These days, the way you justify something in education is you show it improves test scores. So, for art to be valuable, it has to make kids better at math. Or reading. Or make them whizzes at multiple choice. In short, for art to be good for you, it has to make you better at NON-art things.
Huh?
What a bunch of poop.
Fortunately, there are great folks like The Wallace Foundation who make big documents proving that all to be hogwash. Since it's not likely you'll read a 104-page foundation report anytime soon, I'll summarize a really great one called "Gifts of the Muse - Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts."
What it says is:
The arts benefit us in a whole spectrum of ways, and we're ignoring a lot of it to our own detriment because we're hung up on test scores and economic growth... which make up only a tiny sliver of life experience.
Here's more of the spectrum:
- The arts create social bonds. We externalize our thoughts and feelings by making and looking at art and media. We tell people what is inside our heads and hearts.
- The arts create communal meaning. We get a shared vocabulary for our experiences. Napoleon Dynamite is a great example. So is Star Wars. So is Knuffle Bunny.
- The arts build a capacity for empathy. We see other people expressing themselves, and we are encouraged to do it too. We react to other people's art and we experience having others interpret our own ideas.
- The arts make you take responsibility for your actions. You make something, you decide if it's what you wanted, you start over or you turn it into something else. Nobody can decide this for you.
That's the super-short version. But I love the way they've framed it. Culture is not made out of money or test scores or college admissions. It's made out of shared experience and self-expression. Yay for the Wallace Foundation!
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