Using Arts Education to Help Other Lessons Stick

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Perri Klass, M.D.

iStock

Mariale Hardiman, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, where she directs the neuro-education initiative.... her studies have focused on children’s memory for academic subjects, comparing what children remembered 10 weeks after material was taught. “Arts integration should not replace arts education,” Dr. Hardiman said. She suggested a “three-legged stool,” with one leg being arts education, including dedicated classes in visual and performing arts, and the second arts and cultural offerings, such as artists coming into the school or visits to museums. The third leg would be the integration of the arts into the teaching of other subjects. [More]

• Paul T. Sowden, a professor of psychology at the University of Winchester in England, warned that in Britain, as in the United States, arts and humanities subjects have suffered in recent years as the emphasis shifted to science and technology. It's important, he said, that arts education be available equally to everyone. But arts education, he said, is a chance to build resilience and determination in children, as well as to help them master complex skills.
• Ronald Beghetto, a professor of educational psychology and the director of Innovation House at the University of Connecticut, studies creativity in educational settings, which, he said, “can be manifest across all different disciplines.”