My oldest child takes after my husband in almost every way, including the fact that he doesn’t like to write or any form of art. Writing, we have persuaded him, is essential. Art isn’t as obvious.
Not long ago, art in education was thought to be a luxury, and it was cut from the curriculum when standardized testing came in because the students needed more time to be taught how to pass these tests. However, there is more and more research showing why art is such an essential part of education.
“The arts” includes more than “art” and for now I’m just focusing on art, the drawing, painting, sticking pieces of paper together, cutting, sculpture making, etc.
It has been proven that art enhances cognitive abilities. It improves critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities and creativity. Art encourages students of all ages to think outside the box. It also plays a crucial role in emotional development, and we all know that the modern-day child needs help in that department. Art provides a safe outlet for emotions. Perhaps a child is feeling angry and would get in trouble for a sudden outburst, but they could scribble on a piece of paper, or simply focus their mind somewhere else. Spending time being creative contributes to improved self-awareness and empathy.
Another way art helps is in social development. Students can work together and learn team work and how to appreciate the contribution of others. So much of schooling has become focused on individual scores and passing an excessive amount of standardized tests when the truth is, there isn’t such a thing as a standardized child.
In addition to all these, numerous studies have indicated a correlation between art and improved academic performance. Students engaged in the arts have higher scores on these standardized tests. Suggesting that skills acquired through artistic endeavors, such as discipline, focus and attention to detail, contribute positively to overall academic success.
It’s easy to see with all these things that art is essential to a well-rounded education. Yet with a four-day week becoming more popular, many schools are cutting art from the curriculum. Looking at the history of schools in this area, their education was much more related to real life skills the pupils would need in the future, and creative ways of teaching them.
I wasn’t good at art, nor did I particularly enjoy it for reasons I’ll go into shortly, but in my experience art helped so many kids. Especially those children who had learning difficulties, shone in art. When math and science were a big struggle, they could do well in art, often better than their peers.
If art hadn’t been there they could have been forgiven for thinking they were bad at everything. For students whose minds are filled with tests and scores, numbers and verbs, having an hour to sit down and do something completely different was refreshing.
Although I would describe myself as a creative person, and I have dabbled in painting and drawing, I am by no means good at it. I didn’t enjoy art class in school for the simple reason that I wasn’t allowed to be creative. We had to do things “in the style of” another artist. Or something prescribed by the teacher so specifically that you couldn’t even use alternate colors. I can guarantee that famous artists didn’t gain their style by trying to copy someone else!
So why do schools think art is such a low priority? Why don’t they see the benefit of giving the students, especially at a young age, some time to be creative and do something different from the constant drilling in of information they need to pass the next test.
I heard someone say once that tests don’t tell you how good the student is, they measure how well they can take a test, which is so true.
In a world where we say things like “young people these days are out of control,” “why can’t the young people do things we used to do,” “why do young people act like…”, we seem to be missing the vital questions; such as “what have we changed in their education”, “what has changed in society”, “what new pressures do we put on the young people of today that we were not under”.
The young people didn’t have a collective meeting where they all decided to be different from generations previous. They can’t be saddled with 100 percent of the blame. Our generation has changed something, done something, society has accepted something, or not accepted something that has changed the way young people think and act.
Perhaps putting more emphasis on creativity, and putting fun back into learning is where to start?
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