Why teach art?

You may already have ideas about this…or perhaps some
doubts (in which case maybe there is something here to convince you). The
following are excerpts from several sources. You may notice they might expand
upon and add to the ten rationale in the Emphasis Art Chapter 1 reading. They
are intended to provide you with some ways to explore, think about, and start
to articulate your own reasons for why the arts are important.

Reminder—
WEEK 1 Assignment:
Why teach art? Readings Reflection Paper
(1 page; 400-600 words)
As you read the following excerpts on the benefits of arts
education
1)
Identify 3 reasons for teaching art that “ring
true” for you. Summarize these (with source references) along with WHY YOU
think they are important for children today.
2)
Identify 3 barriers you see to providing a
quality arts education. These may be systemic and/or based on your own personal
experience or concerns.

NOTE: if any of the links seem broken—try cut and pasting into a
google search.

CHAMPIONS
OF CHANGE
One of the earliest comprehensive research-based reports on
the benefits of arts education (1999)

Complete Report found at: .aep-arts.org/PDF%20Files/ChampsReport.pdf”>http://www.aep-arts.org/PDF%20Files/ChampsReport.pdf (.aep-arts.org/”>www.aep-arts.org site)

PREFACE

When young people are involved with the arts, something
changes in their lives. We’ve often witnessed the rapt expressions on the faces
of such young people. Advocates for the arts often use photographs of smiling
faces to document the experience.

But in a society that values measurements and uses data-
driven analysis to inform decisions about allocation of scarce resources,
photographs of smiling faces are not enough to gain or even retain support.
Such images alone will not convince skeptics or even neutral decision-makers
that something exceptional is happening when and where the arts become part of
the lives of young people.

Until now, we’ve known little about the nature of this
change, or how to enable the change to occur. To understand these issues in
more rigorous terms, we invited leading educational researchers to examine the
impact of arts experiences on young people. We developed the Champions of
Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning initiative in cooperation with The
Arts Education Partnership and The President’s Committee on the Arts and the
Humanities to explore why and how young people were changed through their arts
experiences.

We believed that evidence could be collected that would help
answer the questions of why positive changes occur and what might be done to
replicate them .We expected the work to build on previous research concerning
the arts and learning so that similar programs could become even more
effective; we also hoped to increase the overall understanding of how the arts
can impact learning.

We invited the initial Champions of Change researchers to
examine well-established models of arts education. We then added research
efforts that looked beyond specific programs to larger issues of the arts in
American education. Finally, we expanded our concept beyond classrooms and
schools to include out-of-school settings. We wanted to better understand the
impact of the arts on learning, not just on formal education.

CHAMPIONS OF CHANGE–
Executive Summary

WHAT THE ARTS CHANGE ABOUT THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

As a result of their varied inquiries, the Champions of
Change researchers found that learners can attain higher levels of achievement
through their engagement with the arts. Moreover, one of the critical research
findings is that the learning in and through the arts can help “level the
playing field” for youngsters from disadvantaged circumstances.

James Catterall’s analysis of the Department of Education’s
NELS:88 database of 25,000 students demonstrates that students with high levels
of arts participation outperform “arts-poor” students by virtually every
measure. Since arts participation is highly correlated with socioeconomic
status, which is the most significant predictor of academic performance, this
comes as little surprise. The size and diversity of the NELS database, however,
permitted Catterall to find statistical significance in comparisons of high and
low arts participants in the lowest socioeconomic segments. This closer look
showed that high arts participation makes a more significant difference to
students from low – income back grounds than for high – income students.
Catterall also found clear evidence that sustained involvement in particular
art forms — music and theater — are highly correlated with success in
mathematics and reading.

These findings are enriched by comparisons of student
achievement in 14 high-poverty schools in which the Chicago Arts Partnerships
in Education (CAPE) has developed innovative arts – integrated curricula. The
inspiring turn a round of this large and deeply troubled school district is one
of the important education stories of this decade. Schools across Chicago,
including all those in this study, have been improving student performance.
But, when compared to arts – poor schools in the same neighborhoods, the CAPE
schools advanced even more quickly and now boast a significant gap in
achievement along many dimensions.

Schools are not the only venue in which young people grow,
learn, and achieve. Shirley Brice Heath spent a decade studying dozens of
after- school programs for disadvantaged youth. These programs were broadly
clustered into three categories — sports / academic, community involvement, and
the arts. This research shows that the youth in all these programs were doing
better in school and in their personal lives than were young people from the
same socioeconomic categories, as tracked by NELS:88.

