Lisa Pasch "Purpose of Arts in Schools according to NC Public School System"

Arts education has been on the chopping block for decades in the United States. It is definitely a big issue – should we really be giving our tax payers dollars to something that ends up being a hobby for most people? Should we be spending time playing music when there is work to be done in society? Is there a real benefit for people who are uninterested in pursuing the arts later on in life? As a future educator in the fine arts curriculum, I have had to develop answers to these questions early on. My answer is always the same – yes, we should continue the arts in schools. Not only because that’s what my degree is in, but because it provides so many benefits to all kinds of students. The North Carolina Public School system developed this blurb on their standpoint on arts education:

“Arts education benefits both student and society. Involving the "whole child" in the arts gradually teaches many types of literacy while developing intuition, sensitivity, reasoning, imagination, and dexterity. This process requires not merely an active mind but a trained one. Arts education helps students perceive and think in new ways. The arts also help provide and extend meaning. Because so much of a child's education in the early years is devoted to acquiring the skills of language and mathematics, children gradually learn, unconsciously, that the "normal" way to think is linear and sequential, that the pathway to understanding moves from beginning to end, from cause to effect. In this early mode, students trust those symbol systems (words, numbers, and abstract concepts) that separate the person from their experiences. But the arts teach a different lesson by often starting in a different place. The arts cultivate the senses that trust the unmediated flash of insight as a legitimate source of knowledge. The arts connect person and experience directly, building bridges between verbal and nonverbal, logic and emotion--the better to gain an understanding of the whole. Both approaches are powerful; both are necessary. To deny students either is to disable them.”

With all of these points in mind, is there still a question of whether or not there is a use and purpose for the arts? Music may not become a skill used beyond grade school years, but the developmental and educational implications arts education has on students are very important and desirable for school administrators who want their students to succeed. Art is more than beauty, but it is practical and useful as well.