Roger Tomhave, the Fine Arts Coordinator of Fairfax County Public Schools, VA wrote this inspiring begining of school-year letter. I thought it was worth sharing:
Roger writes, "In our efforts to maintain our arts programs in the face of ever-weakening positions across the United States due to No Child Left Behind and diminishing budgets, we have often been forced into the argument that the arts are valuable because of the ways in which they enhance learning in “more important” subjects such as mathematics and language arts. This subservient position has further weakened our stance in the curriculum.
Make no mistake. An arts education is our birthright! We have the right to be educated. We are not fully educated unless that education includes an education in the arts. But what do the arts teach? Why are they critical in a well-rounded education? What do they add to the curriculum that cannot be gained in other ways?
Here are 10 lessons that the arts teach.
1. The arts teach children to make good, informed judgments about qualitative relationships. We do not operate in black and white, but relish the gray areas. Students learn to reflect on these qualitative relationships and assess and evaluate subtle differences in their own work and the work of others.
2. The arts teach children that a problem can have more than one solution and that a question can have more than one answer. They teach student to engage and persist. They develop focus and other mental states conducive to working and persevering in an art form to find an appropriate solution within a context.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives, multiple histories, genres, cultures, and peoples.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. They learn to observe and listen more carefully and with skills of subtle discernment. They learn to see and to hear what they otherwise may have missed.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. Music is a way of knowing. Visual stimulus is a way of knowing. Students learn to picture and hear mentally that which cannot be directly observed or heard and imagine possible next steps in composition.
6. The arts teach that small differences can have large effects.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material, or instrument. They learn technique. They develop craft. They learn artistic conventions. They learn to “speak” in the language of the art form.
8. The arts help children to say what cannot be said. They teach students to express, to create works that convey an idea, a feeling, or a personal meaning. They are a way to stretch beyond one’s own capacities and achieve beyond one’s own limitations in ensemble symphony, or synthesis.
9. The arts enable us to have experiences we can have from no other source. The arts are the way in which we mark experiences as special. They are the method through which we make our lives special.
10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
Adapted and combined from Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Show, (pp. 70-92.) Yale University Press; and from Hetland, Lois; Winner, Ellen; Veenema, Shirley; Sheridan, Kimberly M. (2007) Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts Education, In Chapter 1, Making the Case for the Arts, (pp. 1-9) Teachers College Press.
This year, we will be expected to lead as if we are the strongest community for an arts education in the country. We are poised, educated, and prepared to do exactly that. We know that we will need to educate more than children. It has ever been so.
Thank you and have a great year."
Thanks, Roger, for your leadership in this area!
