the following areas, according to researchers (Hanna):
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| 7 | The creative and critical thinking patterns learned through the arts are very sought-after, yet many educators don't realize they are taught best through the arts. People who can't learn them any other way can often absorb them through arts education. It is interesting that the qualities most valued by employers, such as abstract thinking skills and creativity, are the ones conventional education tends not to support. They therefore become more rare and thus even more valued. It is not a coincidence that home-schooled and privately schooled children often outdo their peers when they attend college. But what of the underprivileged or underprepared student? What of the student who is so overwhelmed he or she feels like giving up? What about the teachers who do not know how to get through to them? | ||||||||||||||||||
| 8 | There is a new phenomenon today where we are bombarded with information, so much information that no one person could possibly absorb it all. What does it all mean? Are we paying a price for relying too much on technology? "...They... drown in information even as... they... thirst for meaning. The result is a massive disconnect.... Those who cannot keep up tend to give up" (Mahlmann 6). The possibilities offered by learning through the arts are lost to students if the arts are not available to them. Those possibilities include learning to ask new questions and knock holes in the economic "glass wall" (6). | ||||||||||||||||||
| 9 | Those possibilities are also lost if there is no one to teach the arts in the local school, often through lack of funding because the arts are low priority. Not every elementary teacher knows how to teach art; in fact, in my experience most do not feel qualified. Art can be a difficult subject to teach because it is not cut and dried; there is no teacher's manual with the solutions in the back. It is based on instinctive feelings, understanding, and experience with handling materials, as well as on concrete memorized knowledge. Teachers who don't feel comfortable or qualified with this indefinite, nonfactual subject matter can make awful mistakes. I had this experience in my daughter's elementary school class: when I showed a child how to draw with white crayon and then make a watercolor wash over it to show the white lines, the teacher did not like that the child made the wash light gray instead of black. She took the picture and began to throw it away, saying the child had done it wrong! I took it from her, gave it back to him, and told her there is not just one right way to do art. She seemed to have no idea she had made a mistake, and might have done some damage to that child's creative spirit (or at least hurt his feelings) by condemning his work for not conforming to her idea of a "correct" drawing. The same teacher gave my fourth-grade daughter so much homework she had to work two hours each school night and weekends on it so she would "learn to work." She almost had a nervous breakdown. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 10 | The arts can benefit students in many ways, many of which cannot be objectively measured. Patricia James describes a college class in which her students use the arts to express themselves. She says underprepared students benefit by learning creativity and critical thinking skills. They learn to express themselves symbolically. Making art is an experience in solving a problem for which there are "no preestablished solutions" (3). To appreciate art, students learn to interpret nonverbal/emotional metaphors. The author uses metaphor extensively in her classes to help students expand their ways of thinking. They use "images to think about words and words to think about images" and experience knowledge with feeling and feeling with knowledge (4). | ||||||||||||||||||
| 11 | James says that art develops creativity and critical thinking. Almost everyone can be taught to be more creative. Art can be playful and help a student in self-exploration. Art is a purposeful and open-ended process in which accidents and new insights play a part. James says that students are encouraged in complex concepts and knowledge. They are very engaged and excited, but the teacher needs to be creative to deal with their ideas. Transfer into other areas can occur as students generate their own ideas, problem-solve, and critique their results (4). | ||||||||||||||||||
| 12 | Arts education can help many types of people in specific ways. The arts can help gifted students. Just because someone is good at memorizing or gets good grades doesn't mean he or she is gifted. "Gifted" does not mean a child can copy well or make repetitious, slick pictures. Originality and advanced thinking patterns identify the gifted child. Gifted students can be difficult to teach because they are very intelligent and may get discouraged if things are not easy for them or they feel bored or pressured (Alkema). "...Gifted students require special education services because their learning needs differ significantly from those of the general population." They can grasp more complex ideas and formulate original concepts from them. They may need counseling to help them adjust to their abilities and the problems their abilities create ("Education of Gifted Students" 1). | ||||||||||||||||||
