Incorporating the Arts in Schools
“Just like adults, children and young people express their ideas, experiences and opinions through artistic media and creative genre. They not only find “voice” through the music, multimedia and digital image generation of popular and youth cultures, but also through traditional artistic forms such as writing poetry and plays, sculpture, painting, dance, choirs, and orchestras. The arts are often marginalised within formal schooling, pushed to the extra-curricular or positioned in opposition to the “basics”, yet they provide important avenues for the development of knowledge and skills as well as the means of self-expression and communication.” (Thompson 2010)
The importance placed on the arts has been continually reduced in the education system. The arts have come to be seen as an extra-curricular activity, not something that will help you achieve in life and become a valuable member of society. Because of this shift in thinking, subjects like Math, English and Science, which are ‘more likely to make you a functioning member of society’, take the forefront and the arts are pushed aside to make room for the ‘real education’. What people seem to be forgetting is that [thanks to our technological world] students in today’s society are largely visual learners, or at the very least, find that a visual helps them in the overall understanding of a lesson. This dependence on visuals moves beyond using pictures of apples to help count in Math class and into Language Arts where expression through the written word comes naturally to some students.
The encouragement of unique expression provides the student with a safe way of voicing their thoughts and opinions and essentially communicating with their peers. The arts serve as an essential stepping stone to effective communication which can be argued to be the basis of every subject they take in school. Effective communication is paramount when one is trying to relay their opinion, ideas, solutions, discoveries, etc... We can build to effective communication through subjects in the arts like writing, poetry, painting or drama. In fact many people have made their careers out of using the arts to communicate messages (i.e. Andy Warhol). If schools continue to marginalize the arts, a student’s ability to communicate will take far longer to mold and creativity will be harder to coax out of them.
K.D.
Thomson, P. (2010). Involving children and young people in educational change: Possibilities and challenges. In A. Hargreaves et al. (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Educational Change (pp. 809-824). London: Springer.
The importance placed on the arts has been continually reduced in the education system. The arts have come to be seen as an extra-curricular activity, not something that will help you achieve in life and become a valuable member of society. Because of this shift in thinking, subjects like Math, English and Science, which are ‘more likely to make you a functioning member of society’, take the forefront and the arts are pushed aside to make room for the ‘real education’. What people seem to be forgetting is that [thanks to our technological world] students in today’s society are largely visual learners, or at the very least, find that a visual helps them in the overall understanding of a lesson. This dependence on visuals moves beyond using pictures of apples to help count in Math class and into Language Arts where expression through the written word comes naturally to some students.
The encouragement of unique expression provides the student with a safe way of voicing their thoughts and opinions and essentially communicating with their peers. The arts serve as an essential stepping stone to effective communication which can be argued to be the basis of every subject they take in school. Effective communication is paramount when one is trying to relay their opinion, ideas, solutions, discoveries, etc... We can build to effective communication through subjects in the arts like writing, poetry, painting or drama. In fact many people have made their careers out of using the arts to communicate messages (i.e. Andy Warhol). If schools continue to marginalize the arts, a student’s ability to communicate will take far longer to mold and creativity will be harder to coax out of them.
K.D.
Thomson, P. (2010). Involving children and young people in educational change: Possibilities and challenges. In A. Hargreaves et al. (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Educational Change (pp. 809-824). London: Springer.
