“Music’s the medicine of the mind.” ~John A. Logan
In the last few days, reading posts on the importance of passion in school, and seeing the innovation in this video, I felt compelled to write on the importance of arts in school. A quote paraphrased that I saw yesterday skimming through a book on health was, “when losing weight, too many doctors think only of the body, but we also need to connect the mind and soul if we are to be successful.” This connection between mind, body and soul need to be focused on in our schools if we really want students to be engaged in their learning.
As I have seen continuously that the Arts helps promote emotional intelligence, I continuously wonder why we hear stories regarding art programming being lessened in schools. One of my fondest memories of my elementary years was our music class and the concerts that came out of it. This was something that I looked forward to, and as an overweight child, it helped me build confidence in speaking and public, while being able to connect with others (do you think that these skills are needed by our students?). The ability to create, perform, and develop our imagination are part of the skills that we will need to be successful in the future.
I am also proud that we have removed grades from our arts program. Although we still follow our Alberta curriculum for these subjects, there is a lot of Art that is worth millions that does not connect with me. To mark a child’s creativity seems to me a way to kill a child’s creativity. I once read a story about someone asking Kindergarten students if they thought they were artists, and every child raised their hand. When asking a group of older students the same questions, it was only a few. Where do students lose this? We are doing our best to not kill this creativity, and hopefully promoting it.
As we continuously improve our schools, I hope that we do not forget about the importance of the arts in our schools. Although not everyone will become an artist, I believe that everyone still can be an artist inside. How do you promote this in your school? I don’t know how well the guys in the video below do in the “core subjects”, but they look pretty smart to me.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAllFWSl998&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
