Klarinet Archive - Posting 000431.txt from 2001/05

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Fwd: Week 166
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 18:20:37 -0400

This seemed relevant at this time, so I am sharing it with you all.

>From: WhyMusicEd@-----.com
>Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 14:52:52 EDT
>Subject: Week 166
>X-Unsubscribe: send a blank message to whymusic-off@-----.com
>To: bhausmann1@-----.com
>
>WEEK 166
>
>THE CASE FOR ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES IN YOUTH
>DEVELOPMENT
>
>Organized youth activities can deter risky behavior in adolescents,
>according to a recent national study. Students who participate in
>band, orchestra, chorus or a school play, for example, are
>significantly less likely than nonparticipants to drop out of school,
>be arrested, use drugs or engage in binge drinking. Unfortunately,
>this same study also notes that today's most vulnerable youth spend
>less time in activities like these and are therefore deprived of their
>benefits.
>
>Quality youth programs, whether organized around the arts and the
>humanities, sports, science or outdoor exploration, are a crucial
>source of supportive relationships and vital experiences. Arts and
>humanities programs are particularly potent in promoting youth
>development. We see this most clearly in educational settings
>when the arts and the humanities are fully integrated into the
>curriculum.
>
>Several integrated educational models currently exist in the United
>States. The Duke Ellington School of the Arts in the District of
>Columbia provides its high school students, most of whom come
>from disadvantaged backgrounds, with the chance to attend a
>school where academics and the arts share the school day equally.
>In Kansas City, 7 public school districts, 11 arts organizations and
>35 donors have banded together across state lines to form Arts
>Partners, an initiative to integrate community arts resources into
>the school curriculum. Schools benefiting from this approach have
>seen the transforming effect of the arts and the humanities on the
>quality of education and on student achievement.
>
>While humanities disciplines such as history, literature and language
>have long been accepted as part of the standard school curriculum, the
>enlightened educator who understands the value of the arts has had
>insufficient educational theory and research upon which to base his or
>her insight. In the last several years, this gap has begun to close.
>
>Studies are exploring the role of arts education in the development
>of higher order thinking skills, problem-solving ability and
>increased motivation to learn. Other studies are finding
>correlations between arts education and improvements in academic
>performance and standardized test scores, increases in student
>attendance and decreases in school drop-out rates. The following
>points elaborate on the important ways culture counts in the
>development of children and youth.
>
>The arts and the humanities draw upon a range of intelligences and
>learning styles. Experts believe that people do not possess a single
>general intelligence, but several different kinds: linguistic,
>musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic,
>interpersonal and intrapersonal.2 Schools by and large focus on
>linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. In so doing,
>America's educational institutions may consign many children to under-
>achievement and failure. As eminent psychologist Howard Gardner
>notes, "[S]tudents with strengths in the spatial, musical, or personal
>spheres may find school far more demanding than students who happen to
>possess the "text-friendly" blend of linguistic and logical
>intelligences.
>
>The arts and the humanities provide children with different ways to
>process cognitive information and express their own knowledge.
>Using processes different from traditional approaches, the arts and
>humanities provide children with unique methods for developing
>skills and organizing knowledge. Each arts and humanities
>discipline has its own distinct symbol system, whether it is
>nonverbal, as with music or dance, or uses language in a particular
>way, as with creative writing or oral history. Exposure to these
>alternate systems of symbols engages the mind, requiring analysis,
>synthesis, evaluation and application.
>
>The arts have the potential to enhance academic performance. The
>arts give youngsters a richer reservoir of information upon which
>to draw in pursuing other subjects, such as reading, writing,
>mathematics and history. "Drawing helps writing. Song and poetry
>make facts memorable. Drama makes history more vivid and real.
>Creative movement makes processes understandable."
>
>By honing nonverbal skills such as perception, imagination and
>creativity, the arts also develop vocabulary, metaphorical language,
>observation and critical thinking skills. The elements of sound,
>movement, space, line, shape and color are all concepts related to
>other subject areas such as math and science. The concepts taught
>in the arts permeate other scholastic disciplines, and a child's
>comprehension of an artistic concept can extend across the
>academic curriculum.
>
>Furthermore, the teaching methods used in many arts and
>humanities programs provide alternative approaches to learning.
>For example, some children can process and retain information
>more effectively when they learn by doing, engage in apprentice-
>like relationships and use technology such as in computer graphics
>and videography.
>