To the researchers’ surprise, however, the youth in the arts
programs were doing the best. Skeptical about this finding, Heath and her
colleagues looked more closely at the arts programs and the youth participating
in them. Although the youth in the arts programs were actually at greater
“risk” than those in the other programs, the researchers found that
characteristics particular to the arts made those programs more effective. They
now believe that a combination of “roles, risks, and rules” offered in the arts
programs had a greater impact on these young lives.

Another broad theme emerges from the individual Champions of
Change research findings: the arts no longer need to be characterized solely by
either their ability to promote learning in specific arts disciplines or by
their ability to promote learning in other disciplines. These studies suggest a
more dynamic, less either-or model for the arts and overall learning that has
more of the appearance of a rotary with entrances and exits than of a linear
one-way street.

This rotary of
learning provides the greater access to higher levels of achievement.
“Learning in and Through the Arts” (LITA) and other Champions of Change studies
found much evidence that learning in the arts has significant effects on
learning in other domains. L I TA suggests a dynamic model in which learning in
one domain supports and stimulates learning in others, which in turn supports
and stimulates learning in a complex web of influence described as a
“constellation.” LITA and the other researchers provide compelling evidence that
student achievement is heightened in an environment with high quality arts
education offerings and a school climate supportive of active and productive
learning.

Why the Arts Change the Learning Experience

When well taught, the arts provide young people with
authentic learning experiences that engage their minds, hearts, and bodies. The
learning experiences are real and meaningful for them.

While learning in other disciplines may often focus on
development of a single skill or talent, the arts regularly engage multiple
skills and abilities. Engagement in the arts — whether the visual arts, dance,
music, theatre or other disciplines—nurtures the development of cognitive,
social, and personal competencies. Although the Champions of Change researchers
conducted their investigations and presented their findings independently, a remarkable consensus exists among their
findings:

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts reach students who are not
otherwise being reached.
Young people who are disengaged from
schools and other community institutions are at the greatest risk of failure or
harm. The researchers found that the arts provided a reason, and sometimes the
only reason, for being engaged with school or other organizations. These young
people would otherwise be left without access to any community of learners. The
studies concerning Arts Connection, CAPE, and learning during non – school
hours are of particular significance here.

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts reach students in ways that they
are not otherwise being reached.
Other recent educational research has
produced insights into different styles of learning. This research also
addresses examples of young people who were considered classroom failures,
perhaps “acting out” because conventional classroom practices were not engaging
them. These “problem” students often became the high – achievers in arts
learning settings. Success in the arts became a bridge to learning and eventual
success in other areas of learning. The Arts Connection study provides case
studies of such students; the “Learning In and Through the Arts” research
examines the issue of learner self –perception in great depth.

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts connect students to themselves and
each other.
Creating an art work is a personal
experience. The student draws upon his or her personal resources to generate
the result. By engaging his or her whole person, the student feels invested in
ways that are deeper than “knowing the answer.” Beyond the individual, Steve
Seidel and Dennie Palmer Wolf show how effective arts learning communities are
formed and operated. James Catterall also describes how the attitudes of young
people toward one another are altered through their arts learning experiences.

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts transform the environment for
learning.
When the arts become central to the
learning environment, schools and other settings become places of discovery.
According to the Teachers College research team and those examining the CAPE
schools, the very school culture is changed, and the conditions for learning
are improved. Figurative walls between classrooms and disciplines are broken
down. Teachers are renewed. Even the physical appearance of a school building
is transformed through the representations of learning. The Heath research team
also found “visible” changes in non school settings.

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts provide learning opportunities for
the adults in the lives of young people.
Those held responsible for the development
of children and youth — teachers, parents, and other adults — are rarely given
sufficient or significant opportunities for their own continuing education.
With adults participating in lifelong learning, young people gain an
understanding that learning in any field is a never- ending process. The roles
of the adults are also changed—in effective programs, the adults become coaches
— active facilitators of learning. Heath and other researchers here describe
the altered dynamics between young and less young learners.

