Arts and Education
Lack of Arts in School Curriculum affects learning and interest in learning
School leaders and policymakers pay little attention to arts despite the experience that, allowing young people to participate in arts and culture can influence their development tremendously. The major problem lies with the fact that very few people bother to carry out a research, and record the far-reaching effect arts and culture can have on students. Instead, schools, researchers, and policymakers spend more time focusing on what is easily and commonly measured: reading and math success. This has led art proponents into trying to establish a connection between arts and higher reading and math grades -- a claim that still lacks scholarly, scientific evidence. For other advocates of arts, there is no need and no way to measure the benefits (Greene, et al., 2014).
In recent years, most attention with regards to education have been making numeracy and literacy top priorities, with the aim of creating employment opportunities for students, and as a vehicle for fostering a knowledge economy. With the concern that the more creative subjects are being increasingly ignored as extra-curricular additions, where the middle-class shows dominance, arts associations have prepared their defenses. Art offers an exciting way to document growth. A child's skills improve same way reading and writing skills get better with time. It is the responsibility of both the teachers and
Once different materials are made available, it gives the children the chance to choose to make use of the materials or not. However, when the exposure is not there, they lose the chance to decide what they want to use and what they do not want.
Creation of art is one great way children make their own choices and provide solutions to problems. Decision-making is needed in every step: the right color to use, the best way to draw a line, the best size of image to draw. Their sense of ownership about the object increases with each choice they make. Everyone has an active imagination. Art enhances this ability. Art nurtures and develops children's imagination. Through art, children give their abstract ideas visual manifestations. Children having trouble with other school works may find it easier to express themselves through art. It is one way to express certain latent talents. Art is a channel through which one can communicate one's feelings, ideas, and even solutions to problems in more ways than the conventional written or verbal means. The results of a 10-year national study carried out by Shirley Brice Heath of Stanford University, showed that young people who took part in effective community programs that were non-school arts in communities with inadequate resources, when compared with a number of national students were found to be:
• About 8 times more likely to be recipients of an award for community service
• About 4…
