Personal Experiences

Past Memories of the Arts–and Why They Matter

Walk through almost any elementary school’s hall, and you will see walls hung with students’ drawings, colored with crayons and smudged by finger paints. Why is this? It’s not busy work, nor is it because children are not capable of more. It’s actually the opposite. They are capable of learning; and they are capable of art.

My elementary school in South Carolina had a strong arts program, but didn’t have arts integrated lessons. Some were arts enhanced, but what I remember most were the classes that were exclusively art-based. Twice a week we would have a music class and an art class, each one hour long. I have memories of learning songs on maracas and steel drums, making colorful clay pots, singing songs about the music staff, and cutting and pasting construction paper to create mosaic designs. But there was no intention to connect these arts lesson with what we were learning in the core curriculum of the classroom.These activities were certainly the ones I remember most from grade school and the ones I most enjoyed. The time I spent doing these activities was by no means wasted – but wouldn’t it be nice if those lessons could have helped engage me in a core subject, teaching the material simultaneously with the art form?

The challenge: It can be difficult for schools to find a way to incorporate arts into the classroom effectively. Most often schools not well versed in arts integration methods will use a fun art activity to transition into a new topic or as a way to get students to participate. Or, like my school, they feel the need for the arts so an entirely new class is implemented, free of influence from the rest of curriculum.

The Benefits: Having the arts represented in any form will benefit a student’s education, but directly relating these arts to core curriculum topics and teaching the arts along side math, history, language arts, and science helps students gain an appreciation for the importance of the arts in everyday life. One of the great benefits of art integration is also that it helps students remember the physical action of participating in lesson, and with it, the lesson’s material. Filling out worksheets, for example, don’t create memories, but writing and singing plantations songs while studying slavery and the civil war do.

 

The Artistic Challenges of a Fearful Mind

When thinking about art, many people have fears relating to creating art of their own, including the fear that you’re only pretending to do art, that you lack the necessary talent, that the only good work is perfect work, the belief that “real” art possesses some magical, unobtainable ingredient, and the fear that nothing you create will live up to your expectations. People might resist the idea of associating themselves with art because they feel that art is only for the greatly gifted or professionally trained, another, that they have strayed too far from art and have become too busy to be concerned with it.There are also fears of how one’s work will be perceived by others – that the art won’t be understood or accepted by society. These fears often deter individuals from practicing the arts and being creative in their lives.

The Challenge: Ideally, arts integrated lessons will begin in kindergarten and first grade so that a value for the arts will be instilled in students from the beginning of their educational career. But it’s also important to understand that fears about art are not inherent – they are learned. Children are naturally creative and are not afraid of failure because they have yet to experience the negative connotations and pressures of a perfectionist society. It is a great challenge for educators to counteract these fears and re-instill a love for the arts into children.

I can personally relate to the fear of understanding – meaning, what makes sense in my head is not always what makes sense through the art, and I’m afraid of my work being taken out of context – and I see the way my fear has affected my life. However, in their book “Art and Fear,” artists/teachers Bayles & Orland say, “In following the path of your heart, the chances are that your work will not be understandable to others,” (Bayles & Orland, 2001, p. 39). This makes a lot of sense. I want other people to understand the meaning behind what I create, but if it is truly original, authentic in that it comes from my mind alone, then the chances are not everyone will be able to understand it because they do not live inside my head to see and experience life the way I do. Bayles and Orland also say that “whatever you have is exactly what you need to produce your best work,” and if this is true, then the only think holding people back from being artists is their own belief that they possess no talent (p. 26). Through the integration of arts, we can teach students not only the subject material, but these lessons and values through the art they create.

The Benefits: There only has to be one reason, one passion, one flare of confidence, to overcome all the reasons why a person shouldn’t be an artist. And when that happens, people remember how to be children again – how to take chances and express themselves regardless of how talented or trained they might feel that they are, and that is when the artist rises. This is not only true for adults, but for students, too. As we grow, we tend to fall away from the arts and have to be pulled back in – but introducing lesson plans that are rich and diverse in the arts can help students’ passion for innovation and creativity grow. It those natural, creative minds were praised and encouraged early and regularly in school, perhaps students would never fall away in the first place, ending the cycle of burying our imaginations and running from the arts.