Dive Brief:
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Former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner is pushing to increase focus on arts and music programs in California public schools, seeing them as a way for students to engage with distressful emotions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other tragedies, EdSource reports.
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A November ballot initiative championed by Beutner and celebrities such as singer Katy Perry and actor Issa Rae would, if passed, bring between $800 million and $1 billion to arts and music education for students across the state. School leaders would be able to choose how to spend the funds for their own student body.
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Experts believe art helps to not only capture students’ attention but engage them on an emotional level, serving as a creative conduit to express their worries and concerns. Robust state-funded arts programming may also bring more equity into the school system so all children — not just those in communities that can privately fund extracurricular programming — will benefit from arts enrichment.
Dive Insight:
Art courses and instruction woven into the curriculum can help students strengthen social-emotional skills by providing outlets to express needs and concerns to instructors while working through stressors such as trauma and anxiety brought on by the pandemic.
“Visual arts, design and media arts programming open up the very avenues we need in times like these in order to feel human again after the trauma of forced isolation and social distancing that kept our families and neighbors safe before vaccines were developed to halt the recent pandemic,” said James Haywood Rolling Jr., president of the National Art Education Association and a chair of arts education at Syracuse University. “But even if there wasn’t a pandemic, the arts have always been a tool for collaboration, community-building, and the social skills that come along with that.”
There are many ways schools can incorporate art into the school day even if students don't have access to formal art classes. Educators can play music during class time or even have students design structures such as amusement park rides.
Art courses can also help build community within schools, particularly when students engage in peer-driven projects such as filming a movie or designing a school garden. Expanding arts education in schools can boost students’ feelings of empathy for each other.
Rolling notes that students benefit from viewing art, as well. Educators can bring in examples ranging from stills to moving images to augment lessons, talking with students about the role art plays in the world, from the design of a home to the music they listen to that explores the human condition.
“So, if we are not making art and architecture and animation in the curriculum, we should at least be looking at art and architecture and animation and then regularly talking in our classrooms about what these artworks and artifacts tell us about ourselves and the societies we live in today,” Rolling said.