>The arts and the humanities spur and deepen the development of
>creativity. By their very nature, the arts and the humanities place a
>premium on discovery and innovation, originality and imagination. As
>such, they can be powerful vehicles for stimulating creativity in
>young people, a valuable trait throughout their lives.
>
>Businesses today increasingly look for workers who can think and
>create. Clifford V. Smith, Jr., president of the GE Fund, is typical
>when he says, "Developing business leaders starts in school. Not in
>assembly-line schooling, but rather through the dynamic processes
>that the arts-in-education experience provides."
>
>The arts and the humanities provide critical tools for children and
>youth as they move through various developmental stages.
>Preschool children, before they are fluent in language, are
>powerfully affected by music, visual arts and dance. Preschoolers
>can paint, color, mold clay, sing songs, and dance in order to
>convey feelings and ideas. These activities encourage young
>children to express themselves and learn through the use of
>nonverbal symbols.
>
>Teenagers struggle with issues of identity, independence,
>competency and social role. The arts help to mediate this
>confusion. Creative art activity allows the adolescent to gain
>mastery over internal and external landscapes by discovering
>mechanisms for structure and containment that arise from within,
>rather than being imposed from outside. The artistic experience
>entails repetition of actions, thoughts or emotions, over which the
>adolescent gains increased tolerance or mastery. While providing a
>means to express pain and unfulfilled longings during a distinct
>maturational phase, the arts simultaneously engage the competent,
>hopeful and healthy aspects of the adolescents' being.
>
>Similarly, the humanities encourage youth to read, write and
>express themselves in a disciplined way.
>
>Changes in body image may be expressed through movement and
>dance. Drama offers the opportunity to explore identity by
>integrating childhood roles and experimenting with future
>possibilities. Music expresses emotional dissonance and volatility.
>The visual arts provide a vehicle for translating inner experiences
>to outward visual images. Writing and oral history projects bring a
>greater understanding of one's family and neighborhood.
>
>The arts and the humanities teach the value of discipline and
>teamwork and the tangible rewards each can bring. When
>children's efforts culminate in a performance or exhibition, they
>have a chance to experience meaningful public affirmation, which
>provides them with some degree of celebrity. For those few
>minutes, children are in their own eyes every bit as important as
>anybody-any TV, sports, music, movie or video idol.
>
>This can be an experience of particular potency for youngsters
>whose lives are primarily characterized by anonymity and failure.
>
>The arts and the humanities provide youth with a different perspective
>on their own lives, a chance to imagine a different outcome and to
>develop a critical distance from everyday life. For one adult poet, a
>well-known children's book allowed her to envision a different world
>from the abusive one in which she lived as a child. At a conference
>for adults learning to read, she recalled this experience, held up
>Smokey and the Cowhorse and said, "This is the book that saved my
>life." Victor Swenson, executive director of the Vermont Council on
>the Humanities, elaborates: "It [the book] represented a world outside
>of her own circumstances; a world of honor and honesty, love and
>loyalty and bad luck and good luck. It gave her something outside of
>her own experience. And she could see that there was a way out."
>
>Developing cultural literacy in children and youth gives them a
>sense of perspective as they participate in traditions of expression
>from which they learn and to which they can contribute. As
>humanist John William Ward wrote in 1985, "[H]umanistic
>learning is centered on the individual who has important questions
>about self and society. To learn some of the answers to those
>questions means the fullest and richest and most imaginative
>development of every single self."
>
>A respected gang-interventionist writes, "One of the most natural
>and effective vehicles for gang members is the road of the arts,
>especially theater. New values only emerge through new
>experiences, and the arts provide a unique laboratory where truth
>and possibility can be explored safely. Validating emotional safety
>is everything."
>
>Because dance, music, photography and other visual arts transcend
>language, they can bridge barriers among cultural, racial and ethnic
>groups. The arts also can promote a deeper understanding of
>similarities and differences among religions, races and cultural
>traditions. For some children, the exploration of their unique
>cultural histories can be critical to their sense of themselves and to
>others' images of them. This knowledge can help bind them more fully
>to the larger society of which they are a part.
>
>The arts and the humanities are a critical part of a complete
>education. The true worth of cultural knowledge transcends any of
>its specific applications.
>
>Source: Coming Up Taller, a report about youth arts programs
>by the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities
>www.cominguptaller.org

Bill Hausmann bhausmann1@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://homepages.go.com/~zoot14/zoot14.html
Essexville, MI 48732 ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

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