Professional Documents
Culture Documents
RWS 1301
Zayra Mojica
Abstract
The Arts Education has always neglected, suppressed, and underappreciated, no matter if
its in the elementary school education all the way up to universities education. Whenever a
school has financial problems, the first places to cut funds for are classes and or clubs related to
the fine arts. Principals, teachers, and even students find Arts Education to be a waste of time and
money. The general public, unless they have an interest in art related things, have a negative
view on Arts Education. To get an understanding of the negative views Arts Education gets,
many people have a negative stigma against college students that get degrees in Art, or Music.
There are Arts enthusiast college students that are afraid to go into careers, because of the
People that want to follow their creative paths, are often discouraged to follow those
paths, to conform into what is acceptable to society standards. Theyre forced to keep doing what
they love, until they can longer handle it or learn to live an unhappy life. Despite all the negative
views on Arts education, it can completely make a difference in everyones life. Whether youre
a child or an adult, Arts Education can affect individuals in many different ways.
Keywords: Arts Education, Art Appreciation, Student Development, Student Motivation, Role
of Education
Introduction
According to many different sources, Arts Education has always lacked funding, and
Maureen Reilly Lormier has stated how Arts Education is forgotten and set aside when compared
to the other subject like Math, English, Science, or History (2009, p. 9). They state whenever
schools lack funding for education, the Arts funds are always first to be sacrificed for the rest.
When the Arts funding is cut, the students suffer tremendously, but no one seems to do a thing
about it. Most of the time when a fine arts class needs funding, students are forced to fundraise
money for their own education. It is clear Arts Education gets neglected especially when
compared to the other school subjects, but how can we keep this from happening, with proper
knowledge this can be preventable. This report will cover the benefits Arts Education has to
students, how to prevent Arts Education from becoming neglected, and what anyone can do to
As I stated before Arts Education is often neglected, but thats because the actual benefits
of Arts Education is not known to the common person. Students face many struggles from lack
of having Art influenced education in their everyday life. According to Catherine Grytting, an
elementary teacher in Seattle believes Art fosters the joys of learning, while still covering all the
different learning styles a student may need to understand a topic better (2000, p.66). It covers
the spatial, kinetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal learning styles. Art supports emotional
growth; it inspires students, and it teaches them how to become leaders. Not only does it do all
that, but it also affects the development of a student mentally and emotionally. Art affects
People do not understand how Arts Education actually benefits students education.
Cesarone connects Art and Music to learning, by sharing the techniques he uses with his own
students. He states that, the Arts foster an understanding of people in their cultures, (Cesarone,
1999, p.52), this is possible because works of art capture history. Art works teach students the
difference and similarities cultures may have just by visually analyzing what they see. Art gives
with just regular art, but also with music, dance, and
mention the benefits of Education in a cultural, academic and economic aspect, (Sowden,
2015, p.128). In one experiment they had one group of kids do an improvised dance for a
performance, while another group of kids learned a non-improvised choreographed dance. The
children that were involved in the improvised dance showed better creative, and thinking skills.
By allowing children to use their brains to be creative, they are able to exercise their minds in
school. Three professors followed the dropout rates in a high school where it is not mandatory to
take fine art classes for five years. They believed that, students that take fine art classes have a
lesser chance to drop out of school (Kathleen and others, 2015, p. 39). By having a way to let
student let out their creativity, it keeps them stress free, and from dropping out of school.
Greer, a Professor at the University of Arizona, focuses on the issues and problematic
areas relating to the Arts. As I mentioned before the lack of funding really affects a students
Education, but there is another problem that makes it an even bigger disadvantage. Greer states
that When compared to other school subjects, Arts Education seems to never advance, (1983,
p. 87). He brings up the point that subjects like Science are always changing as new discoveries
are made, but as for fine art classes they seem to rarely change over a long period of time. Arts
Education is always expanding in different ways, but it gets ignored by everyone. For a student
to learn to the best of their ability they need the most advanced information that they can get.
To stop problems like these from happening, Goodwin, a university administrator,
believes by supporting Arts Education publically itll bring awareness to it. He states that If Arts
Education got more recognition in the public eye, it would get funded more and pushed more
into a students education, (Goodwin, 2005, p. 557). Basically the more Arts Education is in the
public eye, the more the public will care about it, and be passionate to help fix the problems it
has.
Conclusion
Even though the problems involving Arts Education are not very prominent, they should
be made aware to the public. Not all schools suffer from problems like this, but a lot of schools
Having a perfect education for a child is inevitable, but that does not mean we cannot have it be
perfected.
References
Cesarone, B. (1999). Benefits of Art and Music Education. Childhood Education, 76(1), 52.
Goodwin, C. D. (2005). Kenneth Clark: His Case for Public Support of the Arts. History of
Greer, W. (1983). Arts versus Art Education. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 17(1). 85-92.
Grytting, C. (2000). The Benefits of Art Education. Forum: Thoughts to Share. Arts & Activities,
127(3), 66.
Kathleen Thomas, M., Singh, P. & Klopfenstein, K. (2015). Arts Education and the High School
88(3), 8-12.
Sowden, P. T., Clements, L., Redlich, C., & Lewis, C. (2015). Improvisation Facilitates
Divergent Thinking and Creativity: Realizing a Benefit of Primary School Arts