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts provide new challenges for those
students already considered successful.
Boredom and complacency are barriers to
success. For those young people who out grow their established learning
environments, the arts can offer a chance for unlimited challenge. In some
situations described in the research, older students may also teach and mentor
younger students. In others, young people gain from the experience of working
with professional artists. The Art s Connection researchers in general, and
James Catterall in particular, explored the impact of intensive involvement in
specific art disciplines.

.gif” alt=”*”> The arts connect learning experiences to
the world of real work.
The world of adult work has changed, and
the arts learning experiences described in the research show remarkable
consistency with the evolving work place. Ideas are what matter, and the
ability to generate ideas, to bring ideas to life and to communicate them is
what matters to work place success. Working in a classroom or a studio as an
artist, the young person is learning and practicing future work place
behaviors. A company is a company, whether producing an opera or a breakthrough
technological service.

How the Arts Change the Learning Experience

The programs and schools examined by the Champions of Change
researchers were selected because they appeared to be models of excellence that
were making a real difference to young people. Their research helps us identify
the principles and requirements that make these arts learning models work. By
helping to better define the characteristics
of effective arts learning programs, the Champions of Change researchers
have also done a great service.

Education reformers and researchers have learned a great
deal about “what works” in recent years. In examining the work of Shakespeare
& Company, Steve Seidel cites the general characteristics of “project-based learning” as factors
that also support effective arts learning. In Real Learning, Real Work, author
Adria Steinberg identifies six elements that are critical to the design of
project-based learning: authenticity, academic rigor, applied learning, active
exploration, adult relationships, and assessment practices. Seidel also
emphasizes that the best assessment of a person’s understanding is a product
that “puts that understanding to work.” Learning is deepest when learners have
the capacity to represent what they have learned, and the multiple disciplines
of the arts all provide modes of representation.

The quality arts learning experiences described by the
Champions of Change researchers regularly contain these project-based learning
elements. The best programs display them in great breadth and depth. To be
effective, the arts learning experience
will also

.gif” alt=”*”> Enable young people to have direct involvement with the arts and
artists. Young people become and see them selves as artists. Whether
creating art works, as in the Creating Original Opera program, or performing,
as in the Fall Festival of Shakespeare program, or perhaps even teaching
younger student artists, as in the Arts Connection program, the students learn
various disciplines through hands-on arts experiences. They actively engage with
artistic content, materials, and methods.

.gif” alt=”*”> Require significant staff development. The best teachers are life-long students. The
teachers involved in the staff development programs examined by the Champions
of Change researchers describe life-changing experiences that transform their
professional lives. High-impact programs demand both adequate staff preparation
and strong administrative support. Well-trained staff and teachers also become
leaders for institutional and systemic change.

.gif” alt=”*”> Support extended engagement in the artistic
process. Opportunities to achieve
artistic and learning excellence cannot be confined to forty-five minute time
periods. Sustained engagement during individual sessions as well as expanded
program length support enhanced learning opportunities. These learning
experiences are also not limited to place; school is just one of many settings
where this learning occurs. Superior results are also associated with the
concept of “practice” and the development of a sense of “craft.”

.gif” alt=”*”> Encourage self-directed learning. Students learning in and through the arts
become their own toughest critics. The students are motivated to learn not just
for test results or other performance outcomes, but for the learning experience
itself. According the to the Arts Connection study, these learners develop the
capacity to experience “flow,” self-regulation, identity, and resilience —
qualities regularly associated with personal success.

.gif” alt=”*”> Promote complexity in the learning
experience.Students who might otherwise complain of boredom become fully
challenged. Unlike other learning experiences that seek right or wrong answers,
engagement in the arts allows for multiple outcomes. Seidel found that when
“refusing to simplify” Shakespeare’s challenging texts, students became
passionately engaged in learning classic works which high schoolers so often
consider boring. Effective learning in the arts is both complex and
multi-dimensional.

.gif” alt=”*”> Allow management of risk by the learners.
Rather than see themselves as “at-risk.” Students become managers of risk who
can make decisions concerning artistic outcomes and even their lives. The
students learn to manage risk through “permission to fail,” according to the
Shakespeare & Company study, and then take risks “to intensify the quality
of their interactions, products, and performances,” according to Heath and her
colleagues.

.gif” alt=”*”> Engage community leaders and resources. Another recent study, Gaining the Arts
Advantage: Lessons from School Districts That Value Arts Education, found that
“the single most critical factor in sustaining arts education in (their)
schools is the active involvement of influential segments of the community in
shaping and implementing the policies and programs of the district.” Similarly,
effective arts learning out of school also requires the active engagement of
the community. The CAPE and Heath studies show a process that attracts and
builds on this engagement from parents and other community members.

