by Chloé Langley

Is studying the arts in school valuable only for those wishing to become artists? Pablo Picasso answered this question when he said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when he grows up." As Dissanayake pointed out art is a crucial part of what makes us human. We are all born with an artistic soul. Watch a four year old "dancing" to music only she hears or coloring a huge mural with only two shades of pink. Artistry is everywhere and so accessible. Children have the capacity to see beauty in the simplest things. A child will observe the sun and draw every picture for weeks with a huge yellow blob gracing the sky. They draw the same pictures over and over again just to illustrate the small differences. Children dance and dance, not needing to turn or to leap to impress their peers but just to move to express their joy. It is beautiful! But by not teaching the arts, we are allowing our cookie cutter, technological society to educate out this innate, fearless creativity.

Follow up:

 We are becoming a society of people who blindly do what has been done and what is accepted. Support for this idea comes from an unlikely group. An IBM study of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the most important personal characteristic for future business leaders in a world of increasing global complexities (Kern). They have declared that "success requires fresh thinking and continuous innovation" (Kern). It is their belief that creativity that will allow a new generation of business leaders to operate with more dexterity, to disrupt the status quo and existing business models, and most importantly to drive decision making by disrupting what they call "organizational paralysis" (Kern). Creativity may be an inherent aspect of Homo Aestheticus, but as with all things, that which is not used will atrophy. If we do not teach the arts, the capacity for creative thinking will die and there will soon be no one capable of breaking the mold. If we allow education in the arts to die, all that is great about our society will die as well. Without ideas we cannot advance.

As an artist I want to argue for teaching the arts in the schools and, like Eisner, I want to insist that the arts not be diminished during the integration process. There is a grace and beauty in art that has value just because it is. At the same time the arts provide a way to vary the purpose of academic thinking by finding different forms of inspiration. I would never suggest that an art class should take the place of studying calculus. The arts, no matter how brilliantly integrated in our schools will never help a child learn to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But an art class can teach a child to imagine the possibilities of the word. Once we stop trying to make the arts "made to order," we will begin to learn how to truly use them to benefit our children's futures. If we leave arts standards as they are, unfinished and undefined, they will continue to be a distraction instead of a springboard to a brighter future. The arts are an all encompassing field that assists in areas we can't quantify completely. If proof is needed for these programs to grow, then it is imperative that studies be designed to provide the proof that analytical thinkers require.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

About The Author

Chloé is entering her senior year at The University of Utah where she is majoring in Modern Dance. She began dancing at the age of four and received most of her early training at Amanda's Dance in Grand Prairie, Texas. In addition to this studio training, Chloé attended the Dallas Independent School System's wonderful arts program where she graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. The concept for this paper grew out of her personal observation that despite the long hours devoted to the study of their respective crafts, her peers both in the studio and at school seemed as a whole to excel academically.

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