Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, and Wynton Marsalis, master musician, wrote a joint article for USA Today about the importance of arts education.
They wrote:
“We hear widespread calls for “outcomes” we can measure and for education geared to specific employment needs, but many of today’s students will hold jobs that have not yet been invented, deploying skills not yet defined. We not only need to equip them with the ability to answer the questions relevant to the world we now inhabit; we must also enable them to ask the right questions to shape the world to come.
“We need education that nurtures judgment as well as mastery, ethics and values as well as analysis. We need learning that will enable students to interpret complexity, to adapt, and to make sense of lives they never anticipated. We need a way of teaching that encourages them to develop understanding of those different from themselves, enabling constructive collaborations across national and cultural origins and identities.
“In other words, we need learning that incorporates what the arts teach us.”
Their article beautifully expresses why the arts change our lives, in ways that cannot be measured by value-added assessment or any other metric that the data-driven technocrats devise.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beautifully put, Dr. Ravitch! Teachers see the impact the arts have on our children every day, and how students develop as critical thinkers through encounters with the arts. We must continue the fight to keep the arts alive in our schools.
you are so right; drawing teaches the student critical lessons in analytical observation and by finding creative solutions. the student taps into those skills when they encounter many hurdles of life.
Reminds me of the Dr. Ravitch post on seeing Shakespeare. We have ALMOST forgotten what it means to be human. The arts, all of them, keep us in touch with our “humanity”. People are not to be perceived only scientific “its” but as Martin Buber stated “thous”. To forget that is to lose sight of our humanity and we know all too well what happens then. When people are perceived as “its”, “objects”, “widgets”, we are well on our way to having another reiteration of some of the worst of human history. We allow this at our peril.
Sums up why “outcomes”-based eduction is such a disaster, especially since it has been cooked up by non-educators such as Eli Broad and Bill Gates and all those making money off of tier so-called “reform” movement.
Here’s the link to the story in USA Today.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/12/31/arts-education-music-faust-marsalis-column/4267705/
They conclude with:
“We must teach our children to be ready for a world we cannot yet know, one that will require the attitudes and understanding sparked and nurtured by the experience of the arts.”
“These are the qualities by which the future will measure us.”
If things continue as they are today, the future will not look back kindly upon our current decisions and actions. It is sheer arrogance for those in power today to expect us to believe that they alone know what is best for our children for they do not and cannot.
To which I would add this from their recommendations:
“As we lament the discordant tone of our national conversation, perhaps we should focus less on that which we can easily count.”
This speaks directly to the challenge all Arts teachers (like myself) have every day trying to explain the value that our field provides to students and society at large. Wonderfully put by Faust and Marsalis.
It seems like a mistake to structure an argument for the arts around the statement “many of today’s students will hold jobs that have not yet been invented, deploying skills not yet defined.” Over the years, people in their jobs tend to provide goods and services. Maybe buggy whips, maybe smart phone apps. Then they go home to their families and play with their kids. What am I missing?
to Ron…yes, what are you missing?
Arts are a way to learn how to be creative, to work together with others, to present one’s self in public, to gain tangible appreciation that success and improvement comes from steady and consistent practice and hard work. Can one gain these things without an arts education? Probably. But it would take longer. Just like asking, can one learn to read w/o schooling? Probably. But it would take longer for most.
The disadvantage that arts education has is in not being able to measure it directly with standardized tests. We live in a data driven society where if we can’t quantify it, then it might not be deemed important.
Arts are a way to learn how to be creative, to work together with others, to present one’s self in public, to gain tangible appreciation that success and improvement comes from steady and consistent practice and hard work. Can one gain these things without an arts education? Probably. But it would take longer. Just like asking, can one learn to read w/o schooling? Probably. But it would take longer for most.
The disadvantage that arts education has is in not being able to measure it directly with standardized tests. We live in a data driven society where if we can’t quantify it, then it might not be deemed important.
Ron, You are missing the same connections as Gates and Broad and Duncan and Rhee, and all of the others who were probably socially inept students in school who found solace in algebra and math class. Numbers make sense to them and nothing else. People who understand numbers, data, and technology, but little else. They forget that each of those data points represent a living, breathing child. Come visit us here in south Louisiana and New Orleans and all of the other wonderful places in our nation where music and entertainment industries thrive. Then you will understand what you are missing. Math and reading are important, but we need so much more to educate well rounded students who also creative, open minded, and innovative.
I would suggest that you have a limited idea of what a job is — or might be. Someone designed the buggy whip; someone designed the last smart phone app you downloaded. Think of all the creativity that underpins anything we invent or produce. (Oh, rats, there I go. I forgot, we don’t produce much of anything in this country anymore.)
