Art Advocacy

Why teach art? Why is it that I have spent so much money, man hours, and emotions for the opportunity to teach art? Art, a subject that parents and educators across the nation fail to understand the importance of. Why should our nation continue to fund the arts in schools? The answer is simple. Art contributes greatly to the success of our citizens and the growth of our nation.

How can this be proven? And what skills do art classes provide that math, science, English and social studies classes fail to provide?

1.) Art forces children to think critically.

The idea of there being qualitative relationships between ideas can change a child's thinking strategies completely. The school system is set up in a way that teaches one way of assessing knowledge: correct and incorrect. But showing children that some ideas are funny, serious, half true, ironic, persuasive, threatening, therapeutic, beautiful, etc. reminds children that these qualitative relations exist, even in a institution that seems to have forgotten about them. It reminds children that there are some settings in which it is "judgement rather than rules that prevail."(Eisner)

If you look at Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking skills, the level of thinking associated with making judgements about ideas is at a much higher level the memorization of whether something is correct or incorrect. Kids must learn that ideas can hold multiple values at the same time or be valued differently by different people. This explains that different perspectives can help form a new understanding. Art (in its most basic form) communicates some sort of meaning, and students must learn how to derive meaning from visual elements because now more than ever, "We live in a visual age" and kids must learn how to pick these pictures apart. (Eisner) Asking kids to practice this prepares them for the visually heavy society that surrounds them. and places their thought past the first level of thinking (knowledge) and into the higher levels (comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).

2.) Art provides a forum for student communication.

I am naturally a lover of the art of communication. I wanted to say something important before I ever had anything to say. Writing was the first love of mine. And before long, I saw that I could push my written art in a direction just as clear and focused as my writing but without any real words. I believe that both of these forms hold significant value in the effectiveness of communication. This is why I am surprised that people seem to give writing classes more credit than art classes. But in reality, art can be used to represent the same ideas that written language can and should be valued just as much as a necessary school subject. Eisner explains that art "helps children learn to say what cannot be said." This emphasis on communication in the arts puts the responsibility of education in the hands of the student. They can create and share ideas as they please, changing the curriculum as they go. Students can also begin to learn to accept their peers' ideas presented in art. Sharing and accepting ideas from peers can be a great step for students to begin accepting new ideas (maybe from adults eventually).

This leads right into the third point.

3.) Art allows students to succeed in other areas of school.

First of all, "art programs engage students and keep in school those at-risk of dropping out." That in itself shows that art directly affects student success in other classrooms (simply because it is keeping them there!) Along with attendance, art can be a great way to synthesize information from other classes. As educators, we know the importance of making information relevant to each student. Having an art class built in to the school day allows options for students to create meaning or connections to information from other classes. Kids become much more interested in a subject or topic when they have had some hands on interaction with it. While a social studies teacher might not know how to make a project like this happen, art teachers are the perfect teachers to team up with to make this level of understanding happen.