Dan Willingham offers up practical reasons why arts education is not a mere luxury in education. Writing at the Washington Post’s The Answer Sheet blog, Willingham cites Harvard developmental psychologist Jerry Kagan, who observed recently that while reading and math are typical litmus tests for academic success, the arts allow some children who might otherwise tune out a chance to feel successful in school. Producing artwork also gives a child an opportunity to create something tangible.
Kagan argues that children today have very little sense of agency—that is, the sense that they undertake activities that have an impact on the world, however small. Kagan notes that as a child he had the autonomy to explore his town on his own, something that most parents today would not allow. When not exploring, his activities were necessarily of his own design, whereas children today would typically watch television or roam the internet, activities that are frequently passive and which encourage conformity. The arts, Kagan argues, offer that sense of agency, of creation.
Artwork also provides a means of communication that, unlike nearly every other school subject, does not depend on words to be effective; participation in the arts also offers an opportunity for children to work together, as well as a chance for children to express feelings that they otherwise might be unable to express. “Kagan cites data showing health benefits for this sort of self-expression; several studies have shown that writing, even briefly, about emotional conflicts reduces illness and increases feelings of well-being,” Willingham points out. According to Kagan there might be similar benefits from artistic expression.
“Yes, core subjects like reading, math, history, civics, geography, and science are important,” Willingham concludes. “But the arts should not be treated as a luxury to be indulged should time allow.”
Exactly, exactly right. And let’s not forget that the arts have their own inherent value. They don’t need to be handmaiden to other subjects or skills to earn their place in children’s lives.
We’re in dire need of aesthetic education….s
Provocative.
I wonder what Kagan would say about tradeoff of limited time?
It seems that in isolation, you can make a case for lots of reasonable subjects. Kids know nothing about basic civics. Nothing about basic finance. You can make a case for exercise, for music, for the most fundamental media literacy, et al.
The budget is 1,000 hours a year. In many charters, they bump that to maybe 1,500 per year.
I wish every commenter on “What we need more of” were simply handed 1,000 or 1,500 hour budgets and asked to hand it in when they’d divvied up the pie.
Then the headline would be: Kagan wants to increase arts and cut, say, math. Now we’re got an interesting discussion.
When I was teaching, I used to say that I wanted to start a school with a unique proposition: we weren’t going to teach reading. What I meant was that reading would be embedded into the core curriculum, not broken out and fetishized as a separate discipline. I still think it’s not a bad idea. At the risk of sounding terribly old-fashioned, I didn’t have a day of explicit reading instruction after second grade. Now, explicit reading instruction is to education what recovery is to addiction–it’s one day at a time, and a process that is never allowed to end. We love to talk about “authentic” reading experiences as if reading to learn is somehow inauthentic.
Well-educated people are readers of necessity and almost by definition. I’d like to see us spend a lot more time approaching reading as a means to an end rather than focused on “creating a lifelong love of reading.” Not only would it be more instructionally useful, but it would free up an enormous amount of time in the school day for other things which in turn would help build the background knowledge and rich experiences that would aid comprehension. In short, a virtuous circle.
I’m with GGW on this. Yes, the arts are important and the reasons Willingham provides are strong, but there are only so many hours in the school year.
So the question is what Dan Willingham thinks schools should leave off to teach the arts?
I do however doubt the claim that Americans are pragmatists who only respect endeavours that cure a disease or make money. I’ve been to the USA, there is some amazing art work there, the collections of the art museums in Chicago, New York, Boston and Washington DC, the memorials in Washington DC, the artwork I saw at the Grand Canyon, I’ve seen acting and singing in New York and Boston that took my breath away, American contributions to music are incredible (the Blues, ragtime, jazz, hiphop). Of course as an outsider I may be mistaking things, but American culture does not strike me as one that doesn’t respect the arts.
The amount of time “available” for arts instruction might be an example of artificial scarcity. There is plenty of time to teach both the knowledge and basic skills that make children understand the power of cultural expression–if we stop seeing instructional time as something limited and subject to hierarchical supply and demand. There are hundreds of ways to re-think time for schooling. What’s missing is the conviction that arts education, in the broadest sense, is critical for all children, not just those whose parents can afford it.
Robert has a point. Rich curriculum crosses disciplinary boundaries. I partnered with two wonderful 7th grade American History teachers whose students sang folk songs and dissected their lyrics for hidden political jokes and evidence of daily life.
We have excised so many things from the American curriculum as “less important” (world languages, for example) in favor of doubling up on math and literacy. But the scores aren’t going up.
I agree with Robert. Art and music expand vocabularies (”perspective”, “kiln”, “lento”, etc.) and open up new worlds, knowledge of which will make kids better readers. And, as Claus points out, the fine arts are intrinsically worthwhile. I want to live in a society populated by people whose interests extend beyond texting, Black Friday sales, and motivational speakers.
You comment Ben reminded me of an anecdote told by a former student when Frank McCourt died earlier this year. Here ‘Tis:
Frank McCourt was my English teacher in my senior year at Stuyvesant (class of ‘74). He introduced us to African literature such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which sounded even more dramatic in his thick brogue. When one student asked why we should read this book, what possible use would it be to us in our lives, he answered, “You will read it for the same reason your parents waste their money on your piano lessons. So you won’t be a boring little shite the rest of your life.” It was the most honest answer to such a question I ever heard from any teacher. Whenever the question came to my head about any subject thereafter I fondly remembered Mr. McCourt and resolved not to be a boring little shite.
