WHY THE ARTS MATTER

 

 

Why the Arts Matter

The VAPA Framework outlines very specific ways in which educators can conceptualize arts program development, curriculum design and implementation across the grades. It provides, through its guiding principles, some strong stances regarding how such programs should serve California students across the grades. It puts forth rationale that is deliberately arts-specific. The VAPA  Framework assumes that the arts are essential and core and does not spend time on providing rationale or advocacy statements for the inclusion of the arts in the school curriculum. All of that being said, in many places under trying conditions, educators, school board members and community people who are highly supportive of the arts are turning to some very broad-based arguments in favor of the arts and what they bring to the learning experience of students. Many are interesting, pragmatic “value-added” arguments in support of including the arts in school curricula at all levels. Arguments can revolve around the more broadbased “competencies” that have come to be associated with participation in dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts. These competencies are sometimes described as “habits of mind” and are put forward by arts educators, academics, decision and policymakers and, recently, the business community. Some value-added arguments put forward in the past few years make claims about the contributions the arts can make to enhanced academic performance. These various points of view are discussed in the rest of this section. Habits of Mind

Arts educators have always paid attention to changes in educational philosophy and effective instructional innovations, particularly when such changes are driven by research about how children learn. A wide range of learning advantages through study of the arts is generally identified and validated in such studies. Arts educators and all educators who understand the value of the arts in the life of our students, also pay attention to broader trends and shifts in thinking that support the view that the arts are, or should be, part of the core curriculum.

Some of these viewpoints on the value of the arts in education are rooted in broad studies of teaching and learning in education. In 2000, Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick submitted proposed theories on “habits of mind” that identified 16 dispostions that incline a person to use thinking tools and strategies that assist them in achieving success when faced with problems or dilemmas where solutions are not readily apparent. These habits of mind are rooted in a modern view of intelligence that maintains that a critical attribute of intellegence is not only having information, but also knowing how to act on it. Habits of mind that contribute to this intellegence are: persisting, thinking and communicating with clarity and precision, managing impulsivity, gathering data through the senses, listening with understanding and empathy, creating, imaging and innovating, thinking flexibly, responding with wonderment and awe, thinking about thinking (metacognition), taking responsible risks, striving for accuracy, finding humor, questioning and posing problems, thinking independently, applying past knowledge to new situations, and remaining open to continuous learning. Employing these habits of mind requires developing certain patterns of intellectual behavior that produces powerful results and are a composite of many skills, attitudes, and inclinations including value, inclination, sensitivity, capability, and committment. Theodore Sizer, art history professor at Yale University, dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, studied educational reform in high schools, and also supported these habits of mind, and promoted “habits” of perspective, analysis, imagination, empathy, communication, committment, humility, and joy. These studies have led to other current research related to teaching and learning in the arts disciplines.

Studio Habits of Mind

Current Harvard Graduate School of Education researchers, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, have also been engaged in research on the “Studio Thinking Project” which focuses on visual artist’s studio habits of mind and their implications for the classroom. This project funded by The J. Paul Getty Trust, the Ahmanson Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education, is in phase 3 of three phases of study. As developmental psychologists, Winner and Hetland’s research in phase 1 studied expert teaching in the arts, analyzed what was taught and what teachers intended students to learn. In the course of their research, they discovered that teachers were teaching eight important and potentially generalizable habits of mind: the dispositions to observe, envision, express, reflect, stretch and explore, engage and persist, develop craft, and understand the art world. They also discovered 3 classroom structures that teachers used to teach the eight categories of learning-demonstration/lecture, students working, and the critique process.The second phase of their study has been an analysis of learning in the visual arts and will result in an assessment tool for assessing Studio Thinking in the eight Studio Habits of Mind.

Phase 3 of their current work, is in documenting how 15 elementary and middle school teachers in disadvantaged public schools in Oakland learn to use the Studio Thinking Framework, in conjunction with the Teaching For Understanding Framework and other Harvard Project Zero frameworks. The purpose of this study is to design arts interventions to reach underachieving students, with the hope of instilling in these students some of the studio habits of mind.This suite of studies will ultimately provide teachers of the visual arts, specialists, generalists, and researchers, valuable tools for further investigation of arts learning. This initiative was described in the March 2008  issue of the School Administrator and has been shared among the country’s school superintendents with the author’s hopes of “changing the conversation about the arts in this country.”

