 Immersion in the arts provides hefty doses of tinkering and intellectual play. We use our hands to figure things out, to express ourselves, to reach, grasp, touch, turn, weigh, join, separate, bounce, draw and paint. Along with our senses, the hand channels information to the brain and serves as the primary tool for interaction with the material world. The most effective technique for cultivating intelligence aims to unite mind and body, not divorce them as so often happens in strict academic learning.
In the right context, the arts have been shown increase the motivation to learn, teach life skills such as persistence, develop a tolerance for ambiguity, and extend creative problem solving. The arts help foster a sense of personal identity - and because arts learning is lively, focused and difficult, it helps sculpt areas of the brain that are particularly active during childhood. Play, in its variety of forms, is crucial to growing up. Adults who experienced creative play as children are apt to be more innovative thinkers as adults.
Academic Benefits
In a speech before the Senate and House of the Louisiana Legislature, Michael Kaiser, President of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, said the arts play a vital role in supplementing the academic experiences of children.
He quoted the National Center on Education and the Economy:
"Too often, our testing system rewards students who will be good at routine work, while not providing opportunities for students to display creative and innovative thinking and analysis."
This report also predicts that in the current and future economy, "the best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people. Candidates will have to be comfortable with ideas and abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis, creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well-organized, able to learn very quickly and work well as a member of a team."
The National Center of Education and Economy’s report further states, "the arts will be an indispensable foundation... Learning through the arts reinforces crucial academic skills in reading, language arts, and math. But just as important, learning through the arts gives young people the skills they need to analyze and synthesize information, and to solve complex problems.
According to research by Stanford University and Carnegie Foundation For the Advancement of Teaching, young people who participate in the arts are:
- four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement,
- four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair,
- three times more likely to be elected to a class office within their school
- four times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem.
A review of 2005 college-bound seniors, research showed that high school students who took arts classes had higher math and verbal SAT scores than students who take no arts classes. Specifically, those students who took four years of arts classes out-performed their peers by 58 points on the verbal portion of the SAT and 38 points on the math portion of the SAT.
Social Benefits
The Arts Education Partnership, tracking results in economically challenged communities, found that arts programs keep children in school rather than choosing to drop out. In fact studies have shown marked social benefits for at risk children who participate in arts activities.
The Youth ARTS Development Project was a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; National Endowment for the Arts; Americans for the Arts; and local arts agencies in Portland, OR; Atlanta, GA; and San Antonio, TX.
The project entailed a national research and demonstration study in which arts programs for at-risk youth in three cities were evaluated for their effectiveness by researchers provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The findings of the controlled evaluations revealed that at-risk youth given opportunities in the arts showed:
- Increased ability to communicate effectively
- Improved ability to work on tasks from start to finish
- Improved attitudes toward school
- Decreased frequency of delinquent behavior and court referrals.
Read research highlights and original studies here.
Other links to arts education research:
TrICA teaches the arts because of supporting research, but also because, quite simply, we defend the notion of delight in childhood.
TrICA believes arts education
- Promotes wonder and curiosity
- Extends imaginative play which affects the adult a child will become
- Helps children to be open to new experience- Develops individual voice, helping children to know themselves and to have the courage to be themselves in the face of opposition
- Develops the ability to make one thing out of another by shifting its function
- Helps children learn how to generalize from particulars in order to see broad applications
- Helps develop the skills to synthesize, integrate, and find order in disorder
- See the familiar from an unfamiliar point of view
- Raises children to become complete human beings who will sustain our culture and our democracy
- Ennobles the human spirit
- Is walloping fun!
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Arts Education Value