Policy Implications of the Champions of Change Research

The Champions of Change studies examined the messy, often
hard-to-define real world of learning, both in and out of schools. As a result,
these research findings have immediate relevance for both policy and practice
in American education today.

.gif” alt=”*”> For
example, if we now know that arts experiences help level the educational
playing field for disadvantaged students, as revealed by James Catterall, then
we need to bring more proven arts learning resources to these students.
.gif” alt=”*”> If
arts learning can help energize or re-energize the teaching work force, as
described by Steve Seidel, then we must look to the arts both as a vehicle for
preparing entrants to the teaching profession and as a means of supporting its
more-experienced members.
.gif” alt=”*”> Looking
beyond classrooms, Shirley Brice Heath found the profound impact the arts can
have on learning for youth outside school settings. If this is so, we must
expand quality arts learning programs outside of schools as well. In the CAPE
model, the researchers find that arts learning can have a defined impact on the
academic performance of students in an urban setting.
.gif” alt=”*”> If
well-constructed partnerships between school and arts organizations can
increase student achievement, then such partnerships must be nurtured and
replicated. In another urban program, Arts Connection researchers define the
role of the arts in enabling students to overcome obstacles to success; again,
such experiences should be made more widely available.
.gif” alt=”*”> Researcher
Dennie Palmer Wolf describes the impact of group versus individual learning
generated through a collaborative arts experience. For this approach to grow, a
more serious commitment to developing communities of arts learners, rather than
just opportunities for “stars,” is required. If sustained, integrated, and
complex projects, like producing an opera, a Shakespeare production, or a
visual arts exhibition, significantly deepen the learning process, as these
studies suggest, then school schedules must also be modified to make such
experiences possible.

The findings of the individual research studies are worthy
of the reader’s careful review. We owe a great debt to these researchers for
their diligence and insights; we can only repay this debt by heeding their
words and seeking systemic ways to make the arts a meaningful part of every
American child’s life. Together, we can make the everyday learning experiences
of young Americans less ordinary and more extraordinary.

CONCLUSION
These Champions of Change studies demonstrate how
involvement with the arts provides unparalleled opportunities for learning,
enabling young people to reach for and attain higher levels of achievement. The
research provides both examples and evidence of why the arts should be more
widely recognized for its current and potential contributions to the
improvement of American education.

Similarly, the experiences we offer too many young people
outside of school are often limited in their purpose and resulting impact. They
provide recreation, but no sense of creation. They provide recess, but no sense
of success. Arts learning outside of schools can also enhance the sense of
accomplishment and well-being among our young people.

This research provides compelling evidence that the arts can
and do serve as champions of change in learning. Yet realizing the full
potential of learning in and through the arts for all American children will
require heroic acts from all segments of our society. With the 21st century now
upon us, we, too, must be champions of change; we must meet and exceed the challenge
of giving our young people the best possible preparation we can offer them. To
do so, we must make involvement with the arts a basic part of their learning
experiences. In doing so, we will become champions for our children and their
children.

WHY CREATIVITY, WHY NOW?
Charlie Sweet, Co-Director Teaching
& Learning Center Eastern Kentucky University 2 Keen Johnson Richmond, KY
40475 Telephone: (859) 622-6519 Fax: (859) 622-5018 E-mail: [email protected]”>[email protected] Web: .tlc.eku.edu/”>www.tlc.eku.edu

(Highlightedand boldedtext by C.Ballard)

In 2006 the Association of American
Colleges and Universities surveyed 306 businesses to determine the most
valuable skills that institutions of higher learning should be teaching, and
the Top Three were (in order) teamwork, critical thinking, and communication.
Yet in 2010 when IBM’s Institute for Business Values asked 1500 chief
executives what leadership competency they championed above all others, voters
selected none of the winners from three years before. Instead, the new American
idol was creativity.

Retrospectively, more seismic signs of
this tectonic shift were visible in this past decade. In 2001 Anderson and
Krathwohl revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to situate “Create” as the highest of
higher-order learning skills. Richard Florida stressed in The Rise of the
Creative Class (2002) the importance of the creative class in economic growth.
In The Whole New Mind (2006) Daniel Pink, while using an oversimplified
metaphor, concluded that right-brained people will rule the world of the
future, and Erica McWilliam, in The Creative Workforce (2008), declared
creativity the cornerstone of contemporary education.

