by Dale Lewis
Studies linking childhood participation in the arts to lifetime skill in academic and career pursuits have become ubiquitous, so much so that they have come to trivialize an important conversation for parents. These studies cite the arts as having a pivotal role in the development of 21st century skills, critical thinking, the experience of working sequentially toward a goal, and improvement in a child’s academic achievement. Arts educators have long recognized these outcomes, but they see more. Children who immerse themselves in the arts experience something greater than improved grades. They experience joy.
Children acquire knowledge over time, gradually building skills and assembling content that allows each to see the possibility of success and the skill needed to approach it. Artistic study forces us to set goals, to work toward them, and to experience joy in the journey, whatever its outcome. In other words, the arts slow things down. School is where the journey is supposed to begin, but teacher-inspired journeys of achievement are often thwarted by a system that eschews journeys with risk. Instead, our system favors short paths toward immediate gratification, flawed paths that we now define as success. Perhaps this is because our parent-guided school leadership would rather guarantee a child’s success than to allow him/her to risk a journey that may include failure.
Teachers know that failure is one of life’s great learning experiences. In today’s schools, however, they are forced to declare every student a winner – regardless of the child’s true level of achievement. We have failed these children by allowing parents to tell their teachers how to teach, what to teach, and to demand that every child receive continuous praise and inflated grades. We have proclaimed the finish line to be our goal, certifying every child a victor before the starter’s pistol has been fired. But the journey has no relevance when schools choose to guarantee results rather than opportunity. Perhaps we adults have forgotten how we learned - one skill at a time, one achievement at a time, even one failure at a time.
The arts provide an ideal platform to restore rigor to our schools, for study in the arts demands skill, judgment, and patience. When a child leans to paint, skills are needed to fill the canvas with quality and expression. There is the study of color, of form, and of technique, and there are intangible elements that require critical thinking. These include the development of a painting’s concept, and the artistic language required to convey it.
Similarly, a child can’t play the clarinet in 10 minutes, days, or weeks. S/he must build skills that lead to a performance, and this takes time. That winter concert we enjoyed wasn’t put together in a week or a month. It was the result of a continuum of skills inspired by music teachers brave enough to swim upstream against declarations of success without expectations of achievement. Concerts are crafted by children who have mastered their art through hard work, skill building, and patience. They have concluded their journey, whether at the finish line or still approaching it, thanks to arts teachers who inspire success and are willing to teach their students to wait for it.
As Director of Long Island’s Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, I have the privilege of working with 1,500 arts majors every day. Guided by a faculty of leading professionals, our students struggle with creative ideas, master artistic techniques, and build works of art one skill at a time. At Usdan, the happy result is seen on the faces of children boarding their buses following a fulfilling summer’s day of “work.” Theirs are smiles of achievement, the result of numerous moments of trial and triumph. We don’t guarantee that children will cross the finish line. We guarantee that they will learn, grow, and have fun approaching it. The joy, after all, is in the journey.
Dale Lewis is the Executive Director of Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Wheatley Heights, Long Island, NY. www.usdan.com
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