2. Some students find school frustrating, and the one thing
keeping them in school is a classroom they enjoy. Often you find
this with the arts, giving students a boost of confidence. On
average, one-fourth of the students who are currently in our high
schools will not graduate(Davis, 3).
3. Classrooms of the arts create a safe zone for students to
explore themselves, new materials and create mutual respect for
each others work.
4. Without classrooms that offer the arts, students will lose a
place that they can belong in. Arts classrooms offer areas to
create new friends and new groups to belong in. Examples of classes
that foster creating friends out of similar interests: band, chorus
and drama.
5. The arts create problem solving skills. The arts dont just
have one right answer they have multiple options for students to
explore.
6. In early elementary levels, even in preschool we are
introduced materials and tools, commonly using the safety scissors.
This cutting motion provides growth in fine motor skills. Simple
things like using crayons, paintbrushes, and cutting with scissors
will assist in the dexterity for students that is essential for
writing.
7. Development in language by just making art and talking about
it gives students the change to learn words for basic shapes,
colors and actions. The arts provide decision making skills that
will strengthen critical thinking, and problem solving skills.
Involving students in an early age to arts encourages them take
risks, experiment and express themselves as individuals.
8. When we look at history what are we looking at, we are
looking at art. Everything from paintings, sculptures, and the
large structures left behind. The art left behind by past cultures,
culture is not only found in what was left behind but what is going
on today.
9. There is no art form flourishing today, or that has
flourished in the past, that has not done so on the wings of
diversity-American musicians borrowing from African rhythms, South
American architects employing Scandinavian ideas, German painters
finding inspiration in Egyptian art, French filmmakers influenced
by Japanese techniques. (Post, 79)
10. When you provide the arts for students you are giving them
a new way to use their hands, their voices, and their bodies.
Suddenly they are their own tools; they have the means to pull out
all of the emotions. Giving students the confidence they may
need.
11. Art is not solely reflecting culture and media but it is
also looking into ourselves. Giving students art, music, theater,
and dance you are exposing them to a way to have an outlet, speak
out, and find themselves.
12. Dropout rates would sky rocket students would find no
outlets in school and would have to seek out things like physical
education and have limited ways to express themselves. There would
be an overall lack of attendance in school because without any
forms of art there is not much to speak to the students on a person
level and retain interest.
13. Provide an expressive outlet for students A sense of
freedom to express Help build self-esteem Can foster collaboration
Empowers the students Introduce other cultures and history Create
classrooms build out of respect and being part of something larger
than yourself
14. Cantz, H. (2012). What is Art? Riehen/Basel: Beyeler Museum
AG. Davis, J. H. (2012). Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. New
York: Teachers College Press.