On
Stage! is tonight and we couldn't be more excited. This the seventh
year Guilford Education Alliance has produced the talent show and
it's set to be one of the biggest. There are more than 500 students
scheduled to perform from schools all over the county, ready to show
off their abilities in the visual and performing arts. And don't
think we're overselling it when we say the stars of tomorrow will be
on stage at War Memorial Auditorium tonight. These kids will really
bowl you over with what they can do.
Guilford Education
Alliance has always taken the opportunity to promote the importance
of arts education during On Stage! We support Guilford County Schools'
efforts to encourage our children's involvement in the arts with
magnet programs like the Penn-Griffin School for the Arts in High
Point and Morehead Elementary, as well as general arts education in
all of our schools.
Supporters
of arts education will point out data connecting student achievement
and involvement in the arts. A 1998
UCLA study found that arts education has a tremendous impact on
the developmental growth of children across socio-economic groups.
Arts education advocacy group Americans
for the Arts claims children who participate in the arts for at
least three hours, three days each week are four times more likely to
be recognized for academic achievement and participate in a math or
science fair and three times more likely to read for fun and
volunteer in their community.
Those are some
wonderful figures but they're easy to question. Is it painting or the
violin that encouraged a student's love of books or are all three
passions emblematic of a larger focus on education by the child's
sphere of influence?
That's
essentially what two researchers working with Harvard's Project Zero
found in 2000. Project Zero is a research entity dedicated to
improving arts education. The 2000 study, which you can read more
about in this New
York Times article, found that art classes did not improve
overall academic performance.
Not surprisingly the
findings caused an uproar among educators and supporters of the arts.
There's plenty of research conducted before and since that 2000
Project Zero study that refutes its findings. But what the study's
authors, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, argued was that trying to
connect students participation in the arts and their academic
performance is unfair to the arts. Instead, Winner and Hetland
asserted, arts education should be supported because of its own
intrinsic value.
You could bury the
Project Zero findings under a mountain of contrary research but the
reasoning behind the effort shouldn't be dismissed. Isn't, after all,
the accomplishment of braving an early freeze to play clarinet in the
marching band for a crowded high school stadium worth supporting on
its own? Do we have to prove that an eighth grader's love of
photography has something to do with why she's so good at math or can
we encourage her passion for an art form simply because it brings her
joy and a chance to express herself?
At On Stage! Tonight
you will see and hear a wonderful sampling of the skill and talent
our public school students are learning and honing in classes across
the county. You will also see smiles, bright, hopeful eyes and
earnest effort. There isn't a better summary for what education looks
like.