I think the people who answered my comment missed my point: I think it makes no sense to structure an argument for arts around the idea that people in the future will “hold jobs that have not been invented”. Is it really about jobs? About jobs that aren’t invented?
Take any place or time in history (say India 1500 years ago) and imagine someone — an artist like Wynton Marsalis — saying “the children need to do art because they’ll be holding jobs you never heard of”. Personally, I think they will mostly have jobs you *have* heard of, like trumpeter, teacher, cook, accountant, computer jockey, sales, repair, driver, lawyer, medical care. For “singlehand”, I can add a “creative” person, they too have always been with us.
Right it’s not just about jobs. Unfortunately though as an art teacher I have heard too many times “my parents won’t pay for me to go to college to study art”. That there will be jobs in the art industry is a defense to this argument. There are many therapeutic aspects resulting from indulging in the arts. I feel that the hole in our society’s collective soul is a direct result of the cultural attitude of placing the material over the spiritual. Engaging in the arts takes us away from materialistic thinking and helps us get back to basics.
Unfortunately, so much of the standardized information that is glorified in the public school system does not value creativity. There are so many jobs available in art related fields today which is one reason that art education should be embraced. However, in addition to that the critical, explorative, risk-taking thinking that is fostered and nurtured in the arts sadly does not occur regularly in education. As an art teacher I am often dismayed by students who look to me for “THE ANSWER” and are blown away to learn that there are MANY. My heart breaks when a (high school) student of mine raised on rubrics looks up and says “How many points will I get if I color the sky?” A part of me wants to mourn the crippling and maiming of the intellectual (and somehow spiritual) capacity of our youth, but I go on hoping that I am getting through in some way.
People do not travel to Rome to visit collections of data or to sit in a hotel using their smart phone. They go to see the amazing architecture, art, and food . They do not go to Vienna to look at the output at a local food processing plant or play on a wii. They go to experience the art of the cafe with its amazing pastries and coffees or the wonderful music. People do not come to the US Capital and visit the Library of Congress to review statistics on the vast book collection. They want to see the exhibits there and to look at books on a wide variety of subjects by yes.. authors or to visit one the many museums. We cannot starve humanity of the need to create and expect to have a joyful and productive world that humans want to live in. People like Bill Gates lack the emotional intelligence (his emotional IQ must be well below the norm) to realize that the data/technology obsession cannot be at the expense of our humanity. It is a tool but when it becomes an end all… WE ARE IN TROUBLE. Our public education is under attack by those who see technology and data as a profit-making END ALL. Harvard has major corporate mega-billionaire ties including their infamous “almost graduate” Bill Gates. Is it too “linked” to speak out forcefully against this “corporate ed reform” assault on public education and the arts? I applaud Drew faust for addressing this all-important issue though. I hope she continues to make it front and center.
Creative thinking manifested through the arts has been absolutely critical to the development and survival of humanity throughout the ages since prehistoric times. It is absolutely criminal today the form of education mandated by the ruling U.S. corporate polyarchy and opulent minority is based on fear and conformity.
You can add foreign languages to that list as well. Soon it will be just math (gag) and reading informational texts in English class (double gag). They are even trying to limit Shakespeare, and the classics in English classes. Where can I sign up for informational texts 101? It sounds like a dream! It all makes me want to throw up. In my school, kids are forced to double up in math or English if they are not skilled in those subjects. There are many kids taking 2 math classes and 2 English classes and hating every second. They have no space for art, wood shop, music or foreign languages. They have no chance to find something they actually “like” learning about. I hated math since 3rd grade, and would have been locked in “math hell” in the current system. This is why my kids will go to private schools no matter what. The chance of an inner city child has of experiencing art or music in the future is just about “Nil.” I wonder how many inner city kids will “attend” these schools… It’s a complete joke. If I were them, I would be running the streets like a wild man, anything but sit in those math and English testing factories. Do you think anyone in charge gives a damn what a president of Harvard or a musician thinks? Now if he were the basketball coach of Harvard, he might actually have some influence and influential connections. Ha ha. What a joke!
And don’t forget social studies either! (not that I’m saying you did, Mike). Social Studies involves a lot that is not measured either, particularly appreciation for democracy and other human beings and where we all come from. We’re losing much of that with this insane focus on low level math and reading.
I agree.
Amen! I’m in the car heading home after hearing my daughter and many other talented children perform at the 2014 South Central District – All District Clinic Bands in NC. I’m a registered Republican and I hate what I see going on in my children’s public schools. I have written all of my representatives to let them know! Thank god for my children’s band programs in their middle and high schools….common core hasn’t gotten to these programs……….yet.
