Persuasive Essay On The Arts

It has been a topic of debate whether the mind is a blank slate upon a human beings arrival into this world. Whether it is or is not, one thing that all have agreed on is that the mind requires developing throughout that human’s life cycle. It has often been said that the arts provide great benefit to the developing of the human mind, a statement which has brought about many years of research. Yet, due to budget cuts and limited resources, many schools have removed the arts from their curriculum, a move which many believe will actually hinder the education of the students who must attend those schools. From kindergarten to even the collegiate level, a school’s purpose is believed to be: to help students develop their minds well enough to

Taking the arts out of school removes the creativity of education, forcing students to succumb only to the forced act of memorizing basic knowledge. As previously mentioned, math, science, grammar, history, etc. are all simply the memorization of things already created. However, the rest of the definition of learning is acquiring knowledge or skills through experience, and education in the arts is teaching by experience. According to the Music Empowers Foundation, when addressing the U.S. Secretary of Education, President Barack Obama wrote, “Education in the arts is more important than ever. In the global economy creativity is essential. Today’s workers need more than just skills and knowledge to be productive and innovative participants…To succeed today and in the future, America’s children will need to be inventive, resourceful and imaginative.” This statement explains exactly why art, music, and theater are needed in schools; kids need the essential skills that they gain from an art

Much like the other studies those who performed the study in 2014 had two groups of young students, ones who were allowed to study art and ones who were not, selected through a lottery. The study contained, “11,000 students from 123 Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma schools, roughly half of whom were assigned to visit Crystal Bridged of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., while the other half served as the control group.” Education Week also did a live-theater study in which they, “conducted a lottery to offer free tickets to roughly half of the 700 Arkansas students applying to see ‘Hamlet’ or ‘A Christmas Carol’ at a professional theater in Fayetteville.” According to the article those who ran the study were careful in their approach creating groups that were identical in their backgrounds and interests, so that there were little differences between the two groups. Not focusing on whether or not the group who studied art got better test scores, the study instead simply looked at the overall changes in the students’ knowledge, increased desire to participate in the arts, and the students’ values learned. The largest value they believed that they had instilled in the students was critical thinking, which the study says taught