|
HomePage |
|
|
|
|
The following is excerpted and adapted by Associate Provost for the Arts Alan Brody from a chapter he wrote for Passion and Industry, (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2001).
There has been an alarming amount of press over the last five years about studies confirming that arts education increases test scores in math and reading. More recently there have been studies of those studies that question the original studies' results. It's becoming quite an industry. What nobody seems to notice is that all these studies are beside the point. I doubt that many people would take seriously a study to prove that reading Shakespeare raises math scores, or that immersion in mathematics is a sure bet for writing better papers on the color imagery in The Red Badge of Courage. Even if such a study did exist (and I wouldn't be surprised) its absurdity would be patent. Literature and mathematics afford us different ways of apprehending our world and, for young people especially, ways of owning it. Neither course of study needs to be of explicit service to the other. Everyone recognizes the discreet contributions of literature and mathematics to consciousness. Art, too, gives us a vocabulary for knowing, one as unique and elegant as the other disciplines. Art gives us a way of knowing our world physically, of engaging our bodies and senses, as well as our minds.
The idea of the arts as an educational enterprise in its own right, on a par with the "traditional" disciplines, is troublesome to many because of many myths, misconceptions, and prejudices.
The myth of talent, for instance, has been a major factor in marginalizing art in education. Talent can't be taught, we're told, so it is futile to teach art. The logic is spurious. Genius cannot be taught either, yet mathematics and the sciences are taught as a matter of course. Perhaps the reason for this singular myopia is a growing confusion between the arts and the entertainment industry. Parents tend to believe there is no purpose in studying any art unless their child is going to be a star – or at least make a living at it. Only the most gifted will survive in the marketplace, and as a consequence those young people who may simply love an art are denied access to it. Not everyone who studies an art should be expected to have a life in that art. But a young person who studies an art will have that art in his life forever. Art education need not be confused with vocational training.
We know very well that many young people pursue sports with a passionate commitment that has nothing to do with a future in the major leagues. They play for pleasure and the excitement of mastering a difficult and demanding activity, often without even being aware that this challenge is the very fuel for their passion. In the process they come to appreciate the subtlest nuances in execution. It makes them avid fans when they grow older. Theatres, concert halls, and museums are constantly voicing concern about where their audiences will come from in the next 20 or 30 years. They spend huge resources devising "outreach" programs in the hope of developing young audiences. Ball parks and stadiums don't have such concerns. Their crowds do not feel like strangers, ill equipped to appreciate the event they've chosen to witness. Fans come to a ballpark secure in their own critical abilities. They have a history of hands-on experience and they do not feel inadequate. Perhaps if we made the arts as accessible as sandlot baseball the producers of the most sophisticated art would be able to stop worrying about where their audience will come from.
A friend once observed that all educational institutions, including colleges and universities, have a twofold mission: to educate and to socialize. He pointed out that these are contradictory goals. If we are truly educated, we have the tools to question even the most sacred social customs and institutions. If we are truly socialized, we embrace the status quo and jeopardize our chances for deeper inquiry. Too often socialization wins out. The practice of arts education comes close to resolving this contradiction.
Training in the arts teaches students to see and hear the world from their individual perspectives. It guides them to their own, unique voice and vision and gives them the tools with which to share what they've found. The visual artist questions the brown and green crayons she was given early on to draw a tree. The actor develops an instinct for authentic action that reveals the behavior of characters on sitcoms as lifeless clichés. The musician soon gets bored with the simplest, most accessible tunes and harmonies. With this kind of orientation it isn't long before these young people are prepared to challenge other forms of received wisdom. They have, indeed, been educated.
Their socialization springs from the need to share what they have found and made with others. At a time in their lives when the pressures for conformity are at their greatest, students who study and participate in the arts discover their capacity to celebrate diversity and to share their uniqueness. Each recognizes his or her contribution to that celebration through the specificity of vision and voice.
In systems where quantitative results are becoming more and more the only standard of measurement, the arts focus on the sensuous, qualitative nature of experience. They help a student find value in non-linear thinking, in the idea that one can understand by correspondence as well as cause and effect, and that our dreams can tell us things quite different from but no less valuable than what tables and graphs can.
The arts help develop a tolerance for ambiguity. They tell us that there need not be one right answer to some questions, and that sometimes the question is more important than the answer, that a symbolic image will never stop revealing its meaning while an iconic sign is fixed. They tell us we can celebrate our bodies and have the world through them as well as our minds, that the pressure of charcoal on paper can contain revelations very different from the tapping of computer keys. Music and acting teach young people to listen with care. The visual arts teach them to see with imagination - which means to see what is really there.
And the arts teach discipline, rigor, and realism. The young pianist cannot sit in her room and imagine winning competitions. She has to be in the studio responding to the demands of her instrument, her own ear and her sense of the beauty of the music, all against the intractability of her own fingers. The dancer goes to the limits of his body's possibilities and then works to surpass them. The poet learns that passion cannot communicate without form and that pure form is lifeless without some emotional commitment filling it. And when these students achieve a level of competence, no one has to tell them. They can hear it in their own ears, feel it in their own bodies, test it against their trained sense of truth and emotional authenticity.
Then again, Jay Keyser said to me when I first arrived at MIT, "Sometimes the best reason to study or practice something is because it's beautiful." Jay does have a way of clearing through the underbrush.
|
HomePage |
|
|
|
|