| 13 | Gifted students do have different needs than most students. I was unofficially identified as a child as being gifted artistically, but no effort was made except on the part of relatives and some individual art teachers to help me. I was bored to death much of the time. I seldom did homework but passed all my classes, mostly without reading the texts. I have heard statistics (I don't know the source) stating that one of the biggest high school dropout rates is for "A" student girls. They are not challenged, they are bored, they want to get on with life. Most states now report from 5% to 10% of their students as being gifted. They may be provided with modified curriculum or may advance more quickly than other students. Some universities work with schools to provide early placement ("Education of Gifted Students"). One of my nieces just graduated from high school with an associate's degree because distance learning was made available at her school. She was able to watch and listen to teachers lecturing live in college classrooms and could phone questions and comments in from her high school lab. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 14 | Arts education is also used to help students at risk. Alkema explains how art can help children with disabilities and tells of several ways the visual arts can benefit children: independent thinking, self-expression, mental development, individuality, discovery of new ideas, finding "new solutions to old problems," mental awareness, organization, expression of organized beauty, and observation and recall. He says art can be therapeutic in that it can help children face and resolve inner conflicts. At a high school in Oakland, California, a program has been going for four years using art throughout the curriculum. While 20% of seniors in this school do not graduate, 100% of those in the art-based program have been graduating (Slambrouck 2). This is interesting, because it shows how the effects of arts education, which can't be precisely measured, nevertheless have helped students in a high-risk category. Students learn material in a subject and then make a three-dimensional piece showing what they consider to be the most important aspects of what they learned. Other projects include making a children's storybook for nearby third-graders, cultural presentations, and studying M. C. Escher's art (Slambrouck). Probably the reason this works so well is because the students are digesting facts and then reinforcing learning by using their knowledge to make something. Educators say that anytime you use more than one learning method to learn (aural, visual, kinesthetic) there is better retention. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 15 | I was identified as being talented in art at a young age, but learning to work hard and problem-solve in arts-related activities has been more beneficial than being told how great my artwork is. My worst subject is math, but figuring out how to size a knitted sweater correctly taught me that I need to do what it takes to get the math right even though it's difficult for me. The arts can be a great incentive for students to stay in school, just as athletics can be. Many students with great potential are bored stiff in school. The arts are exciting and a good outlet for emotions, yet they require a lot of discipline and responsibility. The arts are challenging in a unique way: your art is performed or exhibited and must not only have the cooperation of others but also stand the test of people's criticism. Art can be an adventure, which might not be said about all areas of learning. It is one area of learning in which you don't just memorize or parrot what someone else has said or done, but you communicate it or perform it yourself; it is really part of you. The arts are the wonderful part of education. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 16 | John J. Mahlmann quotes John Adams (in a letter to his wife in 1780): "I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain" (1). Mahlmann divides the quote up into three phases: Phase 1 is "I must study politics and war." Phase 2 is "that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and navigation, commerce and agriculture." Phase 3 is "order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain (italics added for emphasis)." Note that Phase 1 tells us of needs, Phase 2 tells us of wants, and Phase 3 tells us of rights. Mahlmann says we are stuck in Phase 2 because we measure the value of everything in relation to money and utility. We value short-term success over the long-term good. We think if something does not generate money it is not worthwhile. We have changed from wanting to raise good, thoroughly well-educated human beings to wanting to raise smart, academically and technically well-educated rich people (Mahlmann). | ||||||||||||||||||
| 17 | If we are going to ignore arts education in schools we may as well return to the old system where children were sent away to be apprentices to learn to make a living. In those days the arts were for the rich; now everyone can be "rich" if we can get arts education back in the public schools. By being too practical, we may be losing the most wonderful part of education. We could be substituting economic good for humanity, output for creativity. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 18 | Society could make the arts accessible to everyone through the public school system. One of the ways we could make the arts core subjects in schools is through legislation. Some federal agencies have damaged efforts by educators to have arts education recognized as core subject matter. The National Endowment for the Arts has been involved in numerous "scandals" involving art considered by many members of the public to be inappropriate or obscene. In public exhibits or events funded by their agency there have been works such as a Madonna painting with a large ball of elephant manure, a high school play using foul language and imitated copulation, and exhibits of erotic nude photographs. Even when there is a public outcry, the NEA talks of free speech but never utters a word of apology. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 19 | Laura Chapman says that the NEA has shown by their past actions that they want to be the main agency for dispersing federal funds and that their priorities for funding are the Kennedy Center for the Arts and programs such as Artists in Schools, in which an artist goes to an elementary school and does a project with the students for a limited time. This type of activity does not provide any ongoing instruction in the arts, but only short-term experience in various art forms. The NEA has historically actively worked against having arts education integrated as core subject matter and lobbied for their short-term arts projects for children. Money for the arts is limited, and they think their funds will be taken away and given to schools (Chapman). | ||||||||||||||||||
