Blog Entry # 3 Why Teach Art?

The visual arts allow students to grow and develop in a way not supported by other areas.  Art connects to students at a personal level and allows them to reflect on their experiences throughout life and express them in a way that is meaningful.  A well developed art program can help students do this as well as provide a space that is conducive to learning about art in the form of looking at and responding to art through visual thinking strategies, working through different art processes, and then using these to improve students’ visual literacy that will allow them to succeed in a world that demands people create content, decode their world through visual cues, and communicate on a multitude of levels.  Studies have shown that students at all levels and backgrounds greatly benefit from an education that makes art a priority in some way.  Studies have also shown how much students suffer in terms of grades, attendance, and graduation when an arts education is lacking.  For many students, art can be the only thing they wake up and go to school for, while others just see it as another class, even though they are still gaining skills from it.  As an effective art educator, it is important to work to make sure every student is getting all that they can from an arts education and help them to be more visually literate and be able to really analyze the world around them to better understand it at a deeper level.  The visual arts penetrate all aspects of society and culture and often reflect the ideas and philosophies of the time, without the ability to understand these works of art, students are unable to see the deeper cultural ramifications of society’s current and past actions, as artists often deal with these topics.   As many schools deal with budget cuts and attempt to solve this by eliminating courses outside of the “core” subjects of English, Math, Science, and the Social Sciences, they neglect to recognize the fact that art is just as essential to students when it comes down to the world outside of academia.  I understand that not every one of my future students will go on to become an art loving adult like myself, however, it is my job to ensure that their arts education is meaningful, helpful to them, and that they are more well equipped to analyze and evaluate their world in new ways to improve their visual literacy and ability to succeed in the world today.