Intrinsic, Intellectual, and Economic Benefits of the Arts

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Intrinsic, Intellectual, and Economic Benefits of
the Arts

• Sujeet Kumar
• EI Design
• eLearning

09342504365, sujeetkumar_in_at_yahoo.com
Blended Training It Improves Your Productivity
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Why Advocacy?

• Arts advocacy is the fight for the return of
  the life of the spirit to the centre of our
  existence... The arts are not at the top of
  everyones agenda. We cant take public or
  private sector support for granted. We must
  marshall our arguments, make our points, deliver
  the statistics and datarolling out our
  arguments bristling with facts and analyses, in
  the language of our target audience, to help us
  and our allies convince public and private
  funders, and to overcome oppositionsWe must
  speak a business language, an economic language,
  a tourist language, the rock troop languages,
  popular music, chamber music, all languages, all
  levelswe must speak all these languages...
• Shirley Thomson
• Executive Director
• Canada Council for the Arts

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• Intrinsic Benefits
• Intellectual Achievement in Other Subjects
• Arts and the Economy
• A Vision for Arts Education in Canada
• Why Now? Where is the Support?
• What is Required

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Intrinsic Benefits

• Nurtures habits of imagination and creativity
• Gives us tools, beyond words, to express what we
  think, feel and know
• Central to maintaining and expanding our diverse
  cultural legacies
• Helps develop understanding of multiple
  perspectives
• Improves the quality of our lives
• Various sources, including Armstrong Casement
  (1997), Catterall (1998), Eisner (1991), Greene
  (1995), Pitman (1998).

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Risks

• Some people dont know what theyre getting
  into when they open up 30 personalities. They
  have to be very, very astute, but again, I think
  thats the one thing Ive learned about art. Its
  not one clean pretty picture. You have to be
  really sharp to introduce the arts to kids.
  Really, really, sharp. What is it that it does to
  them, that turns them on and inside out?
• Helen Stencell, teacher

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• Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest
  mathematicians and philosophers of the 20th
  century. In his last essay, written at the age of
  95, Russell reflected that the time had come to
  ask whether his lifes work had taught men and
  women not to hate peoples other than their own.
  The final lines of his final essay state
• There is an artist imprisoned in each one of
  us. Let the artist loose to spread joy
  everywhere.

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Mathematics Arithmetic

• Rules creation
• Beauty and Paradox
• Culture of poverty

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Intellectual Achievement

• Learning through, in, and about the arts
  contributes to learning in other subjects by
• Developing thinking skills
• Contributing to self-confidence
• Developing different ways of making meaning
• Enhancing neural networks in the brain (Bruer,
  1998).
• Studies in the arts do not come at the expense of
  mathematics and language achievement
• Georgia study
• Austrian and Swiss students
• Learning Through the Arts (Canadian study)

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• Of the 841 elementary and secondary schools in
  Georgia where staffing and funding of arts
  programs was a priority, students had
• higher SAT scores
• were more likely to graduate with college
  diplomas, and
• had lower drop-out rates
• Music in World Cultures (1996). The Georgia
  project A status report on Arts Education in the
  State of Georgia. St. Boniface, MN Author.

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• There is nothing new about the relationship of
  the arts to other subjects. Nobel Prize winner
  John Polanyi relates how Leonardo da Vinci,
  arguably the greatest figure of the Italian
  Renaissance, was left by his sponsors quite free
  to do science so long as it did not cut into his
  time for painting.

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• Students in Austrian and Swiss schools who had 5
  music classes per week instead of the usual 1 or
  2 (at the expense of classes in mathematics and
  language) were as good in math and better in
  languages than their peers with regular schedules
  at the end of the 3 year study
• Armstrong, A. Casement, C. (1997). The Child
  and the Machine. Toronto Key Porter.
• Weber, E.W., Spychiger, M., Patry, J. (1993).
  Music Makes the School. Schlussbericht zu
  Bessere Bildung mit mehr Musik. Padagogisches
  Institut der Universitat, Freiburg/C.H.

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• 25,000 middle school students showed strong
  associations between involvement in the visual
  and performing arts and subsequent achievement
  after controlling for family income and education
  levels
• Catterall, J. (1998). Does experience in the
  arts boost academic achievement? Art Education,
  51(3), 6-11.
• httpwww.aep-arts.org/highlights/coc-release.
  html

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• 1995 SAT verbal and math scores for students
  with 4 or more years of fine arts courses were
  significantly higher than those of their peers
  who were not enrolled in arts courses
• Fowler, C. (1996). Strong Arts, Strong Schools
  The Promising Potential and Shortsighted
  Disregard of the Arts in American Schooling. NY
  Oxford University Press.

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Learning Through the Arts

• In the baseline data (1999-2000), the single
  greatest predictor of academic achievement was
  socio-economic status as indicated by household
  income and mothers education level.
• Butit is also the case that those students who
  took music lessons outside of school scored
  significantly better on all language and
  mathematics measures than their peers, regardless
  of household income level and education. Why
  music? What cognitive links are there between
  music (beat) and rhythms of language? What other
  things do children who take music lessons do with
  their spare time?
• Upitis, R. Smithrim, K. (2001). Learning
  Through the Arts National Assessment Interim
  Report. The Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto,
  Canada.