Daniel Pink: A Whole New Mind

Daniel Pink, in his book, A Whole New Mind:Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (2005), states that we are moving from the logical, linear, computer-based Information Age to a “Conceptual Age” in our economy and society, one where “creativity, innovation, empathy and big-picture thinking will be rewarded and recognized.” The subtitle of the book is “Why right-brainers will rule the future.” Not only arts advocates and educators have picked up on this theory, but also those in the business community. Pink says that MBAs are a dime a dozen and that the most valued degree in business right now is the MFA—the Masters of Fine Arts degree. This major shift in business thinking comes because jobs that those with MBAs used to do have been outsourced and business leaders have recognized that their biggest competitive edge is their ability to produce products that are “physically beautiful and emotionally compelling.” Think about the brand new iPad™, for example. Certainly left-brain skills must be maintained, but six right brain aptitudes must be mastered as well, according to Pink.

Pink’s “six senses” include design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. Design is critical to every business product so that it is more user-friendly and beautiful. No wonder business is now hiring people from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cranbrook Academy of Art as often as engineers. “Story,” Pink describes as “context enriched by emotion.” Certainly this is the essence of theatre. Facts are there for free, but “story” will remain essential. It is the emotional element that makes information stick. A recent story in the Slate on-line magazine makes this point very convincingly. Sociologists and social anthropologists from Harvard to Berkeley believe that The Wire, the highly acclaimed HBO TV drama series, has something to teach their students about poverty, class, bureaucracy and the social ramifications of economic change. Asked why he was teaching a class around a TV drama, Harvard sociologist  William J. Wilson said the show “makes the concerns of sociologists immediate in a way no work of sociology he knows ever has.” Wilson said, “Although The Wire is fiction, not documentary, its depiction of the systemic urban inequity that constitutes the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling than that of any published study, including my own.” (Story appeared in Slate, written by Drake Bennett, 3/24/10).

Pink uses the metaphor of a “symphony” to describe his next sense. Symphony is about the power of relationships between people and ideas. The “conceptual age” will need those who can see connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and who are able to multi-task. These will be the people who can apply their knowledge of music to business concepts or mathematics, or who can take their sense of ensemble into the business world.  This may be obvious to music educators who understand that students who are part of a band or orchestra or choir must, by necessity, learn to collaborate and understand relationships, both musical and personal. The cast of a musical or play knows this idea well. Next comes empathy, which is considered essential as an attribute of leadership, which will be in even higher demand in the future. The arts have always provided views into the emotional world of the artist through choreography or visual images or musical compositions or theatrical productions. In asking students to search for meaning in the arts forms, an empathetic connection between the artist and the audience is found.

Although Pink generally connects his ideas about the necessity of play to pure laughter and to video games (which he takes quite seriously), teachers of young students understand play as one of the purest and most basic ways that children learn. Children explore their world and their feelings and make meaning by pretending (later to be drama), moving to rhythm and music, learning patterns and rhymes to music, and making things, especially visual images through drawing, painting and constructions. The Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education (which will be discussed in a later section) uses all these aspects of play as the basis for all their learning activities with children. The problem in education is that we remove play as a pedagogical strategy way too soon. We shouldn’t remove it at all! Pink asserts it is necessary all along the way.

Finally, in his list of six senses for the conceptual age, is “meaning.” Pink says that as a society we are on a “high energy search for meaning,” or the basic desire to find purpose and meaning in one’s life. Certainly the arts have always been about expanding, focusing and finding meaning, and making meaning through the medium of dance or music, visual image or theatrical event. The job of the arts is to represent meaning beyond words, beyond number and to touch the emotions as well as the intellect. Viktor Lowenfield, a noted art theorist and practitioner from the 1950s, introduced this theory and viewed the art process in a global context, encouraging art educators to “fan the flames of the human spirit.” He felt that art contributed to a child’s creative and mental growth, and included facets such as facilitating self-expression, promoting independence, encouraging flexible thinking, and facilitating social interactions, as well as developing aesthetic awareness.