As the body of evidence on the importance of creativity grows,
maybe the first question educators should be asking is, can creativity be
taught? Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative
(2001) argues that “we can teach generic skills of creative thinking, just in
the way we can teach people to read, write, and do math,” and to do so “the
pedagogy is designed to encourage other people to think creatively. You
encourage kids to experiment, to innovate, not giving them all the answers but
giving them the tools they need to find out what the answers might be” (26).

A
Creative Pedagogy

How do we teach students to write the
next Carrie, to invent the i-Pod’s successor, or simply to solve simpler
problems? More specifically, if a good education is, above all, a habit of
mind, and choreographer Twyla Tharp claims that “creativity is a habit and the
best creativity is the result of good work habits” (7), how can we
intentionally develop in students a creative frame of mind?

Experts
in creativity break its study into the four Ps—
person, process, product, and press (environment). Let’s assume we want our
person/student to be capable of creative products (e.g., short stories, songs,
paintings, new processes, or simply innovative solutions) and focus mainly on
the other two aspects, the creative environment and the creative process.

The
Creative Environment

Establishing the most conducive
environment for creativity starts with an open atmosphere where students feel a freedom to take risks,
where bad guesses aren’t pounced on, and where every answer isn’t necessarily
right or wrong. This safety urges them to look at things in different—even
radical—ways without fear of punishment, condescension, or even a bad grade. In
fact, this creative atmosphere accepts, even encourages, missteps and errors,
thus minimizing the stress of pure correctness. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame
says simply, “creativity is allowing
yourself to make mistakes.” In fact, research demonstrates the atmosphere
needs to be not only supportive, but fun. Do you know one reason Southwest
Airlines is the only profitable airline in this country? Check out their
mission statement: “People rarely succeed at anything unless they are having
fun doing it.”

Even the physical surroundings of the
environment can promote creative thought. Coming out of the Industrial
Revolution, our schools have throughout the past century been dedicated to the
dissemination of knowledge. Picture the typical static classroom—neatly rowed
chairs and desks for note-taking fronted by a lectern. The 21st century has not
only brought new knowledge, but also new methodologies and audiences with a new
way of learning. Even the more recent active learning approach has been
replaced by a cutting edge pedagogy that Erica McWilliam calls in The Creative
Workforce “meddler-in- the-middle”; students and faculty co-facilitate the
development of knowledge in groups, sitting at tables, in comfortable chairs,
with the instructor smack dab (physically and educationally) in the center of
the environment.

Since
researchers concur that creativity often comes out of extant knowledge, it is
important that students have access to that knowledge as a foundation.
New technology helps that process. At Eastern Kentucky University, we have
developed an incubator classroom to promote this creative environment. By
bringing together experts from the fields of educational research,
instructional communication, pedagogy, technology, and instructional design
into a learning community we call L.E.A.F. (Learning Environment for Academia’s
Future), we have created an atmosphere that embodies all the features necessary
for creativity. We have even studied the optimum room temperature and amount of
illumination. Moveable tables with wireless laptops and wickedly comfortable
chairs surround an instructor, who has control of the laptops, the screens in
all four corners of the room, the data readers, clicker technology, and a
multitude of software. Student assessments constantly reference the relaxed
atmosphere of the classroom and the freedom provided by its instructors as
major factors in helping them express ideas and approaches.

The
Creative Process

But creativity demands more than what
has been called a “softly fascinating environment” to express itself. After
all, creativity is more than a freedom to range wide with our thinking, or as
Walt Whitman held, “For freest action form’d under the laws divine.” To foster
creativity in our students we must develop a process by which to coax that
creative impulse from them, then shape it in discipline- specific ways. That process necessitates our students
learning certain skills key to creativity, skills often not taught in
traditional classrooms.

Goal-Orientationis
important because students, inventors, and even artistic geniuses rarely have
eureka moments wherein a bolt from the blue suddenly strikes them and they
write an epic, paint a masterpiece, or invent the next i-Product. As a wise
person once said (maybe it was Bill Cosby), “You can’t make Jell-O without a
mold.” Whether it’s a 500-word theme or a twenty-minute speech, give students a
goal to produce.

