Assignment 16 Danielle Dutton

Arts Education Develops Modern Einsteins

Every teacher wants to be responsible for creating the next Einstein. After all, the name is practically the epitome of the word “smart.” But what if I told you that the most likely teachers in this school to produce the next Einstein are our arts teachers? You’d probably think I was crazy. After all, arts classes don’t teach real knowledge you can use to make new scientific discoveries or to succeed in a career, do they? Seeing as I’m not sure I, a lowly and knowledge deprived arts student, am smart enough to answer this question alone, I’ll refer to the words of Einstein. He once said that “the greatest scientists are artists as well,” and that “the gift of imagination means more than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.” I don’t know about you, but that certainly doesn’t make me think that his most influential teacher in school was a science teacher. Nope, it sounds like an arts teacher to me. In fact, music had a huge impact on Einstein’s life. He played the piano and violin, and said that if he were not a physicist he would be a musician. According to him, he thought in music, lived his daydreams in music, saw his life in terms of music, and got most of his joy from music. But yet he’s a famous physicist. It sounds crazy, but Einstein is far from the only artistic scientist in history. Benjamin Franklin loved music so much he invented the glass harmonica. Samuel Morse was a successful painter. Leonardo da Vinci is well known for both his works of art and his scientific ideas. Connection? I think so. As I’ll explain, the arts are a crucial part of education that help develop modern Einsteins.

And because of this, it’s unfortunate that arts programs across the country are being cut back, even in our own city. My sister attends Bryan Station Middle School for their Spanish Immersion program and recently applied to get into StationArts next year at Bryan Station High School only to find out that the program may be about to end due to lack of funding and a failure by the principal to see the necessity of arts education. As a result, with her Spanish Immersion schedule she may not be able to continue taking band and drama throughout high school.

This is regrettable for several reasons. The first and most obvious of which being that my sister, along with many other kids just like her across America, loves the arts. She’s passionate about them, and band and drama have always been classes she’s looked forward to every day. She works hard for at least an hour a week improving her skills in both these classes, but yet this work is enjoyable. Contrary to popular belief, most students don’t choose arts classes out of laziness, they choose them because they enjoy them. And while they may not be for everyone, schools shouldn’t deny hardworking students arts classes they’re passionate about, classes that give them a chance to breathe in the middle of their stressful day, should they?

Well, some would argue that in the case of arts classes, they should. Some are under the assumption that the only lifelong benefit of an arts class is having a hobby or growing up to be a starving artist for a living. They argue that arts classes don’t help students in real, prosperous careers. And in this, they are mistaken. Enjoyment and stress relief aren’t the only benefits of arts classes, they also have been shown to improve brain function in a myriad of ways. The two I will discuss today are improved executive function and neuroplasticity.

First off, executive function refers to a group of interconnected cognitive skills including planning, strategizing, setting goals, and paying attention to detail. Musician and Educator, Dr. Anita Collins, explains that the arts help develop these skills more than any other subject. In the arts, unlike in math or social studies, using cognitive executive function skills is imperative and subconscious. For example, an art student must plan their piece of art before they make it. They must strategize which mediums to use, what color scheme fits their desired tone, and how to position all the elements they want to include. They must pay close attention to detail, carefully placing each line and color to achieve their desired effect. None of these things are optional. On the other hand, in math you don’t have to pay attention to every little thing. “Silly mistakes” as math teachers call them run rampant, and aren’t seen as a big deal. In core subjects, it’s just important that you understand the big picture topics. In arts classes, every little detail has to be perfect. Because of this, arts classes improve executive function much more than core classes, but this improvement benefits all subject areas. Once an arts class forces someone to strategize and pay attention to detail, they transfer those skills to their math, science, social studies, and English classes as well.

Arts classes also help the brain retain neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to remain flexible and continue learning throughout life. Everyone’s heard the expression “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and that’s true for every old dog who didn’t grow up immersed in the arts. When we’re young, we have the most connections between neurons we will ever have, and as we age the frequently used connections strengthen while the unused connections wither away. According to Dr. Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Medical Health, participation in the arts, especially playing music, uses almost every single region of the brain, something almost no other activity, including core subject classes can boast. This constant use of the whole brain allows arts students to regularly use more neuron connections than their less-artistic counterparts, meaning that they maintain more numerous and more prosperous neuron connections through their later life, yielding neuroplasticity. Because the process must start at a young age though, arts education in all school levels becomes crucial for obtaining the benefits of neuroplasticity including ease in learning new things and creativity in problem solving, which are beneficial in all school subjects and careers.

The culminating benefits of both executive function and neuroplasticity can be seen in a Kansas University study which compared the standardized test scores of children in top-quality music programs and children not involved with the arts. The study found that the music students scored 19% higher in English and 17% higher in math than the students not in an arts program. That’s a huge difference.

Clearly arts classes aren’t useless. They, much more so than core classes, strengthen a person’s ability to plan, strategize, problem solve, pay attention to details, think creatively, and keep learning into old age to name just a few benefits. And though those skills are beneficial regardless of a person’s career or life situation, they also all sound like qualities of the next Einstein. After all, discoveries don’t happen by regurgitating knowledge, they happen through innovative and creative problem solving, and for that you need an artist’s brain.