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Arts And The Arts : Curriculum Implications

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Many people have often wondered if children really benefit from taking part in the arts or if the arts are just an excuse to get out of class and play, considering that the arts are usually the first to go when it comes to school budget-cuts. This paper will discuss the arts and how they benefit the education and development of children. Some of the arts discussed in this paper will include visual arts, drama, music, and dance. One of the articles chosen to study for this paper is “Learning In and Through the Arts: Curriculum Implications” by Judith Burton, Robert Horowitz, and Hal Abeles from the Center for Arts Education Research Teachers College, Columbia University in July of 1999. The other article chosen was “Involvement in the Arts …show more content…

In those meetings, they “examined field notes, pupils’ artwork, writing, and photo-documentation of in-school activities (Burton, Horowitz & Abeles, 1999)”. These professionals observed a range of schools with no arts programs to schools with three or four arts programs (Burton, Horowitz & Abeles, 1999).
The authors of the article “Learning In and Through the Arts: Curriculum Implications” separated students into two categories for comparing needs. The groups consisted of “high-arts group” where students were exposed to more arts programs in their schooling, and a “low-arts group” where students maybe had one or two arts programs in their education. When they compared the two groups, they “saw immediately that the high-arts group consistently outscored the low-arts group on measures of creative thinking and teachers’ perceptions of artistic capabilities (Burton, Horowitz & Abeles, 1999)”. Students in the high-arts group also received better scores according to their academic teachers. Students “in the high-arts group were stronger than those in low-arts groups in their ability to express their thoughts and ideas, exercise their imaginations, and take risks in learning (Burton, Horowitz & Abeles, 1999)”. High-arts group students also seemed more willing to display what they have learned in front of different audiences. It has also been found

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