I just finished watching President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Regarding education, the President said, “Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform – reform that raises student achievement, inspires students to excel in math and science, and turns around failing schools.”
Do you see a problem with that statement? I do.
For me, the President’s words imply a view of education that values quantitative subjects above all else.
After all, the only subjects he mentioned were math and science – areas that typically get assessed with standardized tests. He didn’t point to topics such as writing, collaboration, languages, and, of particular interest to me, the arts.
I believe that my 30 years of teaching outfit me to say with some authority that the sorts of thinking that students require to be flexible learners and adept problem-solvers aren’t typically being taught in K-12 math and science classes.
They could be, but when school districts’ budgets hinge on how students score on government-mandated math and science tests (as is the case with many schools today), their curricula inevitably become centered on test preparation, which can foster anti-creative mindsets.
As I see it, creativity gets stifled when children are pressured, above all else, to score well on standardized tests in which they’re rewarded only for getting the ‘right’ answers and picking ‘correct’ responses on multiple-choice exams.
In such school cultures, students start thinking in absolutist, black-and-white sorts of ways, and mistakes become costly: wrong answers lower grades and can even undercut school funding.
Yet we all know that we learn best in environments that encourage experimentation and in which the error-and-revision process can proceed without students feeling shamed.
Sure, math and science skills are essential, but they aren’t the only skills that matter. Nor are they necessarily the most important subjects for students to master. Nor does the study of them have to supplant education in the arts.
In my book, The Musician’s Way, the section titled “Solving Problems” (p. 54-70) points out the limitations of educational models that nurture narrow, convergent ways of thinking.
That is, a math problem will commonly have a single correct answer, but artistic problems and social predicaments can have numerous solutions.
Creative problem-solvers, therefore, think in divergent ways.
For us musicians, our artistic success depends on our ability to recognize, define, and solve problems in the practice studio and rehearsal hall. We have to think both independently and collaboratively. We have to try out various interpretive and technical ideas, weigh them, make choices, go forward, have things not work out, try other ideas, etc. (See my post ‘Constructive creativity‘).
I don’t know about your experiences going to school, but in my math and science classes, little of that sort of creative thinking took place. Instead, problems were set in front of us, and we were all expected to arrive at identical answers.
I’m not suggesting that President Obama believes that we should scrap every subject other than math and science. But when he talks about education and appears to tow the old math-science lines, then I feel obliged to speak out and say that students need a very different kind of education today than the one they’re ordinarily receiving, an education that places arts and creativity at the center.
And the evidence is mounting that kids who receive arts educations out-think those who do not.
For instance, in a 2009 issue of Psychology of Music (37/3), researchers Piro and Ortiz report that second graders who were given twice-weekly piano instruction dramatically improved their verbal scores by the end of the school year compared to a control group that had no music instruction.
Of course, the true value of arts education isn’t its power to help students excel in other subjects. Arts education stands on its own merits, which include its capacity to stimulate creativity and integrated intelligence as well as bring about the beauty, self-actualization, and community-building that result from artistic expression and shared meaning.
In sum, I can’t sit back and let our nation’s leaders promote educational systems that merely aspire to train workers to function in technically demanding jobs.
I hope that you’ll join me in supporting educational systems that promote the sorts of creative, divergent thinking that made America great and that spawned the artists and innovators that we celebrate worldwide.
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Do you believe that our school systems cultivate flexible, creative thinking? In what ways did your schooling help or hinder your creative powers?
© 2010 Gerald Klickstein
Terrific points with which I fully agree – an arts-integrated curriculum would be ideal. And a sizable number of charter schools here in the US are implementing such curricula with excellent results. Thanks for contributing.
I am not sure it has to be a versus argument especially in the case of digital arts. The most exciting art for me is coming from the digital world. Look at some of the visuals made from simple L-Systems which are basically simply logic switching circuits. Or look up some Aphex Twin where he uses an FFT analysis of photo of his face to generate music. Elements of science and maths could be taught through music. Scales, intervals, measurement of time, instrument design, acoustics, psychoacoustics, digital technology, networks. In western art music there is much interest in ideas of randomness, chaotic systems, probabilities, set theory, self generation and evolution. Also people never stop creating new musical instruments. There is lot of work going into the use of new sensors such motion tracking and biometrics to control music, new places for music to exist like designing music apps for mobile devices or what will come next cloud networks.
