HT to Elliot Eisner for putting together this list of reasons of what our children are really learning when we expose them to the arts. If you have time you can read the entire presentation here:
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.
Far too often, in schools as well as in homeschools, the arts are often the first subjects to be cut from the curriculum. As my last post illustrates, I'm just as guilty as anyone, although I have to admit I have included them somewhat in the past. All of my boys have attended art classes now and then, and all have had private art lessons with their grandmother who is an incredible artist. I have even taught them one or two years of piano each, and art and music appreciation lessons have always been attempted somewhat (though not always appreciated!).
Another reason for my renewed vigor with including the arts in my own homeschool has come from the overwhelming evidence that including them can positively impact other academic areas. Did you know that more music majors are accepted into medical schools than biochemistry majors? Involvement in the arts is indicative of higher achievement scores overall, as many studies prove. One study shows that students with four years of high school arts classes have higher SAT scores than students with one-half year or less.
Okay, I'm convinced!
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