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The Arts and SchoolGrade 4
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Out of School Activities
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Music Lessons and Preferences forOut of School
Activities
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The Economy

• Imagination and engagement required in the
  workplace are nurtured through the arts
• Conference Board of Canada (1999). Employability
  Skills Profile What are Employers Looking For?
  Toronto, ON.

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• Major economic benefits from the arts, both
  directly
• Job creation
• Increased property values
• Support to other business
• and indirectly
• Development of community networks
• City pride and prestige
• Transforming the responsiveness of service
  organizations
• Contributing to quality of life for people with
  poor health
• Kelly, M., Kelly, A. (2000). Impact and values
  Assessing the Arts and Creative Industries in the
  South West. Bristol, UK Bristol Cultural
  Development Partnership.
• Economic Impacts of Arts and Culture in the
  Edmonton Capital Region (1997). Economic
  Development Edmonton, www.ede.org

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Current State of Affairs...

• The arts play a minor role in public education
  music and other arts programs have been under
  siege clear across the country (Whyte, 1996)
• Relatively few specialist teachers and
  consultants remain in schools and school boards
• Too often art in elementary schools is an
  assembly-line version of art colouring a
  photocopied face or decorating the walls with cat
  cutouts (Allemang, 1996)

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A Vision

• to nurture lifelong habits of imagination and
  creativity by ensuring that the arts form a
  fundamental and sustained part of the Canadian
  school system for all students

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Public Education

• Growing up in a very low income family, music
  lessons were not an option. If it were not for
  the schools and the church, I would not have had
  the early opportunities for education and
  performance that these institutions offered me.
• Ben Heppner
• Canadian Tenor

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Why Now?

• Vague and growing sense of need in the larger
  society (something is missing from schools,
  lives)
• Interest in the business community to restore
  what has been lost
• Major initiatives and new research in arts
  education
• Curriculum leadership across Canada
• Builds on other initiatives of the Council of
  Ministers of Education (Canada)

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• By investing in children and the arts, we are
  developing Canadas great minds of the future.
• Charles Baillie, Chairman and CEO of the
• TD Bank Financial Group

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What is Required

• K-12 curricula that are rich with ways of
  learning through, about, and in the arts
• Teacher education programs that treat the arts as
  core subjects
• Professional development in the arts for
  generalist and specialist teachers
• Artist-teacher partnership programs
• Financial and instructional resources

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Teacher Characteristics Views on the Arts
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Teacher Characteristics Specialized Training
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What is Required

• Partnerships between provincial jurisdictions,
  along with public and private sector champions of
  arts education, arts councils, community
  councils, and other organizations to
• Share information on a systematic basis
• Identify successful practices
• Share instructional resources
• Promote research
• Establish tighter links with provincial and
  municipal councils

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Lifelong Learning

• A lot of people, when they hear good music,
  say, Oh, I wish I was so talented. As if
  Segovia picked up the guitar one day and said,
  My God! Im one of the great classical
  guitarists! Its from music that I learned
  that it takes many years to go from incompetence
  to being very good at something.
• Nicholas Thorne
• M.A. student in
• Computer Science and Philosophy

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• Think of something you love to do
• What conditions must be present to sustain you as
  a learner?
• How can the excitement of our personal learning
  be brought to bear on policy? Professional
  practice?
• What are the barriers?

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Promising Two Things

• Personal
• A Broader Circle
• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
  committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
  it is the only thing that ever has.
• Margaret Mead

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• If we say that art, all art is no longer
  relevant to our lives, then we might at least
  risk the question What has happened to our
  lives?
• Jeanette Winterson

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References

• Allemang, J. (1996). Helping Picassos bloom. The
  Globe and Mail, November 23, 1996.
• Armstrong, A. Casement, C. (1997). The Child
  and the Machine. Toronto Key Porter.
• Bruer, J. (1998). Brain Science. Educational
  Leadership, 56(3), 14-18.
• Catterall, J. (1998). Does experience in the arts
  boost academic achievement? Art Education, 51(3),
  6-11. See also httpwww.aep-arts.org/highlights/co
  c-release.html
• Conference Board of Canada (1999). Employability
  Skills Profile What are Employers Looking For?
  Toronto, ON.
• Eisner, E. (1991). What really counts in schools.
  Educational Leadership, 48(5), 10-17.
• Fowler, C. (1996). Strong Arts, Strong Schools.
  NY Oxford University Press.
• Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination. San
  Francisco Jossey-Bass.
• Kelly, M., Kelly, A. (2000). Impact and values
  Assessing the Arts and Creative Industries in the
  South West. Bristol, UK Bristol Cultural
  Development Partnership.
• Music in World Cultures (1996). The Georgia
  project A status report on Arts Education in the
  State of Georgia. St. Boniface, MN Author.
• Pitman, W. (1998). Learning the Arts in an Age of
  Uncertainty. North York, ON AECO.
• Upitis, R. Smithrim, K. (2001). Learning
  Through the Arts National Assessment Interim
  Report. The Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto,
  Canada. See also www.educ.queensu.ca/arts.
• Weber, E.W., Spychiger, M., Patry, J. (1993).
  Music Makes the School. Schlussbericht zu
  Bessere Bildung mit mehr Musik. Padagogisches
  Institut der Universitat, Freiburg/C.H.
• Whyte, K. (1996). Why Johnny Cant Sing. Saturday
  Night, June, 1996, 13-14.

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