The arts are important to education?!?!?!? The hell, you say!
And in other news, rain is wet and snow is cold.
lol
I am always grateful when people speak out on behalf of arts education. I have taught visual art at all levels and worked on behalf of arts education in public schools since the late 1950s, including some projects that included the performing and literary arts and the first two NAEP assessments in art.
High-profile support for arts education is not abundant, certainly not in this era. Even so, it is important to avoid conceptual traps and cliches that are counterproductive.
For example, the arts do not have a corner on exemplifying creativity or nurturing innovation. There are huge swaths of artistry that rest on honoring traditions rather than innovating. Expressive work in some of the arts depends on repeated practice to hone specific skills; but in other arts there are few prerequisites of this kind. Some arts are collaborative from the get-go, others are more solitary.
The value of skills and techniques learned in the context of art may or may not have economic value. Steve Jobs credited his studies of calligraphy (not skill as a calligrapher) with the early success of Apple see http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
The social and cultural significance of artistry is usually unnoticed unless or until there is controversy… or some “proof” of the efficacy of engagement as a remedy for a problem. For example, advocates always emphasize the special value of the arts in reducing truancy and drop out rates, too often without a corresponding look at other remedial actions.
Historically and in the present, people have been killed and world heritage destroyed because art can be regarded as seriously consequential, not just “a frill.” For the same reason, corporations pay millions for artfully contrived messages to sell goods and services.
In lhe United States, well-intentioned advocates too often repeat one-liners that function as arguments against the value and necessity of formal instruction of the kind schools might might offer. I have met more than one-high-profile artist acting as a policy maker who has argued that formal education in school is either unnecessary or inevitably misguided.
Variants of these mini-arguments against education include: “The arts are a universal language everyone can understand,” “If you have to explain it isn’t art,” “Children are naturally artistic and creative, “Art is caught, not taught,” “People who try to explain art are barking up the wrong tree,” “I don’t know vanything about art, but I know what I like,”
“Art is anything you can get away with,” “Art is a gift or talent you are born with,” ” Don’t teach the arts, let the arts teach,” and so on.
The last of these examples has operated as a premise for a lot research conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, where “participation” in and “exposure to” any of the arts is equated with education.
Many people in and beyond the world of art think that arts education is “taken care of” if the school has a now-and-then-arts program (or one after school), or permits a “visiting artist’ to work with students, or offers field trips (not limited to a single performance or a single “walk and gawk” tour to an art museum).
Alternatively, the school may claim to “integrate” the arts into the curriculum for reasons that bear less on education in the arts than adding a lively twist to another subject in the hope of boosting scores on tests (an outcome actually sought in USDE grants for arts education).
So, the arts are not a panacea, and the idea of systematic studies in the arts remains alien or discomforting to many. The use of the arts as a form of aesthetic persuasion–to make learning in school more bearable for everyone–has some uptake as a palliative for the malaise caused by the test-em-til-they-drop policies and a severely narrowed curriculum. Pitiful.
Thank you Dr. Chapman!
Clyde
http://www.clydegaw.blogspot.com
Wow! Thank you for this one, especially, Diane. Marsalis and Faust have nailed it, and with such style!!
Perhaps this is the place to add an excerpt from Elizabeth Natale’s op-ed piece in the Hartford Courant dated 1/14/14. In “Why I Want to Give Up Teaching,” Natale writes that she has been a middle school teacher for 15 years. Here’s how she describes her students. (Clearly, Mr. Marsalis and Dr. Faust understand them, too.)
“They are humans who are not fazed by a D but are undone when their goldfish dies, who struggle with composing a coherent paragraph but draw brilliantly, who read on a third-grade level but generously hold the door for others.”
As Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
Lousianna Purchase (if that’s your real name),
Haven’t you seen “Schindler’s List”? History, Sociology, Social Studies, Foreign Languages, Art: We are all “unessential workers” now.
“Louisiana Purchase” refers to a particularly egregious error on a standardized social studies test. I teach in Utah, a right to work state, and want to keep my actual name, as my students would say, “on the down-low.”
I teach the Holocaust in class and have seen “Schindler’s List” several times. If the 1% had their way, we’d all be non-essential. I’ve just intruded into Godwin’s Law, but there it is.
I’m so glad they wrote this article. I worked in an urban charter where there were no opportunities to learn any of the arts. It was disgusting. There are many students who have talents in those areas and deserve to have these opportunities. There many people who create businesses by playing music for weddings or selling artwork. It is valuable to society. All children deserve the opportunity to explore music art and drama. What a shame.