 

21st Century Learning Framework

Recently support has come from the Partnership of 21st Century Skills, a national organization that advocates for the “integration of skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication into the core of academic subjects that include English/ Language Arts, world languages, the arts, mathematics, economics, science, social studies and geography.” The member organizations are a “who’s who” of large innovative businesses such as Apple, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, and educational partners Language Arts, world languages, the arts, mathematics, economics, science, social studies and geography.” The member organizations are a “who’s who” of large innovative businesses such as Apple, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, and educational partners including the Educational Testing Service (ETS), The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and the National Education Association (NEA).

The Partnership of 21st Century Skills is a response to the belief that “The current and future health of America’s 21st century economy depends directly on how broadly and deeply Americans reach a new level of literacy – 21st century literacy, that includes strong academic skills, thinking, reasoning, teamwork skills and proficiency in using technology.” The approach is intended “to serve as a bridge across public, business, industry, and educational sectors through common definitions and contexts for skills most needed by students and workers in the emerging digital age.” The bottom line is to prepare students for the world beyond the classroom. The 21st Century skills are to be integrated “within the context of rigorous academic standards,” and assessed through multiple measures.

Many of the so-called 21st century themes—learning and innovation skills, information, media and technology skills and life and career skills acknowledge and build upon the broad-based competencies discussed earlier—are certainly possible outcomes of engagement in one or more of the arts disciplines. Especially relevant to the arts are the skills associated with creativity and innovation, including working creatively with others, the critical-thinking and problem solving skills, the global cultural literacy skills and the media literacy skills that include all elements of new media, mostly visual and auditory, that can influence beliefs and behavior. The approach also values many of the “habits of mind” identified by Lois Hetland as outcomes of work in the studio (in the broadest understanding of the term) such as flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, and working effectively and responsibly in diverse teams. Taken as a whole, and considering its current influence in today’s economic climate, ideas set forth by the 21st Century initiative are bound to be helpful in crafting a very powerful value-added rationale for the centrality of the arts.

Not everyone is taken with this approach. Some education scholars are challenging the ideas, saying that the 21st Century Skills agenda is “taking a dangerous bite out of precious classroom time that could be better spend learning deep, essential content.” (USA Today article on 21st Century Learning Skills, 3/15/09). However, recently a Massachusetts task force concluded, “straight academic content is no longer enough to help students compete” and urged the state education commissioner to add 21st century skills to the curriculum and teacher training. All of this seems to go back to Eisner’s ideas about the “visions and versions” of arts education that will be the focus of the next section of this guide. Eisner says we assume that “the aims to which a field is directed are given by the field itself: mathematics has aims defined by mathematics, scientific studies aims defined by science…But this is only partly so. The aims to which a field is directed is not just the result of judgments of ‘visionary minds’ and personal arguments, but of the social forces that create conditions that make certain ideas congenial to the times.” And what could be a more timely and “congenial” rationale for arts education than their essential role in developing the content and competencies held to be vital for our students, and thus, the country to have the competitive advantage in our 21st century global society?

 

Using the Arts to Promote Academic Performance

Arguments in favor of including the arts as part of a comprehensive education come in and out of favor and usually say something about the times in which we live. The rationale of using the arts to promote academic performance has become highly popular over the past few years. It seeks to justify arts education by showing that the arts contribute to boosting academic performance in the so-called basics. The prominence of this argument shows in many ways what it is that is valued, and that is certainly academic performance in today’s world of high-stakes testing. The claim is that the more arts courses students take, the better they will do in school. It’s “the arts can make you smarter” approach. This idea doesn’t come from nowhere. There is data, from large-scale surveys, that does show that high school students who take a course in one or more of the arts get significantly higher SAT scores. Many other claims linking academic achievement and the arts have been made.

James Catterall’s Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic Achievement and Social Development 2002 explored much of this territory. The book is a guide to research on learning in the visual arts, music, drama, dance, and programs enlisting multiple art forms. Scholars summarize more than 60 studies and outline the contributions to knowledge of each. In addition, two expert researchers comment on each study. The book offers a concluding chapter on general issues surrounding the transfer of learning from the arts. According to Catterall’s own summary of the book, “The work traces the many skills which the arts touch and cultivate—skills that show up as outcomes in more than one art form: such as literacy, mathematics, and science skills along with student motivation and social competence.”

