Should all schools provide education in the arts, including music, art, and drama?
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Article 1: Arts Education
Issues and Topics of Discussion in Arts Education
One of the major issues in arts education is the balance between arts-specific education courses and arts integration. Examples of arts integration are visits from a teaching artist—such as a professional dancer, musician, actor, or visual artist from the community or from an arts organization. Another example of arts integration is when the school music or art teacher collaborates with a classroom teacher to provide learning opportunities in both an art form and at least one other content area such as math, science, history, or language arts.
Arts education would ideally include both arts-specific curriculum and arts integration. Students would learn the specific concepts, skills, and techniques of an art form while also understanding the relationship between that art form and the larger academic content fields.
Arts education—particularly in large urban areas—has been profoundly affected by school partnerships with local arts organizations and artists in the community. Partnerships help schools by offering students access to community performances or artists-in-residence. Field trips to museums and other similar experiences in the artistic and cultural world help inspire students. Ideal arts education partnerships foster collaboration between the community and the school; they also involve parents and families.
Arts educators often discuss the balance between offering arts programs for the especially talented arts student as opposed to arts education for all students. Competitive and selective schools help to identify promising students who may become professional musicians, visual artists, actors, or dancers. General arts education offerings and arts integration programs afford access to all students.
Some schools—again, particularly those in large urban districts—are designated as arts magnet schools or schools of the arts because they have more-extensive programs for students interested in the arts. These schools typically have entrance requirements that include auditions for performers and portfolios of work for visual artists.
Arts education in the United States has been consistently challenged by restrictive funding. The arts were identified as a core subject in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB; signed into law in 2002). This designation qualified arts instruction for federal grants and other support from both the Department of Education and the NEA (both arms of the federal government). Nevertheless, NCLB currently requires schools to report student achievement test results for only reading and mathematics. There are many reports of decreasing instruction time for such subjects as the arts. Standardized testing at the district and state level has further restricted time spent on the arts; students often use that time to prepare for high-stakes tests.
Article 2: Does Arts Education Matter?
A “Zombie” Idea?
Like the Mozart effect, claims that learning the arts (music, art, theater, or any arts) promote brain development, learning, and academic achievement are often repeated—yet seldom withstand research scrutiny. A team from Harvard University (Hetland & Winner, 2001) performed 10 separate meta-analyses of 188 studies testing the claim that studying the arts promotes academic improvement and came up largely empty-handed. They found: no cause-and-effect link between studying the arts and academic indicators; no link between an arts-rich education and creativity; mixed results for learning music and high mathematics achievement; no significant link between learning music and reading skills; and no convincing link between visual arts and reading achievement.
Nonetheless, claims that the arts promote other forms of learning persist—a zombie idea that keeps coming back to life no matter how often it’s put to rest. So, does that mean arts education isn’t valuable? Not at all. Rather, the persistence of these claims may reflect the fact that we ask arts education to do something we seldom ask of other forms of education: justify itself in light of its effects on other fields. How often do we, for example, ask athletic directors to prove that playing baseball leads to better math skills or improves verbal skills?
Works Cited
"Arts Education." Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 86, no. 8, Apr. 2005, pp. 601-604.
"Does Arts Education Matter?" Educational Leadership, vol. 61, no. 2, Oct. 2003, pp. 20-24.