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Flourish Online Magazine | Winter 2007 |
Unexpendable: Why Arts Education is Essential for Children
By Lauren Highfill
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A beautiful bronze statue playfully reflects the sunlight outside the front entrance of Still Elementary in Powder Springs. This sculpture isn’t of the president or an important Georgian; it’s a depiction of two young children, sitting close together on a bench, both of their heads bent over a book.
Resulting from seven teachers’ desire to have public art on campus, the statue aptly represents the importance of arts education today. After years of legislation that has forced several schools to cut their arts programs, many people involved in the school system are now realizing that the arts serve a greater purpose for students beyond what they can learn in traditional classroom settings.
Barbara Hammond, program coordinator for music education at Kennesaw State University and former faculty fellow in character education at the Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics and Character, understands the role that arts play in a child’s education. “There are multiple kinds of literacy,” says Hammond, “and reading music is one of them. Studying the literacy of music has astounding effects and amplifies a child’s learning ability in reading and other areas.”
In addition to complementing children’s learning, education in the arts broadens students’ understanding of the world. “We don’t live our lives compartmentally, so we want children to appreciate the entire spectrum of education. For example, students may be learning about the history of the era before and during World War II, and can also connect the roots of big band, jazz, and film music such as in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ among other important global events.”
Hammond is keenly aware of the state of art and music education today. In addition to strong connections to the Music Educators National Conference, she has developed many partnerships with teachers and schools in Cobb County. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Marietta City’s Hickory Hills Elementary School, which has an arts-integrated approach.
“Slowly spiraling out of a reduction to some arts programs, which was a knee-jerk reaction to the No Child Left Behind Act, educators and administrators are beginning to realize that good arts education programs strengthen literacy across the curriculum and increase test scores,” said Hammond.
Connecting art and learning
Today, arts education is thriving in the Cobb County School District, as seen at Still Elementary where connections between the different learning areas are encouraged. “We collaborate with the other teachers to connect our art and music projects with what the kids are learning in their English or social studies classrooms,” said Lynn
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Art education major Carolynn Stoddard (center) working with students in Lynn Duhn's (right) art class at Still . |
Duhn, art education specialist at Still.
“For example, we’re studying Native American art by creating bravery bead necklaces. The students will come into the class and say, ‘Hey, we’re learning about Native Americans in social studies!’” This type of faculty collaboration gives students the opportunity to create a deeper meaning and connection to the topics they are learning about through the arts and through other subjects.
The merging of art and traditional classroom learning is something that “we as arts educators have to be more vocal about,” said Duhn. “It’s a challenge for arts educators to change people’s perceptions of what arts education is,” said Terri Talley, music education specialist at Still. “Some people think that the kids are just coming to my room to sing; but really we, as arts educators, are also reading teachers, math teachers, English teachers, all rolled into one.”
In both Talley’s and Duhn’s classes, students have the opportunity to write and respond to artistic works. “My fifth graders have been creating musical loops with an editing program and they were asked to give their classmates written feedback about the pieces they created,” said Talley. “They took the task very seriously and their
comments were very constructive. It’s things like that that support the whole
education of a child.”
Duhn has had similar teaching experiences in the art classroom. When students were creating the bravery bead necklaces, student-teacher and KSU art education major Carolynn Stoddard asked them to think and write about a time that they were brave in their own lives. “This allows students to engage with the topic on a number of levels. It’s all about getting students to verbalize what they’re working on and for them to feel proud of what they do,” said Duhn.
Actively educating the "whole child"
Connecting art to classroom study is important in educating the “whole child,” but it’s also important to note that the arts bring a different kind of understanding to the topic. “When children have the opportunity to learn about and experience art, an aesthetic point of view is awakened in them,” Duhn said. “We, as teachers of the arts, turn switches that maybe aren’t as concrete as they are in the classroom. Two plus two is always going to be four; whereas, the effects of light and shadow have to be experienced and can be captured in a number of ways.”
Principal Gloria Navarro at Still Elementary believes this unifying characteristic of learning about the arts is why legislators need to continue to reprioritize arts education. “Legislators need to understand that experiencing the arts supports students’ learning so much more powerfully than watching a video or reading a book,” said Navarro. “So much of it is about making the arts real to the students.”
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Music teacher Terry Talley gets students actively engaged in learning music. |
Part of this realization occurs when students are actively engaged in learning. “Instead of just seeing or hearing examples of storytelling or a music play,” said Talley, “the kids become a part of that experience; they can be a bat, they can be a skeleton, they can play an instrument. They have fun and then afterwards we can look back and ask, ‘Oh, now what did we just learn?’”
Navarro says, “That’s performance-based learning. Through those kinds of activities, the students learn the pattern of the music, how to play a part, how to use their creativity and display what they’ve learned. They’re also learning about the standards in the music and art area.”
The absence of art education
Most children in metropolitan areas like Cobb County are able to learn about the arts through these types of engaging activities. In fact, most students in the United States receive at least some level of arts education in school. What seems to be a pressing problem is underprivileged children’s access to the arts. The chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts Dana Gioia brought this situation to light earlier this year during her commencement address at Stanford University. Over the years, “art became an expendable luxury, and 50 million students have paid the price,” said Gioia. “Today, a child’s access to arts education is largely a function of his or her parents’ income.”
Hammond has seen the relevance of Gioia’s statement. “Often, if a child has an incomplete arts program in their school, the only recourse a parent has is to give the child private instrument lessons or get them involved in a local choir or hand bell group,” she said, “and of course that’s not equal access to the arts.”
Community collaboration
To address this issue, many communities have developed programs that serve underprivileged children. “There’s a community outreach program in Atlanta that collects donated instruments to benefit intercity schoolchildren,” says Hammond. “There are programs out there, but they are small in scope. Even if school or community programs are limited, efforts are made to support high quality and collaboration with sources of community resources.”
Sandra Bird, associate professor of art education at Kennesaw State, agrees. “Art teachers are providing a solid foundation for students’ education in the arts,” said Bird. “This is largely due to the increasing number of principals who are ensuring that the standards of all subjects are being attended to in the public school environment.”
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Principal Gloria Navarro with the statue the Still Elementary community helped bring to campus. |
Navarro is definitely one of those principals who is recognizing and foraging a place for arts in education. Her drive and the passion of the faculty and surrounding community are what brought that bronze sculpture to Still.
Seven classroom teachers proposed the project as part of their master’s thesis at Lesley University. To pay for the statue, students created artwork that was framed and sold at a fundraiser. “When the students saw their artwork displayed like that, it really kicked up their pride in themselves,” said Duhn.
Still Elementary is a stellar example of the state of arts education in public schools in the United States, but we can’t forget that, according to Talley, “we’re extremely fortunate and a lot of schools and students don’t have as many opportunities to experience the arts."