I think digital artforms offer a rich environment for a well rounded education. I came from an arts background and was taught a history of philosophical thought. I knew of Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum but not of his calculus, in school I knew of Pythagorean triangles but not of his music of the spheres, I knew of Bertrand Russell’s History Of Philosophy but not his ideas on set theory. It just goes on and on. A modern example would be Richard Licklider and Robert Taylor both professional psychoacousticans who went on to develop the early arpanet/internet. Clever people think about a lot of things. To divide up history and education into hard and soft arts is misleading and I am still trying to complete this broken picture of knowledge I was given. The reverse of course would be true for those from a science background. In science only things that are measurable count, anything is is just so much noise. This can of course blind people as was pointed out by one of this centuries great thinkers is Mandelbrot who is neither mathematician, meteorologist, computer scientist, or economist but a deep thinker who can see that problems are shared across many fields.
Public funded art schools do excel and exist.
http://hspva.org/dhtml/
http://www.evergreen.edu/
Very interesting posts.
I love the Ted Video
There is a book I’m reading by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Professor of cognitive science at Indiana University. It is known as GEB (Gödel Escher Bach). The work talks about integrated principals of systems in math, quantum physics, visual arts, music and intelligence.
If you aren’t convinced these fields are in truth closely related, you should check it out.
Max I agree with your concern about ‘needy idealism’ and its lack of hubris. I think is a closely related idea to many of the posts on motivation and practicing that Professor Klickstein has presented. I have found that ideas about what I “need” to do, or what I “should” do are often painfully far from reality. I think that movements based on similar ideas are also painfully far from reality.
I want to distinguish between practical needs and idealistic needs. Practical needs are needs that are tangible such as: i need money to pay my rent. As opposed to :I really need to practice today.” I can think that thought all I want and often it doesn’t help me practice.
I agree with Max in many ways I think that arts based movements often overlook the idea that the arts are directly related to other fields. I too am over the Math and Science emphasis that our education system triumphs. I find that the way we teach these subjects falls far behind the reality of what math and science are actually about.
Mathematics is taught too often based on repeated busywork, math classes rarely discuss the relevance of mathematical principals in practical/interesting terms. Calculating angles of a triangle can only be interesting for so long. The more relevant ramifications of mathematics in our daily lives are often overlooked in classroom settings. Or they are lost in hours of repetition. doing the same thing over and over.
Science has similar problems, how much time is spent describing the scientific method, and the structure of DNA, which are in the larger scheme of science, trivial facts. Not related to any practical application of science in the real world. You can learn more about the practical information of science on Wikipedia in a week than you can in years of science classes.
With the explosion of information in our age our systems of learning have become far less interesting than simple games. Game play has been proven highly important in the early development of intelligence in humans and in other species. There has to be a scientific basis for it. If we don’t adapt our learning systems to be flexible and to be tailored to the way human brains work we won’t succeed in educating our children effectively.
Thanks, Roberto.
I, too, recommend that video by creativity expert Ken Robinson. The 20-min. lecture, titled “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity,” can also be viewed on the TED website via this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Wonderful
There;s a wonderful TED talk about the need for art in education, that backs this up beautifully:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
As educators (and parents), we’re supposed to be preparing young people for life in a world that is changing so quickly, we have very little idea what it’s going to look like in 10 years. Creativity, exploration, and experimentation teach the adaptability we need to thrive in such an environment, and the arts are indispensable in this process.
Most of the arts-based schools that I’m familiar with are public – the one here is Winston is – so they’re having a significant impact on poor and wealthy Americans alike. Such schools typically function as magnet or charter schools so that students from across a city can attend. Admission can be by lottery or by audition – ours is by lottery, which makes admission accessible to all.
I’m not convinced that reducing arts activities in schools will improve students’ math/science skills. In fact, in many arts-centered curricular, students excel on math/science exams.
If we’re looking to improve student academic performance, then I think that there are some effective models that can be copied and developed. E.g., some top-performing schools don’t cut back on arts but have longer school days and year-round school – i.e., students have their vacation days spread out over the course of the entire year rather than having a 2-3 month summer break.
Also, as I see it, while U.S. students might not be scoring as highly on certain tests as students in some other countries, the standardized tests we’re using are measuring relatively narrow sorts of knowledge and thinking. Truly comprehensive educational programs will enable students to excel broadly, not just on those easy-to-measure types of skills.
I don’t doubt the number of art-based schools in the U.S. But how many of them are public-funded? I’m pretty sure the majority of them are private which is of no concern to mainstream America. At least not to the people President Obama was talking to.
