Arts: They are the basics we need to get back to
Distance Learning, Learning Loss, and the Arts #8
“Voices in my head,” oil on canvas. Avi Juni. 2019.
It has been a crazy difficult year for all of us. For our students, losing the ability to attend school and learn as part of a community has taken a toll we don’t fully understand yet. Teachers, from the outset, have done the heroic work of continuing the work of teaching and learning in the only way that they could, through technology. Communities scrambled to provide devices and connectivity, some more effectively than others. And kids, like the rest of us, logged on to continue, as best they could, with their learning.
Suffice it to say, it has not all gone swimmingly. the best distance learning is…well, distant. The types of activities that lend themselves to the format, despite the best efforts of teachers bringing their best creativity to the fore, is different and less nuanced, collaborative, and connected. We begin to read reports of struggles with what student engagement really means. We begin to read about conversations about the complexity of quality grading systems that capture to nuance and complexity of learning. We begin to hear a lot about “learning loss” and what it will take to make up lost ground when we are finally able to more consistently return to in-person learning.
And there is a danger there. Far too many times when American schools have chased some achievement and learning goal, it has produced a kind of unlovely “back to basics” mindset. it is easy to understand how well-meaning people come to that conclusion. We are falling behind. We need to buckle down and open the books and dig into Math and English and Science. And those are essential things.
But we must not set arts learning aside on some dusty shelf to get back to another day when things calm down. We have made that mistake before, and our children have suffered for it. Arts learning — and I mean deep learning around arts disciplines as well as nuanced and complex arts learning woven into the broader context of learning writ large — is a game changer for kids. I’m not talking here about drawing a picture at the end of a unit of study, but digging deep into arts disciplines and bringing those skills to the fore to add depth and nuance and context to learning.
Far too often, these kinds of rich arts experiences are an artifact of a school’s zip code and affluence, leaving whole swaths of children disconnected form the deep benefits of arts learning. It is through the arts that we learn about ourselves and out world. It is through self-reflection, study, collaboration, creativity, connection, and expression that we deepen learning across the curriculum. It is through opportunities to explore and learn the arts disciplines that students develop a different kind of mental muscle that serves them well whether they pursue the study of a specific art form or not.
As we begin to have conversations about returning to in-person schooling and address issues of learning loss, we must keep the arts at the very center of these conversations. If we leave the type of rich, contextual, complex, and creative learning and doing that arts require by the wayside, we will have not only exacerbated learning losses but, along the way, deprived our children of their opportunity, and right, to dream, create, connect, and communicate.
Learn more about "The Art of Everything: Leading for "We" in the Age of "Me"