_ 1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning
in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the
unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When
children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel,
they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will
do the job.
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind,
In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale
University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint
permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment
of its source and NAEA.
20 Reasons why art is important for children
This article shows all of the benefits associated with children
learning art while they are young and the impact it has on their lives.
Art stimulates both sides of the brain.
33% of kids are visual learners.
There are studies that show that kids, who make art, read better and get better grades in science and mathematics.
The kids learn by using their senses and art is ideal in this process
The kids need a place to express themselves at school.
Art promotes self esteem
Art encourages kids to give more attention to the physical space that surround them.
Art develops hand and eye coordination.
Art stimulates perception.
Art teaches them to think openly. It represents a culture of questioners more than a culture of responders.
Art teaches that there is more than one solution for a problem.
Art teaches kids to think creatively to solve problems.
Kids can share and reflect on their work of art and learn something about the world they live in.
When art is integrated with the other subjects in the curriculum, kids commit more to the learning process.
In
the process of doing art, the child is exposed to different
possibilities, to discover and to freedom, this way they avoid falling
into the control and the predictability of the conventional education in
the United States of today.
Art nourishes the human soul. One feels good doing it.
Art brings the cultural resources of the community into the class.
Art involves parents and tutors in the school, inviting them to participate as volunteers in diverse activities.
Art provides a common ground across racial stereotypes, barriers and prejudices.