Can the Arts in Education Help Your Child to Learn?

By Gail G. Gage, Parents' Source, January 20, 1999.

The educational success of our children depends on the creation of a society that is both competent and creative. That goal in turn, depends on the ability to provide children with the tools to not only understand that world, but to contribute to it and make their own way. It is the arts that lay the foundation for future academic and career success. A strong arts foundation builds creativity, concentration, problem solving skills, self-efficacy, coordination, attention to values and self-discipline.

The National Standards for Arts Education is a statement of what every young American should know and be able to do in four arts disciplines ­ dance, music, theatre and the visual arts. Their scope is grades K-12, and they focus on both content and achievement. With the passage of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the national goals were written into law, naming the arts as a core academic subject ­ as important to education as English, mathematics, history, civics and government, geography, science, and foreign language.

Knowing and practicing the arts disciplines are fundamental in the healthy development of children's minds and spirits. This is why, in a civilization, the arts are inseparable from the very meaning of the term "education." We know from long experience that no one can claim to be truly educated if they lack basic knowledge and skills in the arts. There are many reasons for this assertion:

• The arts are worth studying simply because of what they are. Their impact cannot be denied. Throughout history, all of the arts have served to connect our imaginations with the deepest questions of human existence: Who am I? What must I do? Where am I going? Studying responses to those questions through time and across cultures ­ as well as acquiring the tools and knowledge to create one's own responses ­ is essential not only to understanding life but to living it fully.
• The arts are used to achieve a multitude of human purposes: to present issues and ideas, to teach or persuade, to entertain, to decorate or please. Becoming literate in the arts helps students understand and do these things better.
• The arts are an integral part to every person's daily life. Our personal, social, economic, and cultural environments are shaped by the arts at every turn from the design of the child's breakfast place mat, to the songs on the commuter's car radio, to the family's nighttime TV drama, to the teenager's Saturday dance, to the enduring influences of the classics.
• There is sufficient evidence that the arts help students develop the attitudes, characteristics, and intellectual skills required to participate effectively in today's society and economy. The arts teach self-discipline, reinforce self-esteem, and foster the thinking skills and creativity that are valued in the workplace. They teach the importance of teamwork and cooperation. They demonstrate the direct connection between study, hard work, and high levels of achievement.

Arts education cultivates the whole child by gradually building many kinds of literacy while developing intuition, reasoning, imagination, and dexterity into unique forms of expression and communication. This process requires not only an active mind but a trained one. Students of the arts learn to respect the often very different ways others have of thinking, working, and expressing themselves. They learn to make decisions in situations where there are no standard answers.

By studying the arts, students stimulate their natural creativity and learn to develop it in order to meet the needs of a complex and competitive society. And, as study and competence in the arts reinforce one another, the joy of learning becomes real, tangible, and powerful. This competence provides a firm foundation for connecting arts-related concepts and facts across the art forms, and from them, to the sciences and humanities. For example, the intellectual methods of the arts are precisely those used to transform scientific disciplines and discoveries into everyday technology.

The visual arts have gotten a tremendous boost from discoveries in neuroscience. The old model was that left-brain thinking was the home of the necessary "higher order" thinking skills, and right-brain activities were frills. That paradigm is wrong. Current research tells us that much learning is "both-brained." Musicians usually process melodies in their left
hemispheres. PET scans of problem solvers show activations in not just the left frontal lobes but other areas used to store music, art, and movement (Kearney 1996). Many of our greatest scientific thinkers, like Einstein, have discussed the integration of imagination into scientific pursuit. There has been worldwide success of the neuropsychological art therapy model or NAT (Parente and Anderson-Parente 1991, McGraw 1989). The use of art not just to draw but to teach thinking and to build emotive expressiveness and memory has been a remarkable demonstration of the brain's plasticity.

The value of music as a component of enriched learning has long been recognized in education. Many schools offer music education in gifted programs. But what evidence is there that daily music education ought to be universal, for every K-12 student? Is it merely anecdotal or has the new research on the brain caught up? The evidence is persuasive that (1) our brain may be designed for music and the other areas of arts education and (2) a music and arts education has positive, measurable, and lasting academic and social benefits. In fact, considerable evidence suggests a broad-based music and arts education should be required for every student in the country.

