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Mallory Donahue
September 27, 2012
Persuasive Essay
Art Education in Schools
As someone who has experienced the many benefits of art education, I can
tell you first hand just how important it is. Art not only helped me academically but
mentally as well. I grew up in Washington DC, where the public schools are some of
the worse and the most dangerous in our nation, according to a series of articles
written by the Washington Post, titled Can D.C. schools be fixed? To enter the public
high school in my neighborhood every morning, students are required to walk
through a metal detector and place their bags through a scanner, like the ones we
see at the airport. I was able to stay out of the DC public school system by attending
a private school in Kensington, Maryland. I was able to do this through an art
scholarship that covered everything except for books. I was capable of earning this
scholarship because of the many years of art education I received in elementary
school as well as middle school.
My art education provided me access to an academically prestigious high
school. This high school gave me the opportunity to excel at many activities beyond
the academics that most high schools offer. It gave me the chance to develop into a
well-rounded person, but it did more then just that. As part of my scholarship, I was
required to take an art class every semester. All those art classes allowed me to
deepen my understanding of art, my self, and the people around me. It helped me
psychologically. I suffer from manic depression, bipolar disorder and severe anxiety. I
was untreated until I was seventeen, halfway through my senior year of high school. Art
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was my way of communicating with the world around me. Art said what my words could
not. It cannot fix depression and make it go away, but it can help. It is a way someone can
put down how they feel and make it concrete. It’s a way to show others who you are.
In elementary school and middle school I learned a lot about art and different
ways of producing it. I was exposed to some of the best galleries in the nation and
hundreds of works of art. I learned basic techniques and explored many types of art. As I
grew older, my artwork became more and more expressive. It became a big part of me. I
took what I had learned in my art classes and applied it to create something that was
significant to me. When I couldn’t understand what was going on inside of me, art helped
“put it on paper”. It made a visual representation of my mind and its thoughts. In seeing
my work, I was able to better understand. Sometimes I would create a piece and it would
make something so clear to me, but I still would not be able to put it into words. That
didn’t matter. What mattered was I understood. I have never been good with words. Art
helped say what I wanted to.
At the beginning of high school I viewed art as something that kept me out of
the distresses of the DC public school system. At the end of high school I saw art as
something I had to do, something I couldn’t live without. It kept me going during a
hardship. It saddens me to know that our nation’s devotion to art education is
declining and denying millions of students the joys and benefits that follow. Many
schools are pulling funding for art programs. Little do they know, it would be more
beneficial for the students to increase that funding.
Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed in 2001, schools have
been feeling pressured to raise test scores. The NCLB requires all students in all schools
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receiving federal funding, to take a standardized test each year. The tests are the same for
every school. The tests must be given to every student. Test scores should increase after
two years or the school will publically be labeled as “in need of improvement”. If a
school has not improved test scores over four consecutive years, the school is required to
replace the staff, introduce a new curriculum, or extend the amount of time a student
spends in class. If the school still fails to improve tests scores after five consecutive
years, the school may have to shut down or find other funding. This act has put an
immense amount of pressure on the school and its teachers to improve test scores.
Teachers now feel that it is essential for if scores are not improved year to year they
could potentially loose their job or school funding. Time that was once devoted to the arts
has been decreased or cut completely, to add more time towards academics. The NCLB
act is pressured many schools into pulling their art programs. The act’s goal is to improve
academic stature, but in reality it may be doing more harm than good.
Art education can improve many qualities and characteristics. Artists are problem
solvers. They learn to think outside the box and come up with new approaches. Art
education can strengthen a students problem solving and critical thinking skills. These
skills add to the overall academic success. Art can help students develop a sense of
craftsmanship, quality task performance, and be goal oriented. Even those students, who
are considered to be academically successful, can benefit from art education as it can
present new challenges not found in the classroom. All these are skills needed to succeed
in the classroom and beyond.
A 2005 report by RAND Corporation (Research and Development), a nonprofit
think tank, shares that parents generally exposes their children to the arts through piano
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lessons, dance lessons, trips to the art museums, etc. Lower-income families cannot do all
of these things and therefore their children are not receiving the same amount of art
education outside of school. Eric Cooper, the president and founder of the National
Urban Alliance for Effective Education, said, “Art education [in schools] enables those
children from financially challenge background to have a more level playing field with
those children who had those enrichment experiences”. Art education allows children
from low-income families to be exposed to similar amounts of art as children from
higher-income families. This allows them to gather the same pleasure and benefits from
the arts.
