Why Art Education Is Important

Schools are the institutions in which each student is given the same opportunities; one of these opportunities should be access to the arts. Educational policies shape the minds of the young and “we tell the young, through the curricular choices that we make, what is important for them to learn”. By neglecting to include art in the school curriculum, students miss out on the unique opportunities and insights provided to them by museums and other such places where great art is hosted. Art cultivates the senses, allows for creativity and facilitates the development of personal judgment along with the understanding that not every answer is black and white but sometimes gray. The important skill of reading artistic images is important to understanding art and what each artist wanted to accomplish. Each one of these skills and opportunities gives the students cultural capital.
The ability to experience great art enlightens in a special way and stretches the mind in the process, the arts offer insight that only artistic form can reveal. Language itself cannot describe an artistic experience, students must be taught and learn how to read art to participate in the profound form of human experience that art offers. The get meaning from art students must learn how to speak the language of the images and understand the artist’s motivations.
In the art room students are allowed to be creative. Individual expression is encouraged and students are praised for their individuality and originality. Art helps children to express their feelings and show who they are as individuals. No other subject allows children to have this type of guided freedom in which they practice their creativity and individuality.
When students are actively engaged in learning about art and producing art they are cultivating their senses. As Elliot Eisner stated
“It is our sensory system that first provides the “material” we experience, reflect upon, and eventually manipulate. It is our capacity to create images from the world we are able to experience that feeds our imagination. When our sensibilities are dulled or ill-developed, the content for reflection and imagination is itself limited” Art allows students to look at the subtleties of the world around them and experience the qualities of which the world is made up.
In art there is no single right answer to an artistic problem, this requires students to use their own judgment, higher-order thinking skills and think outside the box. In math a student is expected to find the correct answer, this is true of all of the core subjects where students are tested in a situation that is black and white, right or wrong. This black and white thinking is confusing in the future when the answers to life questions aren’t black and white but a subtler shade of gray. The art classroom allows students to explore the gray areas and create unique solutions to problems, which prepares them for their adult life.
Art education is needed in schools. Students do not learn the skills that a good art education provides, only as a result of advancing in age. We can’t let our children down by not providing creative experiences for all learners that help them read the arts and raise their cultural capital. Now I ask a question posed by Elliot Eisner “What kind of children and what kind of culture do we wish?"

Works Cited
Getty Center for Education in the Arts. “Beyond Creating: The Place for Art in America’s Schools: Why Art in Education and Why Art Education. Ed. Elliot Eisner. LosAngeles, California: 1985. 64-69.