Nancy: Yes the amount of time available for arts instructions might be an example of artifical scarcity. Or it might be an example of entirely natural scarcity.
The example you cite, of 7th grade American History teachers having their students sing folk songs and dissecting the lyrics may be very worthwhile in and of itself, but by this description the children aren’t creating folk songs, and thus lose some of the benefits Kagan lists of expressing feelings, creating beauty, using representations in the mind that are other than words. This is not to say that analysing folk songs is worthless, I am just pointing out that time spent doing this is not time spent doing what Kagan argues is beneficial.
I agree that I am missing the conviction that arts education is critical for all children. I do try to keep an open mind. Personally I think that arts education is valuable for all children but not critical.
As for the other points, it’s all very well to say that something is vitally important and should be taught, but it’s a lot tougher to say what shouldn’t be taught to make way for what should be taught. I note that no one here has said that.
@Tracy: OK. I’ll say it. Serious study of the arts is just as important as Trigonometry, Brit Lit, Chemistry, and Government (which are the full-year HS courses assigned to college-bound juniors in my school district). And students who prefer to take Sculpture or Graphic Design (two courses recently eliminated in my school) should be able to take them, even if it means they miss out on Beowulf or the periodic table.
Because my state now requires four years of math and science (we’ve always required four years of English)–students are finding it not just difficult, but impossible to take arts courses for four years. Which has had the effect of refashioning arts courses as “taste of”/ survey classes. If you can only take one year of art, or two years of orchestra or choir (rather than four years of each) the quality of the course content and products goes down significantly.
What would I get rid of? For individual students–lots of courses that aren’t taking them where they want to go. Should my child have been able to take jazz band for four years, even if it meant he didn’t take the required Calculus? Yes. It was more important for him to be in the jazz band.
My point, however, is that it’s artificial scarcity that’s made this an issue. He should be able to do both. And he would, were we able to afford it. Excision of the arts for the large majority of kids who are in publicly funded schools is a result of failure of imagination. We only have so many hours, the argument goes–so what’s least important? And the infighting begins.
Even then–relative importance of core content is not “natural.”
At the turn of the last century, well-educated (upper class) American boys were all taught rhetoric and logic, as well as classical languages. There’s no cast-in-concrete global template, either. Our failure to make American children (at least) bilingual is one example of that. What is valued varies from culture to culture.
The fact that we have some outstanding cultural organizations in our large cities is a result of solid arts programs existent in earlier decades, and the fact that this is a very large country with a huge, mobile pool of potential artists to draw from and showcase. It’s regional symphonies and local art galleries that are hurting–and, much worse, the aesthetic sensibilities of Americans, which shape their ability to appreciate and analyze the arts.
I think Kagan hits of six important themes–but I think he’s missing a seventh (and said so, in the commentary below Dan’s NYT piece): core knowledge about the arts. Many of Kagan’s ideas are not reflected in the arts programs that are currently in place, which are far more skills/performance based. When arts teachers get 45 minutes/week with children, it’s difficult to give them opportunities to create or express their feelings. Most arts programs are seeking to introduce kids to basic arts skills. It’s the content–analyzing song lyrics, for example, using significant cultural knowledge–that’s missing from Kagan’s (otherwise excellent) outline.
Nancy, you write:
“My point, however, is that it’s artificial scarcity that’s made this an issue. He should be able to do both. And he would, were we able to afford it.”
Nancy, you just defined “actual” scarcity, not artificial scarcity.
I should be able to get unlimited Red Sox tickets, trips to London to visit my brother, flowers for my wife, and food…and I would, were we able to afford it.
But there is scarcity of resources thing. So I do without London, flowers, and food.
No. Artificial scarcity exists when there is the capacity to produce something to meet all expressed needs, but the particular good or service is kept limited for the benefit or gain of one group. When supplies are limited, demand is high. Capitalism is one big exercise in artificial scarcity.
If you, in fact, do not earn enough money to buy tickets, trips, flowers, etc. you do not have the technical capacity to produce what you need–if, in fact, you “need” Red Sox tickets. You don’t of course–this argument is about whether students “need” to study and experience the arts. I say it’s a human need. You say it’s a luxury. That’s where the argument lies, not in the definition of artificial scarcity.
At this moment (according to Jeffrey Sachs and others), there is global capacity to feed and decently house every citizen on the planet. So why do we let 15 million people die of hunger every year? Food is not really “scarce”–it’s artificially scarce.
How do I know that arts instruction is positioned as “too expensive,” when we could easily re-allocate resources to provide arts courses? Because children in other high-achieving nations routinely get arts instruction–and other classes, notably the teaching of multiple languages–that are thought of as “too expensive” or unnecessary luxuries in the U.S.. It’s about priorities and values.
Our exchange student from France (who spoke three languages fluently, and had studied two others) was dumbfounded by the fact that every school in America has an equipped gymnasium. She was a gymnast herself, and her father was a one-time Olympic coach, so she was familiar with “sport” as she called it–but thought that having all that expensively outfitted space for football, while restricting the study of foreign languages to HS, and visual arts courses as “frills,” was ludicrous.
Defenders of the study of art in schools, such as Robert, seem to me will never win their case. In that regard, I think of the differences between (1) students’ learning that results in their gaining a job after schooling, and (2) the enjoyment that people may experience in, for example, making and/or viewing a picture. Robert’s apparent assumption that schools should emphasize (2) rather than (1) seems far-fetched.
Should not we also contemplate whether liking art will make countries less aggessive toward one
other? There seems to be little relationship between those two variables.