Must We Justify Arts Education?

In the current culture of American education the arts: music, visual arts, drama, dance, and others have taken the hits of district cutbacks. There are now a plethora of studies that show that taking arts education away from students is taking away opportunities to enhance academic achievement and self-confidence.

I found an interesting article called Getting Scientific about Arts Education that suggested links between studying music and achievement in geometry. The same article also claims that arts education can increase attention and intelligence, as well as self-confidence, especially in those who are not considered “academic”.

Another article entitled Guggenheim Study Suggests Arts Education Benefits Literacy Skills implies that the same skills that students use to view and question meanings of paintings is transferable to reading skills. The Guggenheim compared schools with artists sent to them for up to 20-week residencies to schools without and found students with the art program performed better in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills than students with out the program.

All interesting, though some other studies I read claim that addition of any extra class to the curriculum would garner the same achievement results. I think it is obvious that arts are important to a child’s education. We as a society show that we consider arts important. Why else do we have museums and galleries? Why do people pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for tickets to concerts, performances, or exhibits? If it is important enough for all of these things, then it is important enough for kids in school to gain access to. Why do we need to have a rash of studies trying to link the arts to any kind of desired skill outside of the appreciation and enjoyment of art and personal expression? Don’t all children have the right to become exposed to what the world agrees upon as important?

I know some may consider it a bit naïve and unrealistic for me to believe this, but I can’t help it. As a teacher I see how our “test prep” mentality can drain the creativity and zest for learning out of students. Art, music, drama, dance…all of these and other classes are a chance for kids to have a creative outlet and possibly even find something they love. From our “worst”, lowest achieving to our highest achieving, most exclusive schools students should be given an opportunity to see a world outside of their own.

We should make sure every student, regardless of income level has exposure to what we deem important in our society. If it manages to help them with literacy, critical thinking, math, or any other skill needed for academic success, we can consider that just the proverbial icing on the cake.

Parental Involvement in Education

Over the past nine weeks, I have consistently run into one overarching theme- parental involvement.   Every issue I have investigated showed lack of parental involvement as a cause of some negative consequence or parental involvement listed as an important piece in some success. As a middle school teacher, my students typically do not receive as much parental support as they did when they were younger.  However, if parental involvement is so important in academic achievement, then I need to learn more about how to increase parental support for my students.  

First, I found an article with a title that made me giggle out loud, Study: Parents play big role in academic success. (Gee, really?)  It actually turned out to be an article geared more toward arguing against vouchers, but it did have interesting data involving parent involvement.  This study was a 12 year longitudinal study that followed 1,000 urban students from 8th grade until 8 years beyond high school in both public and private schools.  It involved tracking of academic achievements as well as surveys of principals, teachers, and parents of the students.  The study showed that students who went to private schools did not receive much of an advantage in terms of academic achievements and long term career satisfaction than their counterparts who attended public schools.  While students who went to private schools typically scored higher on SAT's, they had no better overall academic performance in math, reading, science, and history than students in public schools.  What did come up as the biggest factors in student success all involved parents: how much parents earned, whether they were involved in their child's day to day schoolwork, and the long-term expectations for their children.  While no one can influence the first factor, it seems the school can have a role in encouraging the second two.  

As I investigated, I read Parental Involvement in Education which synthesized information from many sources related to parents in education.  The authors first acknowledged the broadness of the term "parental involvement" to include attending school function, school obligations like conferences, volunteering at school, taking a role in school planning activities, and helping with schoolwork.  Studies indicate that involved parents are linked to student achievement.  In fact, the more intensely involved the parent is, the more beneficial it is to the student.  Some of the most effective things parents can do are: read with their children at home, support children with homework, tutor children with teacher provided materials, and being involved with conferences, school events, field trips, etc.  So how can schools encourage all of this to happen?

Programs that have orientations or training for parents show more effectiveness in encouraging parental involvement.  Most parents need and want the direction to help their children.  The article cautions that less is more in this situation.  Schools have to be careful not to overtax parents.  In addition, schools have to encourage participation in a broad sense with a variety of ways to get involved.  The benefits of parental involvement extend to the middle and high school levels and among traditional "subgroups" of low socio-economic status, limited English proficiency, special education, and etc.  This shows that if low-income parents are trained and encouraged in how to help their children, there can be a large increase in achievement for students who have the most to gain. 

What I see in my own daily life supports a lot of this.  Many of my middle school parents do not feel confident in their own ability to help their children as the content increases in difficulty, especially in subjects like math.  In addition, many of my parents do not speak English and feel they cannot participate in helping their children.  My school departmentalizes in middle school and many parents are daunted trying to keep up with different teachers.  This causes learning to become the sole responsibility of the student, and situations like that seem destined for failure.  I think we should have a parent event, particularly at the beginning of middle school, to help familiarize parents to the change that is about to happen and ways that they can continue to support their students' educations.  Of course there will always be those that choose not to participate in that, but as the previous article stated, we should also be conscious of opening a variety of ways to participate throughout the year.  I think an orientation night is a good place to start in my situation, but there would need to be a plan in place for other ways to encourage parental involvement throughout the school year as well.