And where do the leading charterites/privatizers send THEIR OWN CHILDREN?
Are the arts that important?
Let’s just take a peek at some excerpts from “ARTS OVERVIEW” on the Cranbrook Schools website:
“Cranbrook believes that everyone has the capacity to make art, and we aim to foster that ability in each student with the Arts program at our private boarding and day school in Michigan. The arts are passionate. Initially solitary and ultimately public, the arts involve the whole person and address the whole community. Recognizing that intense and regular exposure to the arts has always had a civilizing and liberating influence, our Fine Arts, Dance, Drama, and Music Programs offer students a variety of studio and performance-based classes and frequent exposure to a diverse group of artists.
… Cranbrook continues to uphold creative expression as an essential component of the school experience. Our students’ art choices abound: printmaking, drawing, metalsmithing, weaving, symphony and jazz bands, choral groups, stagecraft, acting, dance, sculpture, and ceramics.
In addition to our accomplished art faculty, Cranbrook Kingswood students have additional resources available to them in the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the only institution in the nation dedicated exclusively to studio-based graduate education in art, design, and architecture, as well as the Cranbrook Museum, a contemporary art museum featuring the work of local, national and international artists.”
Link: http://schools.cranbrook.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=148933
I seem to remember a catchy argument that “poor parents should have the same choices as rich parents” when it comes to the schools their children attend.
Does anyone know what happened to that rheephorm slogan?
😎
keep saying it, my friend!
The children of the “test and punish” (reeform) crowd will neither be tested not punished….at least not in the way other people’s children are.
The high academically achieving students will certainly face a battery of tests. In Fairfax County Virginia there are the TWO admissions exams required for admission to Thomas Jefferson high school(a public magnet), likely the AMC 10, AMC 10/12, AIME, certainly a large number of AP exams, PSAT, SAT, SAT subject exams, perhaps ACT, and the numerous teacher graded exams that actually influence class grades, high school GPA, and class standing.
Oh, and also state mandated exams in addition to those listed above. Seems like a fair number of exams to me.
TE,
Disingenuous.
You have been a participant on this blog long enough to fully understand the difference between the SAT, AP exams, etc. and the “test and punish” routine so many of our students live with. You have also had the differences explained to you by numerous posters.
Please stop with the false equilivancy.
One begins to suspect that you purposely conflate and confuse.
For the vast majority of students, state mandated exams are no stakes exams. At least the outcome of all the exams I cite actually have an impact on the students.
We are stuck in outcomes based education land. We are going back to Goals 2000. Marc Tucker and his workforce training. There is no art and music in this land of data collection. Students will get more involved with virtual realities and “interactive 3D technologies” as CORE boasts on its website.
We cannot try to tweak the Common Core. It is deadly. It doesn’t allow for the arts.
“Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better. ”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
The full article can be read at:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/12/31/arts-education-music-faust-marsalis-column/4267705/
Excellent article!
Oh my….So eloquent….
Of course we need the arts….and we need the sports…we need the mechanics…we need the engineers….we need the domestic….we need all …
Another one of my favorite Einstein quotes….
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein
Goodreads.com
You are listing things that make the world go ’round….but the arts are different from those other pursuits. As you quoted Einstein, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Great art is not derived from the five sense world. It draws its inspiration from and takes us to a world unseen.
Pearson is about nailing down what needs to be known, providing materials that get students to know it, providing tests that prove that they know it, and selling that idea and product list on a scale this country has never seen before. Sir Michael Barber and Bill Gates and Arne Duncan are limited because they live in the world of five senses to the exclusion of reality. And these are the people in charge of educating our youth?
I can’t help but feel that the standardization and “common”-ness that is being crammed down our children’s throats is detrimental to the point of ending civilization as we know it. Our discussion is about U.S. education policies, but history shows that the other nations follow us eventually. The BIG $ money is behind this push. A part of me believes that humanity will never give up the urge/need to be creative…the act of touching our original self (God/dess’ face) and tuning into that.
But don’t we also see standardization and commonness in the arts as well? My youngest son is far from the first chair in the violin section in the school orchestra, but he is the go to person if you want someone to tune your instrument using the pegs because he experiments with nonstandard tunings at home when he plays the fiddle.
