Fine Arts In Schools

“Music allows us to know, discover, understand, experience, share, or express such aspects of the human condition as feelings, aesthetic experiences, the ineffable, thoughts, structure, time and space, self-knowledge, self-identity, group identity, and healing and wholeness.” (Hodges) In life, fine arts is one thing that a majority of the population turns to when they need something to help them express themselves. “Evidence of its effectiveness in reducing student dropout, raising student attendance, developing better team players, fostering a love for learning, improving greater student dignity, enhancing student creativity, and producing a more prepared citizen for the workplace for tomorrow can be found documented in studies held in many

In 2004, E. Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto hosted a study to find out. The IQ scores of 72 children who were enrolled in music courses increased significantly against those who did not. Kids immersed in the arts do better in tests. “The arts enhance the process of learning. The systems they nourish, which include our integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and motor capacities, are, in fact, the driving forces behind all other learning” (Jensen, 2001). The arts help develop many very important, arguably critical neurobiological systems which improve emotional, academic, and physical outcomes. We’ve all heard that instrumental music helps with math. Learning to read music helps you learn how to count and add quickly so that you can play the music correctly, exercising your brain for the better for later use in of course math, but also science, and other courses that correlate with these subjects. People who do not use fine arts in their lives regularly are more likely to have lower grades and test scores, not to mention, lack of development of many skills in their

But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” This brings me to an epiphany I had.. Every student is forced to take the core subjects, math, science, english, etcetera. Which those classes are all fine and dandy, don’t get me wrong, but what about the kids that aren’t good at these subjects? They excel at drawing immaculate portraits, or belting out “The Phantom of the Opera.” Why do these students get told they need to work harder in the subjects that everyone is “supposed” to know rather than work on what they actually enjoy doing and are good at, when students who are great at these subjects just get a pat on the back and are never once told they have to take an art course to be accepted into the next grade level? In the words of one of my friends, “Real life plot hole.” If they are going to make me, who is great at morphing into another person at the snap of a finger, take Biology, which just doesn’t click in my mind, can’t they make students who have never had these issues take a class to learn how to paint? So tell me this: Why is one type of 'intelligence ' the only one that 's praised? Why don 't I get recognized for the hard work I put into my craft the way other people do for their efforts in 'normal '