“Arts education in schools has introduced many children to great painters and great music, and helped them through their first dance steps or tentative musical endeavors,” writes Perri Klass in Monday’s (3/4) New York Times. “Insights from neuroscience suggest that arts education can play additional important roles in how children learn. Paul T. Sowden, a professor of psychology at the University of Winchester in England … said that arts education should be available equally to everyone. But arts education, he said, is a chance to build resilience and determination in children, as well as to help them master complex skills…. Mariale Hardiman, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education … was interested in how children do—and don’t—retain what they learn in school. ‘A lot of the information we teach doesn’t stick…. Arts allow for elaboration, allow for repetition,’ Dr. Hardiman said.… So though arts education has many other benefits, she said, such as creative thinking, her studies have focused on children’s memory for academic subjects … Children who had learned the material in the curriculum that made use of the arts remembered more, and the effect was largest among the children who were less strong academically.”
Posted March 7, 2019
In photo: The Akron Youth Orchestras will present a side-by-side concert on March 10 in Medina, Ohio, featuring musicians from its Akron Youth Philharmonic and Akron Youth Symphony ensembles.