Thinking “outside the box” has become a cliche in many ways…but to me that is another way of saying un-standardized and un-common thinking. There is a huge movement among arts educators to include the arts in the acronym-STEM(science, technology, engineering, math) and make it STEAM. The creative thinking needed in these other fields is fostered and nurtured in the arts. So much of science, technology, engineering and math involves recalling information (data), but to go that step further and synthesize it into something new…a new thought, creative thinking is needed. As an art teacher I am so aware of this…many of my colleagues in other disciplines are also. As a result they often require imaginative, clever “cap-stone” projects as a final assessment. These are, in essence art projects.
Jeanne – I love it. STEAM instead of STEM. Full speed ahead.
IT is true that the kind of “education” being foisted upon us by Gates and Broad (and others) is anathema to creativity, and to arts education, the arts not being part of standardized testing.
It is interesting though, that Broad is a major patron of the arts in LA, says he is very supportive of arts education. Does he not realize that what he is doing in education is very harmful to arts education?
Much of the funding for so-called “education rheeform” seems to come from the computer industry–not just from Gates, also from Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs widow) (I am sure she is greatly profiting from the LAUSD Ipad deal), and others.)
Do they think that the kind of teaching to the test that they promote will create better workers for Silicon Valley? If so, I think they are mistaken. There has always been a great deal of creativity and innovation in the computer industry (“thinking outside the box”), beginning with folks like Gates and Jobs and Wozniak, and continuing to this day. In fact, there must be many artists involved in the creation of today’s operating systems, on computers, smartphones, and the like, as well as in the programs and applications. Yet the kind of education promoted by such folks, teaching to the test, is very harmful to arts education, only encourages thinking within the box, or shall we say, bubble.
Despite what some say, I doubt that Gates and Broad are meddling in education to increase corporate profits, or anything like that. (Although there are certainly some who are in it for that reason, such as the publishing companies, and some charter schools.) Gates and Broad though, have more money than they know what to do with, and think they are doing good with their philanthropy. (Besides education, Gates is trying to solve problems like malaria and world hunger.) But they seem to be terribly misguided and misinformed, and are causing major havoc in public education.. (Gates seems to be extremely naive, thinking that all “problems” can be “solved” with data.).
I would hope that more politicians, including school boards, start listening to Wynton Marsalis, and the President of Harvard.
Is it a coincidence that many of the greatest scientists have also been musicians?
Mike,
Broad’s patronage of the arts is inseparable from the same will-to-profit and will-to-power as his foundation’s agenda in education. They are all indirect ways to expand his power and wealth, the desire for which is apparently insatiable.
His “love” of art is based on it as an investment, and his support of for the arts is directly connected to museums and galleries as anchors for real estate development and gentrification.
Broad started out as a real estate developer (of white-flight suburbs in Southern California), and that continues, with his support of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) being used to raise real estate values in downtown LA, an elite project decades in the making.
As with Broad, so too with Gates, whose real genius is as a monopolist. Thus, it’s no coincidence that his effort to “end hunger” involves Monsanto, genetically modified food, and the privatization of the agricultural gene pool.
We are mostly talking about “corporate reform” in education…the “corporate influence” in the arts is another, though similar, story. It doesn’t surprise me that Broad’s interest and support of the arts in LA has a (real estate) financially lucrative aspect in it for him. The push for standardization in education has a financially lucrative aspect to it (all of Diane’s writing articulates this well). The creativity that I am talking about (and refer to regularly as an art teacher) is unrelated to the art world. The over-priced, often corrupt practices of the current art world have made oodles for people like Broad. The manipulations and art market goings on have little to do with the creativity that is so marginalized in education.
Reblogged this on writewireless and commented:
Amidst the hullabaloo about Common Core standards in schools, the arts have been swept into the corner. This insightful article points right to the heart of the matter: young people today, more than ever, need to engage their entire beings in their learning. Through exploration, experimentation, and relating the world to their unique sense of self, a wholistic education is possible. Self-expression is a basic human need. The ability to think critically about anything and everything is an essential developmental skill. The arts provide both. Why are we limiting our young people’s learning and potential for enlightenment?
I went to an I service about rigor where the presenter pooh poohed the use of posters, collages, and dioramas as school projects. He claimed, not only were they a waste of time, but they had no real value in the working world.
I had to laugh. At that particular moment, one daughter had to decorate a table featuring healthy eating for a special event sponsored by her work place. A display of this sort needs to be three dimensional (diorama) complete with various flyers and posters or even a collage.
My other daughter was working in a presentation at her job which included PowerPoint as well as professional grade posters. This daughter was very artistic and I had needlessly lamented that her art background would be wasted. However, many careers require an artistic eye. Even some of those desk jobs.
Sometimes those so called experts don’t have a clue what goes on outside their tiny minds.