Art education can also help troubled youth by offering a substitution to
destructive behavior. The U.S. Department of Justice initiated research on art education,
the YouthARTS Development Project. This project offered the opportunity to receive art
education to youth at risk in three cities. The study’s results show a decrease in
delinquent behavior and improved teamwork and outlooks on school. In the beginning
only 43% of the youth were able to cooperate with others, but by the end of the twelveweek program a full 100% was able to do so.
Art does not only have an impact on education but on the psyche as well.
Professor Semir Zeki, chair neuroesthetics at the University College of London, ran an
experiment that proves our brain reacts in a similar way to when we are in love and when
we are looking at something beautiful, like a piece of art. In the experiment, they looked
at the activity in different areas of the brain by using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
and showing them pictures. When they experience beauty there are areas of the brain
where activity goes up significantly. Similar activity happens in the brain when you are in
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a state of love. One may argue that art is not always beautiful. This is true; however, early
art education, such as that of an elementary school or middle school, focuses on the
exposure to different techniques and different types of art. Most young artist will strive to
make something that is pleasing to the eye, rather than making a statement.
As we develop our knowledge of art and go further into art education, we begin to
recognize that art is more then just creating something beautiful to look at. Art is about
concepts and statements. Good, effective art is art that causes the viewer to think and
have a reaction. Art has helped many people with depression. It is helpful to look at and
see something beautiful, something that pleases our eye, but it can be even more
beneficial to create a work of art. Art is an unspoken language. It is through visual images
that ideas, moments in time, and feelings are expressed. Art is not a way of hiding what’s
beneath but instead it is likely that it is an open door to what is below. Art is so closely
linked to our subconscious. It often displays an underlying feeling that we are
experiencing. Sometimes we aren’t even aware of what is going on in our own head. Our
choice in colors is a great example of this. Color plays a large role in expressing our
subconscious. We tend to choose certain colors depending on how we feel. Colors have
different affects on our brain. We perceive each color in a different way. Yellow, for
instance, is a happy color. When we are feeling depressed we tend to avoid yellows and
reds, the color of energy. We instead lean towards more calming colors such as blue. We
may also lean towards black, which indicates there is something that is concerning you.
An excellent example of color playing the role of the subconscious is Vincent
Van Gogh. Van Gogh is thought to have suffered from depression or another form of
mental illness. Van Gogh went through a depressive phase. The modern art community
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refers to it as Van Gogh’s blue period. All of his paintings done around this time had a
strong visual of blue. This indicated to the viewers he was depressed and did not want to
look at the happier colors, such as yellow. I myself experienced this hidden color choice.
My senior year of high school I was in A.P. studio art. My concentration was drawing
and painting. My work expressed my subconscious thoughts and emotions. My paintings
were painted with lots of blues, greens, and purples. I was dealing with a lot of pain
physically and mentally. My work expressed that through my subject matter and color
choice. My teacher looked at all of the work I had done at the end of the first semester.
She recognized that something was seriously wrong and encouraged me to seek the help I
needed. There have been other incidences similar to this, which further suggest that art
programs should be supported or even increased.
Most people do not realize how many of us out there suffer from illnesses such as
depression. One out of every five children has some sort of mental, behavioral, or
emotional problems and one out of ten have serious emotional problems. In adolescents,
one in eight suffer from depression alone. Only a small 30% of these children and
adolescents receive any sort of intervention or treatment, the other 70% struggle with the
pain of mental illness or emotional turmoil. It is a sad statistic that the third leading cause
of death for 15-24 year olds and the sixth leading cause for 5-15 year olds is suicide.
When we think of people with depression, the image of an adolescent comes to mind. We
fail to recognize that even those at the age of five can be affected by depression.
Depression that goes untreated increases the incidence of depression in adulthood,
criminal involvement, self-abuse and much more. Art can help identify those children
with depression or just simply give them an outlet for there emotions. It is a way
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someone can put down how the feel. It’s a way to show others how you feel. Art can say
what our words could not.
I have gained so much from my art education. It helped me as a student. It
sparked my creativity, allowing me to attack problems from all sorts of different angles.
This ability to problem solve has helped me in my academics and my everyday life. I
learned so much from my art education. I learned things about myself that may have
taken years and years to find. Art helped me through a very difficult time. Considering
the number of children and adolescents that feel the same way I did, art programs are just
as important as math, science, etc. Not only will art help them academically, but also it
will help their overall wellbeing. For the 70% of children and adolescents that never
receive treatment, this is all they have and we should not take that away from them. We
want what’s best for our youth. When we are old, wrinkly, and sitting in a wheelchair
talking about the weather, those five year olds, who just started kindergarten, will be in
charge. We want the most well educated, well rounded, and understanding leaders to run
our country. Art education can help develop those kindergarteners into such leaders.
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