I agree that it would be horrible if the arts were stripped from the public school system. However, there is a difference between taking something away and leaving it to its own command. I don’t believe the President was talking about stripping the arts, just placing it on the back burner. And I will say I agree with him on that because of the math/science scores the U.S. has in comparison to that of Europe and Asia. It’s kind of embarrassing when discussing it with people in Europe!
Interesting points, Max – thanks for commenting. Actually, numerous schools across the U.S. have adopted arts-based curricula, and with superior results. There’s a famous arts-based elementary school here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where I live.
These schools don’t aim to turn every student into a professional artist or force kids to make art but to provide students with comprehensive educations rather than narrow, test-driven ones. That’s the sort of education I’m referring to when I describe curricula with arts and creativity at the core.
Regardless of whether schools choose to be arts-based or not, though, stripping arts from school curricula will be detrimental to our kids and our culture because many students will have no other opportunities to play music, paint, act, think creatively, etc. Of course, as you point out, some people will manage to make art no matter what, but without opportunities to discover their talents, countless students will never express their gifts and may graduate with rule-based, underdeveloped thinking skills. That is, their schools will have failed to educate them.
Well said. Unfortunately, the plan of creative arts being front and center will never happen.
There are countless statistics and theories that show how important the arts are for one’s development; from little Billy’s attention span being improved by learning a Mozart theme on a recorder, to an old woman’s ability to remember events in her life because of some music therapy she went through. We get it; there are benefits.
But consider two factors:
Factor #1: The U.S. doesn’t understand the arts, the people do.
The social consensus in the U.S. went through a major overhaul during its industrial revolution and, more specifically, during the great depression. Because of the dire economic situation of that time, people needed jobs and fast. It was both encouraged and respected to have a get-your-hands-dirty job because it produced instant results; you worked 10 hours a day and got a paycheck at the end of the week. To work in a factory was concrete; it was real and it was the business model of the times. To have a job as a musician was considered abstract at best; it was hard to get a hold of. There was no tangible product per ce. It was because of this reason that the idea of perusing a job in the arts was discouraged. Funding was cut significantly for public schools. It got to the point where many considered a musician to be nothing more than a pan-handler. Playing music was an activity, not a way of life. This very thinking is still with many people in the U.S. and evidence shows that it is still enforced. Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few years, those same tough economic times are essentially being relived. The majority of people’s thinking is the same today as it was back then: the random act of success as an artist is simply not practical. The mantra was (and arguably still is): “Don’t give the kid a guitar. Give him a wrench.” This is not the way I’d want to see our society view the arts, but it’s a cold fact that it is. And President Obama knows it.
Factor #2: The arts do not need any help.
Luckily, the arts didn’t need much funding or leadership. It made its own. From Copeland to Pollock, Gershwin to G. Wood. Despite the poo-poo attitude of the arts these people flourished. But you’d never know it by talking with education advocates. The feeling is that we will “loose” the arts if it doesn’t take more precedence in schools. Even the highly popular “Save the Music” foundation is pushing for reform in favor of music. This, to me, is got to be one of the biggest jokes ever. I’m sure that we can agree society dismissing an art like music in favor of science puts those who want to practice music at great adversity. Good! If there is one thing that music and musicians have taught us over its existence is that music thrives in the face of adversity. Some of the best pieces of music came from composers who were dirt poor, little if no education, and had the cards stacked against them.
Just because we don’t see music in the schools doesn’t mean it’s going to disappear. I believe that many of the great artists came about in spite of their academic settings. If we were to force music into the schools as we want, you would see things like choir becoming a prerequisite to graduation, or band practice would be mandatory. But I can assure you, if you ever want a kid to NOT do something, tell them they have to (I know because I used to be a kid once). There would be a major backlash.
I’m a composer, an organist, a teacher and I live for music. But I also know my place in society. That doesn’t mean I have an unhealthy attitude of myself or my career choice. It just means I know there are far more important things out there. Quite frankly, I’ll be damned if someone tells me that things “need” to be a certain way. Should some musician tell me that music needs to be more prevalent today, isn’t that a little biased? That mindset is the same as critics out there who give their annual “the best music you’re not listening to” rant in some pseudo-hip magazine. Really? The best? Who says, you? Could it be that people don’t listen to it because it’s terrible?
So forget President Obama’s lack of an agenda on the arts. If you have the means to teach, teach only those who ask for it. As far as making it, I think we as musicians should do what we can to help ourselves. It is, after all, much like creativity itself: an extremely selfish practice. The outcome is for anyone. But to create it requires only you and your angels. Even if the NEA closed it’s doors after humoring the public for 45 years, and PBS stopped teaching kids to sing about taking a bath, music would survive. Quite possibly for the better.