Another take on Critical Links comes from its insights regarding for whom the links between the arts and human development are in fact the most critical. Caterall says, “I refer here to a clear focus in many of the compendium’s studies on children at risk —the millions of children in America’s urban centers, and children in poverty across the nation.” Catterall characterizes the implications of the book as unambiguous: “The arts contribute in many ways to academic achievement, student engagement, motivation, and social skills. Notions that the arts are frivolous add-ons to a serious curriculum couldn’t be farther from the truth. While education in the arts is no magic bullet for what ails many schools, the arts warrant a place in the curriculum because of their intimate ties to most everything we want for our children and schools. Critical Links identifies many arrows pointing in positive developmental directions.

Critical Links puts forth a very attractive argument in favor of arts education and it is clear why this is so. There have been so many efforts to improve school performance over the years and yet there has been no clear or sustainable progress. Educators may be forgiven for thinking they have tried everything, so why not the arts? Arts educators themselves find this arts and academic achievement argument attractive, if for no other reason than the attention it commands, especially after they have been marginalized for so many years.

Critical Links was bound to produce some pushback from other researchers and arts education theorists. The Dana Foundation published Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition in March of 2008. This report questions the research methods of prior studies, and warns about the need to distinguish between correlation and causation. The main part of the Dana study consists of the research of neuroscientists on very particular correlations between study in various arts forms and certain kinds of behavior. Its findings are narrow and very cautious; very cautious as the title of the introduction to the document suggests: “Arts and Cognition, Findings Hint at Relationships.” (Italics added). The study certainly does indicate that the question of why arts training has been associated with higher academic performance is an important one and worth of further study. Dana suggests many areas of study to pursue in the future, some extensions of research into the whole area of the arts ability to enlarge cognitive capacities beyond what is learned in and through the arts taught for their own sake.

Eisner, too, warns about the potential problems of using the “arts and enhanced academic performance” argument if the data do not clearly and unambiguously support such assumptions. He asks, “What happens to the reasons for a field’s place in the schools if research shows that such claims are overblown, or that evidence to support them is weak, or that other approaches to boosting academic test scores are more efficient?” What, indeed. On one of the national news broadcasts, there was a story about how a district had found a strong relationship between being active—exercise, and physical movement in PE classes and improved attention and test scores for high school students. It makes one wonder if PE is the next “arts” in this pursuit to find something to boost academic performance beyond the academics themselves.

It is likely, however, that the arts will, in the long run, be shown to have a significant relationship to cognitive development that can’t help but improve performance in many aspects of schooling, especially in areas like motivation, attention, focus, short- and long-term memory, sequential learning, observational skills, and the manipulation of information. The Dana Foundation suggests that there be much more hard research in these areas. The arts are, after all, cognitive. That is not in question. For all of the “broader-based competencies” discussed in this section, arts education should, as Eisner says, “Give pride of place to what is distinctive about the arts. Arts programs should try to foster the growth of artistic intelligence.”

So why do the arts matter? They probably matter for all the preceding reasons, rationales and arguments discussed in this section. Those that are totally artscentric and those that are a large, big-vision construct about where our global culture is headed.

The following charts provide information discussed in this section and throughout the guide.

The “Why the Arts Matter” table brings together a number of rationales from educators and organizations about the value of arts education. The views expressed are based primarily (but not entirely) upon the intrinsic value of the arts—on “arts for arts sake,” or, as Eisner puts it, about rationales that give “pride of place to what is distinctive about the arts.” In this chart, these reasons for valuing arts education have been placed under the five VAPA content strands. The Connections, Relationships and Applications strand here has been widened to include what Hetland calls “habits of mind” associated with study of the arts, which is a reasonable extension of the ideas of this strand.

It is interesting to note that the last two, Americans for the Arts, and Eloquent Evidence, begin to shift toward arts advocacy statements and as they do, they tend to emphasize the more “broad based” or “value added” justifications which dominate the next chart, “The Value of the Arts from the Perspective of Broader Learning Outcomes.”

This chart shifts the perspective from an “arts-centric” point of view to one that looks at bigger themes and concerns, many embedded in current ideas about the thinking and the skills that will be necessary to succeed in today’s global society. The ideas that have been included here are those that are most relevant to arts education and not the complete version of several of the entries. The descriptors of the VAPA content strands are included on this chart to remind us of the broader meaning of each. A sixth (and unoffical) “strand” called “Capacities and Habits of Mind” has been added here, distinct from the connections strand. In several entries, large, essential ideas are relevant across all of the strands.