Brainstorming
occurs when you ask students to generate
individually and collectively as many ideas as they possibly can in a defined
period of time. Quantity is the goal, not quality; all ideas initially live.

Piggybacking
often occurs right after brainstorming. Students are asked collectively or
individually to build upon an idea, such as those just generated. David Kord
Murray has written an excellent book called Borrowing Brilliance (2009), where
he points out that so many great inventions occurred because someone stood
on the shoulders of a previous giant.Darwin’s theory of evolution comes out of Lyell’s geology
and economic theory. The i-Pod needed the Walkman to precede it. “The secret of
creativity,” Einstein believed, “is knowing how to hide your sources.”

Perception Shiftis
the ability to look at something from a different angle and see something new.
For instance, you are doing a cross- word puzzle and for a four-letter word you
see the clue “First place.” Athletically inclined, you immediately try to fill
in “GOLD,” but it doesn’t fit and you find yourself stuck. Perception shift is
the skill of being able to back away from the object/clue and see another
possibility. Maybe the four-letter word is seen through the prism of biology
and you write “CELL” or “WOMB”; maybe you also have a religious side and fill
in “EDEN.”

Combining/Synthesis
is the process of connecting the dots or finding what Henry James called “the
figure in the carpet.” Intelligence analysts look at threat analyses from all
over the globe to try to locate a pattern. Literary and music critics try to
discover motifs in etudes and epics. Divergent thinking, as illustrated by
these examples, demands more than memorization. In fact, it often demands
applying, analyzing, and evaluating—the higher-order skills of Bloom’s
taxonomy—as necessary precedents for creating.

Recognizing
and Pursuing Glimmers is a highly metacognitive skill.
Students have to be taught to listen to others and themselves. For instance,
when we were typing this article, we did not want to outline it beforehand.
Instead, as we typed the first draft and while we were on one idea,
another—FLOW—would suddenly come to mind. Rather than concentrate solely on the
concept we were putting into a paragraph, we would just stick the “glimmer” or
the embryo of another idea right into the text. As a result, we wouldn’t forget
that we wanted to include something on . . .

Flow
is how cognition experts describe what athletes
experience when they suddenly hit seven three-point shots in a row.
Psychologists tell us that when it happens we are in intense concentration upon
a subject.

Why teach creativity now? Because we
can’t afford not to.
References

• Anderson, L., et al., eds. 2001. A
Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing—A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy
of Educational Objectives. Boston: Addison Wesley Longman Inc.
• Azzam, A. 2009. Why Creativity Now? A
Conversation with Sir Ken Robinson. Educational Leadership 67(1): 22-26.
• Florida, R. 2002. The Rise of the
Creative Class. New York: Perseus Book Group.
• Kern, B. May 18, 2010. What Chief
Executives Really Want. Bloomberg Businessweek. http:// .businessweek.com/innovate/content/”>www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/
may2010/id20100517_190221.htm. Accessed August 18, 2010.
• McWilliam, E. 2008. The Creative
Workforce. Sydney, UNSW Press.
• Murray, D. 2009. Borrowing Brilliance.
New York: Gotham Books.
• Peter Hart Research Associates, Inc.
December 28, 2006. How Should Colleges Prepare Students to Succeed in Today’s
Global Economy? AACU. http:// .aacu.org/advocacy/leap/documents/”>www.aacu.org/advocacy/leap/documents/
re8097abcombined.pdf. Accessed August 19, 2010.
• Tharp, T. 2003. The Creative Habit.
New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ten Lessons
the Arts Teach
By Elliot Eisner Found at: .naea-reston.org/tenlessons.html”>http://www.naea-reston.org/tenlessons.html Copyright © 2005 National Art
Education Association. All rights reserved.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts teach children to make good judgments about
qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum
in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather
than rules that prevail.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts teach children that problems can have more than
one solution
and that questions can have
more than one answer.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is
that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem
solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but
change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the
ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of
the work as it unfolds.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their
literal form nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our
language do not define the limits of our cognition.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts teach students that small differences can have
large effects.
The arts traffic in
subtleties.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts teach students to think through and within a
material.
All art forms employ some
means through which images become real.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to
disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic
capacities to find the words that will
do the job.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no
other source
and through such
experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
.gif” alt=”*”> The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to
the young
what adults
believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and
the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows.
(pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications.

