Arts In Schools Look Like In Future Decades If Funding Continues To Decrease?

What will Arts in Schools look like in Future Decades if Funding Continues to Decrease?

Art education is essential to the development of crucial life skills that are incredibly beneficial in higher education and occupations in later life. The study of art challenges students intellectually, fosters creativity, provides a basis for connection and understanding of multiple cultures, and brings air to important moments in history (“To Move Forward: An Affirmation of Continuing Commitment to Arts Education” 37). However, educators’ attitude toward art education does not reflect the gravity of the positive learning platform that art provides. Art education is regarded as a nonacademic subject with minimal impacts on the intellectual growth of students

The purpose of the NCLB is simple--to hold schools accountable for students' learning and achievement. Since the establishment of the NCLB, American Education has shifted its focus toward almost entirely math, science, and reading skills which must be tested under the NCLB legislation. Moreover, since the NCLB does not require the testing of art skills, schools have lost all incentives to continue enhancing their art education programs and instead focus their time on the subjects which require progress testing by the NCLB. Subsequently, art education has continued to receive fewer amounts of funding and revision. What will art education look like in future decades if funding continues to decrease? If schools continue to abstain from valuing art education, students' development of creativity that is driven by art classes will be stunted, the benefits of art education on overall intelligence and its correlation to success across all subjects in school will be lost, and the prolonging result may be art being wiped from school curricula completely. Without support from

This concept is called Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE). DBAE is discipline based, meaning that it is characterized by the building of knowledge and skills. DBAE has four primary discipline areas: art history, aesthetics, art criticism, and art production. These four branches challenge students to gain knowledge of different cultures, push themselves to understand the value of art pieces, use knowledge they have gained to make their own judgements and criticisms of art, and force them to make deliberate choices founded upon acquired knowledge and experience (Young and Adams 2). If stricter guidelines are enforced upon the teaching of arts, the result will be stronger knowledge and skill building within students, as well as an increased likelihood for school districts to take arts seriously. Nevertheless, the implementation of DBAE will require support from students, teachers, and community members. The indispensability of the skills and knowledge developed by art and the prioritizing of this learning by the DBAE could make all of the difference in the art education