Friends of Arts Education

The Arts Are a Cornerstone of a Comprehensive Education

We believe that the arts are a vital and indispensable part of a comprehensive education.  As audience members, students learn new ways to see the world. As participants in the arts, students develop their own creative abilities which lead to enhanced self-esteem and self-discipline along with the gained knowledge. A study led by Dr. Shirley Brice Heath at Stanford University* shows that young people who participate in the arts for at least 3 hours, 3 days each week for a full year or more are:

• 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
• 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their school
• 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
• 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
• 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem

To ensure that the FAE programs are student-centered, while addressing the teachers’ needs for training in the arts and curriculum materials that support the State Content Standards, we use rigorous guidelines based on the Visual and Performing Arts Framework for California Public Schools – Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve, the California Standards for the Teaching Profession, and the work of renowned educators such as Elliot Eisner and Howard Gardner, as well as the experience of the FAE staff, teaching artists, and the Teacher Advisory Committee. Following is a summary of our primary guidelines.

Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Framework for California Public Schools

1. Artistic Perception Processing, analyzing and responding to sensory information through the language and skills unique to the arts.
2. Creative Expression Creating, performing and participating in the arts.
3. Historical and Cultural Context Understanding the historical contributions and cultural dimensions of the arts.
4. Aesthetic Valuing Responding to, analyzing and making judgments about works of art.
5. Connections, Relationships, Applications Connecting and applying what is learned in one art form to learning in other art forms and subject areas, and to careers.

For a free download of the complete VAPA Framework go to: www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/fd/documents/VPA.pdf

* Dr. Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University, for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

California Standards for the Teaching Profession

1. Engaging and supporting all students in learning.
2. Creating and maintaining effective environments for student learning.
3. Understanding and organizing subject matter for student learning.
4. Planning instruction and designing learning experiences for all students.
5. Assessing student learning.
6. Developing as a professional educator.

For a free download of the complete California Standards for the Teaching Profession simply do a “Google search” with the title or go to: www.ctc.ca.gov/reports/cstpreport.pdf

Multiple Intelligences

from Frames of Mind – The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner

FAE is aware that not all students learn the same way.  For that reason, we follow the example of many successful teachers and address various modes of learning in our Professional Development Workshops for Teachers and curriculum guides. Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences provides an in-depth perspective on the different modes of learning best known as the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modes.  The following is a summary of seven intelligences identified by Gardner:

1. The linguistic intelligence is the intellectual ability to process words in order to meet the different demands of adequate communication.  One may process words for rhetorical, mnemonic, explanatory or reflective purposes.
2. The musical intelligence is the ability to organize symbols, in this case pitch (melody) and rhythm, to achieve self-expression and/or to communicate an idea.  Emotional and communicative goals are particular to music.
3. The logical-mathematical intelligence is the ability to understand cause-effect between elements. Contrary to the musical intelligence, it is remote from subjectivity and the material aspect of the world.  It grows out of patterning objects into numerical arrays.
4. The bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is the ability to arrange and transform the world through the use of the body.  It operates in various domains such as medical surgery, carpentry, or dance.
5. The spatial intelligence encompasses the capacities to perceive the visual world accurately, to perform transformations and modifications upon one’s initial perceptions, and the ability to re-create aspects of one’s visual experience, even in the absence of relevant physical stimuli. This includes the ability to recognize relationships between forms.
6. The personal intelligences are the intrapersonal intelligence focusing inward, and the interpersonal intelligence focusing outward. The first is manifested in the access to one’s own feelings or range of affects and emotions. It is the sense of self. The interpersonal intelligence is the ability to notice and make distinctions among other individuals and, in particular, among their moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions. The interpersonal intelligence permits a skilled individual to read the intentions and desires of others and, potentially, to act upon that knowledge. Knowing one’s self provides clues in understanding others and vice-versa.

Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

by Elliot Eisner

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, judgment prevails.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. There are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed and change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capabilities to find the words to express themselves.
9. The arts enable us to have experiences we can have from no other source. Through such experience we discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The position of the arts in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.