From
the Oregon Alliance for Arts Education .lclark.edu/~dbecker/oaae.htm”>http://www.lclark.edu/~dbecker/oaae.htm
.gif” alt=”*”> The Arts contribute
significantly to every student’s capacity to learn, to think, to create.
.gif” alt=”*”> In all cultures, the arts
are the language that communicates the diversity and universality of the human
experience.
10 Reasons for
Supporting Arts Education

The Arts develop
higher-order thinking skills.
The Arts can increase
cooperation, tolerance of diverse values and viewpoints, and understanding
of cultures past and present.
The Arts improve
self-esteem, a major factor in learning difficulties, the dropout rate,
teenage suicide, violence, substance abuse and crime.
The Arts access a
variety of human intelligences.
The Arts enhance
student creativity and increase creative thinking and problem-solving
abilities.
The Arts develop skills
that prepare students for the workforce.
The Arts contribute to
economic development.
The Arts enhance the
learning environment.
The Arts assist in
developing public images in the corporate world.
The Arts in the schools and community can
affect new business in the area.

What the Arts
can provide: A rationale for the arts in prevention from the Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Americans For the Arts.artsusa.org/”>http://www.artsusa.org/

.gif” alt=”*”> Education: The arts offer an alternative for success and respectability for
students who struggle academically.

.gif” alt=”*”> Access to Success: Art making allows success for people who have been defined as
failures. Artists show that struggle is
a necessary part of succeeding. The
process allows an individual to succeed in just the doing. The product of the struggle, the art, is a
self-expression that “society” views as valuable.

.gif” alt=”*”> Ownership and Self-Empowerment: The arts provide an expanded view of what is
possible.

.gif” alt=”*”> New Eyes/New Images: Artistic accomplishment can redefine a person’s
self-image and build new bridges to families and loved ones (and community).

.gif” alt=”*”> Jobs and Increased Employability: Arts training offers new, nontraditional
career options in a wide range of arts and arts allied fields. The arts can teach valuable work-related
skills such as logic, organization, flexibility, insight, creative teamwork,
patience and ability to discipline the imagination to solve difficult problems,
as well as the knowledge that “failure” is a critical element of
discovery and learning.

.gif” alt=”*”> Improved Social Problem-Solving Skills: The arts can improve the
ability to: a) generate multiple and effective solutions; b) understand and
accommodate the perspectives of others; and c) control impulses.

.gif” alt=”*”> Improved Communication and Socialization: The arts can improve
communication skills and provide a safe medium for practicing and rediscovering
social interaction skills.

.gif” alt=”*”> Cost/Benefits: The arts are a low-cost, high-touch, non-threatening intervention
that has produced measurable results.
Relatedly, as students gain expertise, they become less dependent on
frequent teacher input and become more self-sufficient learners.

.gif” alt=”*”> Mentorship: The arts embody a teaching practice that has been handed down for
millennia. The attention and high
expectations of the mentor-artist has the capacity to move young people out of
the cycle of self-defeat.

.gif” alt=”*”> Making Sense/Coping Tools: The arts supply a constructive outlet for dealing
with confusion, frustration and anger in a chaotic and unpredictable
environment.

.gif” alt=”*”> Getting Through – Youth to Youth: The performing, visual, literary and media
arts are primary mediums of communication for the trans-community, trans-global
youth culture. Arts based educational
messages about critical thinking and making healthy choices created and
delivered by peers have a significantly greater chance of being heard and
making impact on young audiences.

(OPTIONAL)
Advocacy—
In a 2001 Monograph, the Americans for the Arts analysis of
a national survey stated that “an overwhelming majority of the American public
believes in the value and importance of arts education to a child’s
development. However, many parents are satisfied with the amount of arts
education their children receive….leading to a sense of complacency about the
need to support arts education. More
over the survey showed that most respondents do not know how to get involved in
advocating for their child’s arts education.” .artsusa.org/library/ARTS086/html/3.html”>http://pubs.artsusa.org/library/ARTS086/html/3.html

A few sites to get started . . . .

.artsedge.kennedy-center.org/”>http://www.artsedge.kennedy-center.org/ Go to “CONNECT”—for articles and advocacy

.naea-reston.org/research_advocacy.html”>http://www.naea-reston.org/research_advocacy.html

.artsusa.org/”>http://www.artsusa.org/