Most-Clicked: Art for Its Own Sake

One of last week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief stories:

Teach art for its own sake, researchers say (NY Times)

Two Project Zero researchers, who published findings in 2000 that art classes don't improve overall academic performance, nonetheless advocate strongly on behalf of arts education in their new book, Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education. Winner and Hetland say we need to "change the conversation about arts" and "figure out what arts really do teach." They claim to understand the need to advocate for arts as NCLB shrinks the curriculum to a few subjects but believe that advocates should stick to plausible arguments. Their book focuses on the broad, indirect benefits of participation in various art classes.

Does a rationale of "broad, indirect benefits" hold water in an accountability age?

Comments

[Nicole]

While it dimishes the value of arts education to view its place in the curriculum only as a means to increase a students performance in academic subjects, music teachers like myself have always been keenly aware that most of the students in the accelerated and honors programs are our school's best musicians and artists. That said, if we ignore the aesthetic value of arts education, we diminish ourselves as human beings. We must be continually vigilant about providing the arts FOR ALL, otherwise we lose something incredibly valuable and real. It is art that connects us, in spite of our differences, and keeps us from killing those who we fear as different.

[Garreth Heidt]

"Broad, Indirect benefits" definitely holds water. I suggest the book A WHOLE NEW MIND by Daniel Pink if you need proof. Or perhaps the books by Dr. Richard Florida on "The Creative Class." I think it's quite clear, and the evidence far beyond anecdotal, that the kind of benefits we're talking about here are those gained by employing and honoring right-brained thinking. An education in the arts honors creativity, divergent thinking, and champions possible answers over standardized responses. In a world where change, innovation, and creation are the key words that will identify which businesses succeed and which don't, the arts and their "broad, indirect benefits" will provide much of what our nation will need to prosper in the future.

[Connie Walters]

Clearly this is not an "either/or" situation. Of course the arts should be studied as their own subjects as part of a well-rounded education that prepares children to be full participants in society and to make sense of their world. AND the arts are a way of learning, a cognitive path to process information, like language-based literacy. We don't argue about whether students should read only textbooks or only literature - of course they should be reading both. What is most important is that the habits of mind the arts encourage are fostered, which happens when students receive thorough and consistent arts instruction throughout their school careers. If that were happening in our schools, the debate would be unnecessary.

[Donna Maria deCreefr]

There are two points I'd like to make. One is that the skills students/artists use when engaged in art projects (visual, musical, theater, dance) are difficult to quantify. The vague notion that the arts convey "broad indirect benefits" doesn't even begin to address what students learn through the arts.
The second is that the importance of the arts, their cultural importance and the part they play in daily life are taken for granted. How often do educators stop to consider the things in our material world that had to have been created by someone--an architect, a designer, a musician, a choreographer--with an arts education?
Marginalizing art education as teaching "art for art's sake" does a disservice to our students.
Making art takes intelligence, application, creativity and spirit. It should be art for all our sakes.