Findings about Arts in Learning and Education

Jim Reinhard, Chair, Art Department

North Allegheny Schools

 

Finding 1: Learning in and through the arts provide for the development of particular cognitive processes or habits of mind that are transferable and essential for success across the curriculum. 

Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

By Elliot Eisner

  1. 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.

  2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

  3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.  One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

  7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.  All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

 

Finding 2: The emerging economy places a premium on creative thought processes; fluent, flexible, original, elaborate, and divergent thinking, that are particularly developed in the context of the art classroom.

Best selling Business Author Daniel Pink in his newest book, A Whole New Mind (Riverhead Books, 2005), describes the forces of the economy that reinforce the ascendancy of habits of mind and cognitive skills that are associated with right brain function and are cultivated particularly by learning in the arts.

His articles on business and technology have appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and other publications.. He has also worked as an aide to United States Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich and an economic policy staffer in the United States Senate.

 

Sir Ken Robinson led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. His report, All Our Future: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to huge acclaim. Profile http://www.principalvoices.com/voices/ken-robinson-bio.html

 

Finding 3:  Arts infused curricula drive achievement across the curriculum.

Nick Rabkin Director, Chicago Center for Arts Policy, Columbia College Chicago. In his book, Putting the Arts Back in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century (Columbia College Chicago, 2004), Nick Rabkin chronicles how pairing the arts with academics raises test scores and gets Chicago kids excited about learning.

 

 

 

Finding 4: The arts are specified as core curriculum in the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) and in the Pennsylvania Chapter 4 regulations.

Every high school student is required by Pennsylvania Chapter 4 Regulations to meet the Pennsylvania Academic Standards in the Arts through planned instruction in grades 9 through 12. The planned instruction in any North Allegheny High School Visual Art elective is designed to enable the student to achieve proficiency in all of the Pennsylvania Academic Standards in the Arts.  As with any discipline, individual students may require additional instruction for remediation or enrichment. A similar approach may be possible in Music and Family and Consumer Science.   Several existing courses in theatre and planned instruction in English and Television may serve to meet the theatre standards.  Dance standards may be met with planned instruction in the Physical Education classes.

 

 

CHAPTER 4 (6-265) ANNEX A JANUARY 16, 1999 PAGE 12

§ 4.23. High school education.

(a) Instruction in the high school program shall focus on the development of abilities needed to succeed in work

and advanced education through planned instruction.

(b) Curriculum and instruction in the high school program shall provide all students opportunities to develop the

skills of analysis, synthesis, evaluation and problem-solving, and information literacy.

(c) Planned instruction in the following areas shall be provided to every student in the high school program.

Planned instruction may be provided as separate course or as an instructional unit within a course or other interdisciplinary instructional activity:

 

(1) Language arts, integrating reading, writing, listening, speaking, literature and grammar.

(2) Mathematics, including problem-solving, mathematical reasoning, algebra, geometry and concepts of

calculus.

(3) Science and technology, including participation in hands-on experiments and at least one laboratory

science chosen from life sciences, earth and space sciences, chemical sciences, physical sciences and

agricultural sciences.

(4) Social studies (civics and government, economics, geography and history including the history and

cultures of the United States, the Commonwealth and the world).

(5) Environment and ecology, including scientific, social, political and economic aspects of ecology.

(6) The arts, including art, music, dance, theatre and humanities.

(7) Use of applications of microcomputers and software, including word processing, database,

spreadsheets and telecommunications; and information skills, including access to traditional and

electronic information sources, computer use and research.

(8) Health, safety and physical education, including instruction in concepts and skills which affect

personal, family and community health and safety, nutrition, physical fitness, movement concepts,

motor skill development, safety in physical activity settings, and the prevention of alcohol, chemical

and tobacco abuse.

(9) Family and consumer science, including principles of consumer behavior and basic knowledge of child health and child care skills.

 

(d) The following planned instruction shall be made available to every student in the high school program:

(1) Vocational-technical education under §§ 4.3 and 4.31-4.35 (relating to definitions; and vocational

education).

(2) Business education, including courses to assist students in developing business and information

technology skills.

(3) World languages under § 4.25 (relating to languages).

(4) Technology education, incorporating technological problem-solving and the impacts of technology

on individuals and society.

 

Conclusion

 

Arts content and skills are essential learning for a comprehensive education for all students K through 12.  Arts learning develops unique cognitive skills that serve students in their personal and professional per suits.  The arts are core curriculum as defined at the state and national level.