Why Arts Classes Matter in Schools
(Or, Why Arts Classes Are a Model for Teaching Creativy Across the Curriculum)
I recently rewatched Ken Robinson's iconic TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity" (a pillar of innovative thought on why schools need to change, and how), and it got me thinking about why I am still a music teacher. The crux of his argument is that the structure of school, as it operates today, prioritizes certain patterns of thinking (particularly those of academia, or scholarship for its own sake), while educating students out of their youthful creativity. While I am the kind of person who nods his head vigorously and agrees vehemently with Sir Robinson's every word, I think there's an even deeper argument to be made about not only preserving, but centering Arts classes in schools, which is that they provide a training ground upon which to learn the skills, patterns, and actions of creative thinking that students (and adults) will need in any field they choose to pursue.
It's not very contentious to point out that Arts education is lower in the curricular hierarchy than other, more "academic" subjects like Math and English, because it's true. The most obvious expression of this hierarchy is budget cuts to Arts departments, which are tangible and, sadly, quite extensive. But money isn't the only way our schools show us what matters and what doesn't - as another example, our classes are often used as a buffer or placeholder that helps facilitate schedule changes; while "core" classes are preserved (kids just change Math sections if their schedule is changed), a student may be moved from Music into Theater, or Visual Art into Music on a whim at any time. This is particularly concerning when it happens late in the year: imagine putting a kid into a math class for the first time in January - they'd be totally lost, and so it is with music, yet it's quite common for me to receive several new kids at the beginning of Semester Two, implying that the content they missed is optional, or that it's more important to check the "Arts" box on their schedule than that they actually learn the content. And, of course, our society's educational priorities are on full display when it comes time for me, a music teacher, to proctor high-stakes tests like MAP and PARCC, and Math and ELA reign supreme, while the Arts are nowhere to be found.
It's also not very contentious, I don't think, to stand firmly against the reality that the Arts are deprioritized in this way, although then again, I am a Music teacher, and I'm surrounded by Arts teachers who think about this every day. The audience at Ken Robinson's TED talk require no convincing at all - they cheer and laugh, and it's clear that he's expressing the shared sentiments of a community whose creativity, in all its manifestations, was stifled in school (that community is all of us). Many scientific minds have spent time and effort discovering the very real psychological and neurological benefits of the Arts for children. Arts education associations like NAfME, the National Association for Music Education, actually provide advocacy resources and argumentative strategies that rely on this science designed to help us "promote and protect" our programs (although I suppose the existence of these advocacy kits could be construed as an argument against the idea that most of us would favor more arts in schools - if we did, there would be no need to advocate in the first place. A topic for another time).
The point, though, is that all of these arguments focus on the elevation and/or relegation of content in a curricular hierarchy, which I think is a misguided approach. Advocacy kits seek to elevate the arts by arguing that students benefit from a creative outlet for self-expression, and I agree with that, but I also think that these rosy proclamations may not resonate with someone who hasn't personally spent a lifetime feeling the joy of skillfully making music or art and experiencing the positive benefits of personal expression for themselves - they sound overly idealistic to me, and I think people aren't convinced by what I call the "butterflies and rainbows" argument that everything is wonderful in the arts. Furthermore, I think there's a more important point to be made, which is that creative thinking can and should be expressed in all of the disciplines, including Math, Science, and ELA (the "A" stands for "Arts" - also, if you need convincing that Math can be a beautiful expression of creativity, check out the fantastic Youtube channel Numberphile).
The focus on content (and the bickering over which types of content we elevate/relegate) obscures the higher-level development of broader creative skills, problem solving skills, which I'd argue should be the top priority for our kids because these are flexible and adaptable skills, which will allow students to grow into mindful adults who can pursue and build a successful career in whatever interests them. Most Arts teachers understand that our goal isn't to pump out musicians and artist from schools. We're after creative skills, and this is an approach that other classes can take as well. On paper, the content of my class is actually very simple, and my students expect my class to be easy (they expect that of most Arts classes, or "specials"), but they discover that, while the tasks or even the concepts themselves aren't particularly challenging, it's the many, many opportunities for productive failure (and the fact that we need to embrace failure in the Arts) that make the creative process so tough. It's incredibly easy to make a terrible song that follows the rules, but to make something that's actually good it takes perseverance, creative and critical thought, and a willingness to explore, make mistakes, and discard failed attempts. And, kids care! They feel upset with themselves when they make something mediocre because they know (and they say this to me, and they write it down on reflections) they could have done better if they stuck with it and dedicated a little more time.
Unfortunately, though, the focus on content is what drives our educational world right now (the Common Core, of course, being the culminating exemplification of this approach). There's a messiness to the creative process that Math and English teachers are probably wary of, since they feel pressured to efficiently cover the content that will show up on the test. I can understand why schools that prioritize results on high-stakes testing would cut Arts education first1 - in the model of different teachers inputting different types of content into the children (a conception of pedagogy famously critiqued by Paolo Freire as the "banking" model), the stream of content coming from the arts department isn't as valuable as the stream coming from the Math and English departments. But this whole setup reveals that, no matter what schools say, they're focused more on teaching specific content than on the development of broader patterns of thought.
My argument, therefore, isn't that kids need more Arts content in their day so they can become better artists, but rather that Arts classes provide them with a place to experiment, fail, and practice the creative skills that will make them better at every other discipline, even if it comes at the expense of learning some of the content in those disciplines (actually, my experience is that creative pursuits lead to kids finding gaps in their own knowledge, what teachers call a "need to know," and they wind up asking you to give them the content anyway). In fact, let's blow the lid off this entire thing and forget the Arts entirely - every class our students take should prioritize creative thinking and problem solving over content. It's not more Arts that the kids need (that would be the content argument), but rather the opportunity to explore, to fail, to revise, to ask questions, to be curious, and most important to be creative in all their classes.
In a (rather unsurprising) plot twist, I suppose I've built my argument back up to Ken Robinson's, which held the umbrella over all of my disparate opinions and reflected my own take all along (and it would have been quite presumptuous to think that I understood this better than he did). If we take our gaze off the different types of content we're teaching our kids and instead focus on bigger, broader thinking skills, it doesn't matter what discipline we teach. Arts teachers may have a keener sense of this than most, but that doesn't mean that Music, Art, Dance, and Theater are the only classes where creativity can thrive. I do think our classes can provide a model for what a strong education in creative thinking can look like for other teachers, but as we look forward to an innovative and revolutionary educational future, I think we should look very closely at what our actions prioritize and consider liberating students and teachers from the grip of content and allowing them to flourish into creative practitioners and critical thinkers in any discipline to which their passions and interests lead them.
1And I can understand why they would prioritize high scores on statewide tests because that'swhere the money comes from.