Music, in itself, is not a "right-brained frill." Robert Zatorre, neuropsychologist at the Montreal Neurological Institute, says, "I have very little doubt that when you're listening to a real piece of music, it is engaging the entire brain." Reading music also engages both sides of the brain. Once someone learns how to read, compose, or play music, their left brain gets very involved.

Think of music as a tool for usage in at least three possible categories: for arousal, as a carrier of words, and as a primer for the brain. Arousal means the music either increases or decreases the attention transmitters. An example of "perk up" music could be the theme of "Rocky." Relaxing music might include a waterfall or soft piano melodies. A study of 8th and 9th graders reported in Principal magazine showed that students' reading comprehension substantially improved with background music (Giles 1991). A second use of music is as a carrier. In this case, the melody of the music acts as the vehicle for the words themselves. You may have noticed how easily students pick up the words to new songs it's the melody that helps them learn the words. There is a third, and quite powerful use of music that can actually prime the brain's neural pathways. Because neurons are constantly firing, what distinguishes the "neural chatter" from clear thinking is the speed, sequence, and strength of the connections. These variables constitute a pattern of firing that can be triggered or "primed" by certain pieces of music. As an example, have you ever put on a piece of music to help you get a task done like cleaning the house or the garage?

Music may, in fact, be critical for later cognitive activities. Lamb and Gregory (1993) found high correlation between pitch discrimination and reading skills. Mohanty and Hejmadi (1992) found that musical dance training boosted scores on the Torrance Test of Creativity. The neural firing patterns are basically the same for music appreciation and abstract reasoning. The well-publicized "Mozart Effect" study at The University of California was the first to directly link listening to music as the single cause of building intelligence.

Does evidence support the value of singing? Music researcher M. Kalmak found that music has many positive correlates better abstract conceptual thinking, stronger motor development, coordination, creativity, and verbal abilities. Singing is good stimulation for the brain. A survey of studies suggest that music plays a significant role in enhancing a wide range of academic and social skills. It activates procedural memory and therefore, is learning that lasts (Dowling 1993). Music is a language that can enhance the abilities of children who don't excel in the expression of verbal thinking.

Three countries near the top in ranking of math and science scores (Japan, Hungary, and the Netherlands) all have intensive music and art training built into their elementary curriculums. In Japan, every child is required to play a musical instrument or be involved in choir, sculpture, and design. Many studies suggest that students will boost academic learning from games and so-called "play" activities (Silverman 1993). The case for doing something physical every day is growing. Jenny Seham of the National Dance Institute (NDI) in New York City says she has observed for years the measurable and heartwarming academic and social results of school children who study dance. Seham notes positive changes in self-discipline, grades, and sense of purpose in life that her students demonstrate.

Researchers know that certain movements stimulate the inner ear, which helps physical balance, motor coordination, and stabilization of images on the retina. David Clarke at Ohio State University's College of Medicine has confirmed the positive results of a particular type of activity spinning (1980). Clarke's studies suggest that certain spinning activities led to alertness, attention, and relaxation in the classroom.

Give students daily dance, music, drama, and visual art instruction in which there is considerable movement, and you might get a miracle. In Aiken, South Carolina, Redcliffe Elementary test scores were among the lowest 25 percent in the district. After a strong arts curriculum was added, the school soared to the top 5 percent in six years. This Title I rural school showed that a strong arts curriculum is at the creative core of academic excellence not more discipline, higher standards, or the three Rs (Kearney 1996). In Columbus, Ohio, Douglas Elementary a predominately art-centered school, has achievement scores twenty points above the district norms in five of six academic areas. Demand for their program is strong; more than one hundred children are on the school's "wait list." Does the arts emphasis make a difference? "There's a definite link," says principal James Gardell (1997).

By learning and practicing the arts, the human brain actually rewires itself to make more and stronger connections. The arts stimulate body awareness, creativity, and sense of self. The child without access to the arts is at a disadvantage from ways in which he or she can experience the world.

Sources:

• National Standards for Arts Education, Appendix (Publication)
• Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen, published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA, 1998, pp. 29-40. http://www.ascd.org

Gail G. Gage has been a teacher of visual and performing arts for the last 27 years.

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