| 20 | A recent report done jointly by the NEA and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies asserts that arts education produces better reading and math test scores, increases such things as "creativity, thinking, and communication" (Chapman 2) skills, adults who participated as children help more in schools, students who take art classes do better on art assessment tests, and the arts are supposed to be a core subject in school. The NEA and NASAA are not the originators of these ideas; in fact the true originators are arts educators, who have been fighting for arts education in schools for decades (Chapman). I'm surprised to read that these two agencies are saying they are supportive of these ideas which the NEA has historically opposed. It's like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet, which he most certainly did not do. The NEA is just trying to get on the bandwagon. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 21 | The NEA choices that have shocked and dismayed the public are damaging to the efforts of those who advocate arts education in schools. Their unfortunate choices and absence of anything resembling an apology make parents more wary of what value education in the arts represents for their children. If the NEA cannot tell the "difference between great art and awful art, the public has good reason to wonder why those leaders in the arts are entrusted with taxpayer funds" (Riddell 2). Yet they continue to be the main disburser of federal tax dollars for the arts, and arts educators continue their campaign to get the arts recognized as important to the education of our young people. If the fight for funding cannot be won by going directly to the state and federal legislatures, the fight must be taken into the homes of the children who would benefit from having the arts integrated into school curriculum. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 22 | Informing parents of the value of arts education will do more for getting music, drama, and art recognized as core subjects than any act of congress. If parents see how their children will benefit, they will see to it that their children get what they need. More states should allow charter schools and more parents should take advantage of what they have to offer. Students are not all alike; they are individuals with varying needs. Treating students like cookie-cutter robots doesn't work, but that's what education has tried to do. The arts help students as individuals. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 23 | Gradually the benefits of arts education are being recognized. Some states are now putting the arts into everyday classrooms. Things will be all right soon. Art will help us all and we will live happily ever after. What could be wrong with the arts being embraced by the education system? A lot can go wrong. One of the dangers of wholehearted acceptance by the education community is that the arts are being touted as cure-alls for social ills (Gee). Every at-risk dysfunctional student will be cured if he can have a graffiti class. Can anything cure social ills? Probably religion is a better thing to rely on than the arts, since people's core beliefs influence how they raise their children; how they do this is the greatest influence on society's future. Asking arts education to cure social ills is like the public schools being asked to raise our children for us--not a very good idea, since neither an institution nor a discipline can replace family influence in producing a good human being. Arts education can help, but we must be realistic. Connections can be reasoned but not statistically counted. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 24 | I began this paper looking for factual researched evidence, but I did not find it. Instead, I found that the concrete rewards of an education in the arts can be as elusive as the meaning of art itself. Is it a set of defined rules that decides what art is? Or a group of people? Last Spring term, I was walking on campus as people were looking at works in the campus sculpture show. One of the observers was looking at a piece of sculpture he obviously didn't like, and he said, "That isn't art!" | ||||||||||||||||||
| 25 | I asked him and his companion, "So is the definition of art that it is something you like? And something you don't like isn't art?" They both looked somewhat sheepish and we parted, but I can't forget what I learned in that encounter: just because everyone does not appreciate something does not make it valueless. It is really the lack of understanding that is the problem. I disliked the sculpture too, but I understood that it was indeed art, and that it had value in itself. That is what lawmakers, educators, and parents need to understand.
 Two of my daughters, Rosalie and Gelsey, | ||||||||||||||||||
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"Aesthetics." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, CD-ROM. Microsoft Corporation. 1998. Darby, Jaye T. "The Fourth R: The Arts and Learning." Teachers College Record. 96.2 (1994):299. Winter94. http://search.epnet.com/login.asp Gates, Bill. The Road Ahead. New York: Penguin Books USA. Inc. 1995. Goodlad, John I. "Educational Renewal and the Arts." Arts Education Policy Review 101.4 (2000):11. Mar/Apr2000. http://search.epnet.com/login.asp Goodwin, Mac Arthur. "Reaching a Strategic Inflection Point: Current Education Reform Initiatives and Arts Education." Arts Education Policy Review 100.1 (1998):20. Sep/Oct98. http://search.epnet.com/login.asp "John Dewey." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, CD-ROM. Microsoft Corporation. 1998. Lowenfeld, Viktor and Brittain. W. Lambert. Creative and Mental Growth. 5th ed. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1970. "Teacher Training." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, CD-ROM. Microsoft Corporation. 1998.
Nominated by Monique Hampton, Writing Instructor
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