This is not another academic article defending the arts in education. You won't find any data here to show how the arts improve student achievement in other subjects or arguments why the arts should be core and central to the education of our children. You've read the convincing cognitive research and advocacy articles many times.
And look around. While we were busy justifying the arts in last generation terms, a new generation of education priorities took hold—creativity, innovation, interdisciplinary inquiry, global understanding, and yes, performance assessment. Now all educators must navigate this course to improve their educational practices. And it's the arts, in familiar territory, that have the compass and imagination to lead our schools and young people toward inspiring learning environments.
Will the arts finally take a place at the helm as an insightful source for new educational possibilities? Our advocacy of the past is giving way to a fresh communications approach. Quiet paper reports are integrating with the sound of our collective voices.
When the Carnegie Design Team recently held an arts outreach session to discuss its plan for credit flexibility to increase student-learning options, representatives from eight cultural arts organizations and several school districts filled the room to raise issues and ideas. Our voices were heard. When ODE announced three new visual and performing arts opportunities to improve practice, more than 50 requests came in within days, creating additional demand for arts experiences for more teachers and students. Again, our voices were heard.
Local arts educators across the state are becoming change agents instead of looking to others to make a difference. Armed with knowledge of state requirements that impact our disciplines, we are connecting with one another to articulate relevant issues and explore practical solutions to sustain arts programs.
We are becoming a remarkable collection of Ohioans with tireless commitment to the arts. A small group of advocates has grown to an inclusive network of schools, universities, nonprofits, statewide organizations, government agencies and responsive communities ready to leverage resources in these tough times. We are shifting our efforts from parsing policy words—core vs. non-core—to connecting the arts to the common public values of economic competitiveness, civic engagement, quality of life and educational advancement.1 This emerging communications approach is both strategic—drawing on research—and honest—sharing human expression and compelling stories about the potential and productivity of the arts.
Ultimately, we will change attitudes and behaviors to promote a learning environment where students find their voices and exercise their creative imaginations to express meaning in many forms.
We have a challenge and a new opportunity. It is no longer a matter of protecting the future of arts education, but rather determining the role the arts will play in the future of education.
ODE is engaging a broad network of arts organizations, schools and educational service centers to combine efforts, develop resources, integrate services and design art-centered programs that address the Governor's new education priorities. Our statewide Committee for the Arts and Innovative Thinking2 will leverage our voices and actions to demonstrate how the arts can make education environments meaningful and build Ohio's creative capital.
National and state leaders are counting on aggressive innovators with fresh concepts to take us forward. Join us as we lead the arts into the future of learning.
Footnotes:
1. http://www.theimaginenation.net/
2. Visit www.education.ohio.gov, keyword search: CAIT for a list of CAIT members
This article was published in April 2009, Volume 5, No 1.
Also indexed under Perspectives: State Leaders
