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CREATIVITY AND THE ROLE OF ART IN SCHOOLS

The Importance of Creativity, Dreams And Play in K-12 Education

THE ROLE OF ART IN SCHOOLS [1]
Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland argue forcefully for the benefits of art education. In their view, art education should be championed for its own sake, not because of a wishful sentiment that classes in painting, dance and music improve pupils' math and reading skills and standardized test scores. The researchers found that the visual arts classes did have broad indirect benefits, even if they were not directly related to quantifiable performance in other subjects. "Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments," the authors conclude. "When kids take a lot of art, they don't improve in their core subject areas," Ms. Winner said in an interview. "We simply found no evidence of that." When students who take art also generally do well in school, reports Robin Pogrebin in the New York Times, this may be because academically strong schools tend to have strong arts programs, or because families who value academic achievement also value achievement in the arts. "You cannot conclude that because they're taking art, they're doing well in school," Ms. Winner said. "There's just no way to conclude anything about causality." In campaigning for keeping arts education, some educators say, advocates need to form more realistic arguments. Art classes are often the first thing to be jettisoned from a crowded curriculum. As a result, Ms. Winner said, it is understandable that some arts advocates hew to the academic argument to keep the arts in the curriculum. "The arts are totally threatened in our schools," she said. "Arts advocates don't even think about whether they're accurate -- they latch onto these claims."

The Ideal Approach and the Real Goal of All Education.

"I am a retired art teacher of 42 years.  I have found that no one in education and that includes some of my fellow art teachers, recognize the value of the creative process.  I approached all parts of my art classes as a series of problems to be solved.  I had students who were the brightest and many who were at the other end of the spectrum including children with physical limitations in the same classes.  I think teaching kids how to find their own answers to the highest level that they can reach was very rewarding for each of  them.  I taught them all the basics using the principles of art and problem solving skills. 
For me, it is all about the process which carries into writing, science and all other parts of the curricula.  The products were wonderful, original no matter the media we used.  I taught stone carving, painting in all media with the results being different and every one of them was the answer to the problem I proposed.  After all of these years, I still meet students who remind me about a piece of work they did in my classroom.  It touches their soul and not one of them saves their math tests or essays or science tests.  That is reason enough for art to be in the curricula.  Now if Administration could only figure it out, this would be a giant step forward." ~ Anon

Arts Education Partnership

Students on the social Web: New NSBA study
In releasing its study "Creating & Connecting: Research & Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking," the National School Boards Association this week added some balance to the public discussion about safety on the social Web. The 10-page report is just as useful to parents as it is to educators.
The National School Boards Association is a non-profit association of school boards representing 95,000 local school board members. In stark contrast to what students reported, more than half the districts said that students providing personal information online has been "a significant" problem in their schools.
... The report goes on to recommend that school districts reconsider the common practice of restricting student access to social networking tools. Fewer than 29 percent of school district leaders believe that social networking could help students improve their reading or writing, the report goes on to note.[2]

Conducted for the NSBA by Grunwald Associates, the study found that

As for those creative online activities, the NSBA and Grunwald found that

KEY FINDINGS
Fewer risks than expected

"nonconformists are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors an skills that indicate leadership among their peers."

Interestingly, the survey found NONCONFORMISTS ARE "significantly heavier users of social networking sites" - 50% of them are producers and 38% are editors of online content. These students, the study found, are "significantly more likely than other students" to be "traditional influentials," "promoters," "recruiters," "organizers," and "networkers."

Fewer risks than expected!

"Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown" is the headline on ArsTechnica.com's report on the NSBA study It "suggests strongly that the overwhelming majority of kids have never had an unknown adult ask them for personal information." And there's a big discrepancy between students' actual experience with risk, as they reported it to the researchers, and school perceptions. More than half of US school districts (52%) say students providing personal information online has been "a significant problem," while "only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, screennames, or other personal info to strangers." The School Boards Association ends the report calling on schools to "reexamine their social-networking policies." It's important to have such policies, it says, but students may learn online safety and responsible online expression better "while
they're actually using social-networking tools."

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