Wings of Harmony

SUCCESS IN LIFE

Each of us wants our children—and the children of all those around us—to achieve success in school, success in employment, and success in the social structures through which we move. But we also want our children to experience “success” on a broader scale. Participation in music, often as not based on grounding in music education during the formative school years, brings countless benefits to each individual throughout life. The benefits may be psychological or spiritual, and they may be physical as well. – MENC

To put it simply, we need to keep the arts in education because they instill in students the habits of mind that last a lifetime: critical analysis skills, the ability to deal with ambiguity and to solve problems, perseverance and a drive for excellence. Moreover, the creative skills children develop through the arts carry them toward new ideas, new experiences, and new challenges, not to mention personal satisfaction. This is the intrinsic value of the arts, and it cannot be overestimated. Education Week, Issue 20, vol. 24, pg. 40, 52; Jan 26, 2005, Rod Paige (former U.S. Secretary of Education), Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas, Education Commission of the States Chairman (www.ecs.org), Chairman’s Initiative on the Arts in Education.

“The arts are not just affective and expressive. They are also deeply cognitive. They develop the tools of thinking itself: careful observation of the world, mental representation of what is observed or imagined, abstraction from complexity, pattern recognition and development, symbolic and metaphoric representation, and qualitative judgment. We use these same thinking tools in science, philosophy, math and history. The advantage of the arts is that they link cognitive growth to social and emotional development. Students care more deeply about what they study, they see the links between subjects and their lives, their thinking capacities grow, they work more diligently, and they learn from each other.” Nick Rabkin, Executive Director of the Center for Arts Policy, Columbia College Chicago; Robin Redmond, associate director of CAP. “The Art of Education Success”, Washington Post, January 8, 2005, pg. A19 http://www.supportmusic.com/drjohn/archive/2007-06-11.mhtml