In the cannon of essential rights of children and youth, Arts Education doesn’t usually top out high on the list.
But it should.
It is through the arts that young people get their hands dirty, engage their creativity and imagination, view the world from another’s perspective, and then to communicate their own truth. And those are the most essential skills not only of good students, but of informed and engaged citizens and thoughtful and reflective members of society. There has seldom been a more critical time for our children to explore those necessary, but often elusive, skills of creativity, reflection, and expression.
It is a sad conundrum that in far too many places, studying the arts is a product of the affluence of a child’s school or family, rather than a core component of learning. Too often, we have framed arts education and a “fun activity” after one’s “real” studies are done, relegated to after-school or to elective periods that those who have successfully mastered reading and math have access to, leaving the opportunity to dream, to imagine, to experiment, and express one’s truth to someone else’s children.
It is time for new thinking about arts and arts education.
We have long known that the deepest learning is when we synthesize disparate pieces of knowledge, apply it to our own lives, and are able to create something new with it. That is true with writing and mathematics — and art. Deep arts learning, in fact, requires that its students understand historical and social context, explore technique, consider the context of the subject, and bring all of that together with some unique creativity and vision to make something new. It is through intensive and sustained arts learning that we make the only just imagined, real. It is a proving ground for our ability to synthesize knowledge, employ empathy in another’s lived experience, and create something new to share with the world. Those are the skills that can engage a child’s passions, that can connect us across the barriers that have divided us, and that equip our children to be the kind of leaders who can imagine a future not only grounded in what it, but in what might be.
And that kind of learning, of possibility, must be a core part of learning for every child, every day.
Sculpture image by Abastenia St. Léger Eberle, born Webster City, IA 1878-1942. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the C.K. Williams Foundation. CCO.