We’re all familiar with the acronym STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. On discovering that students in the United States were lagging behind many other developed countries, Congress authorized massive funding for STEM education. Sadly, however, after several years of funding change has been slow and progress among American schools has been unremarkable.
What high school educators want to see is greater student participation, higher motivation, and an increased interest in relevant issues. What Universities and big companies want are students who are creative, analytical and capable of thinking critically.
Persuasive research seems to indicate that one way of ensuring this is to integrate skills, strategies, and activities from the Arts into the teaching of STEM subjects. The idea is to move from STEM to STEAM.
The problem is that for far too long the arts have been relegated to the sidelines of mainstream education. Educationists who should know better have shown very little vision in promoting the arts. Included in the arts are Dance, Drama and Theatre, Music, and Visual Arts. According to the Dept. of Education, in the first decade of the 21st Century, schools in America have seen up to 20% fewer lessons in the arts. This is a lamentable state of affairs and indicative of the myopic view of schools and educational boards. It is also evidence of a breath-taking lack of vision and lack of care for our students.
It was in 2006 that Sir Ken Robinson gave what is now regarded as the most popular TED talk of all time, “Schools Kill Creativity.” The sad fact is that for most schools, change has been too slow or non-existent.
From an evolutionary point of view, the human brain is far better attuned to appreciate art and music than it is to the scientific method. The cave art of Lascaux, France, are over 30,000 years old. By contrast, the modern scientific method which had its first hesitant steps during the Golden Age of Greece and the Arab world only truly came to the fore about 400 years old during the European Enlightenment and Age of Reason.
It’s not clear why humans took so long to develop an understanding of the scientific method, but lessons from natural selection would indicate that art, music, dance, drama must have conferred some sort of survival benefit on the species.
However, even though on the surface the arts and the sciences may be at odds with each other (art is subjective, science is objective; art is intuitive, science is logical) the fact is we need both for a full flourishing of the human personality. Ultimately – and here’s the key – all activities –both from the sciences and the arts – are a product of the functioning of the brain.
Contrary to what many educators think, the purpose of school is not to prepare students for Universities. It is to prepare students for life after high school. The arts are not only basic to the human experience, they are fundamental to what makes us human.
Activities related to the arts are crucial in developing a better brain. Humans are a visual species. A large part of the brain is devoted to processing visual information. The same systems are used in the brain to process visual information and to create fantasy. This is why virtual reality, television, and books can be so compelling. A study of visual arts in high school can help to promote this aspect of the human brain.
The anterior parts of the brain are devoted to language skills. Cognitive Psychologist, Steven Pinker, and linguist, Noam Chomsky, have both pointed out how the human brain is born with schemas and neural modules that help in rapid acquisition of language in childhood. Studies of children raised in isolation have shown that if language skills aren’t developed in childhood then it is not always easy to rectify in adulthood. There are mirror neurons present in the neocortex of the brain that fire when we see another individual commit an action. Both the mirror neurons and the cerebrum are connected to the limbic system of the brain which is its emotional centre. A study of drama in high school would undoubtedly help develop a student with better language and empathetic skills.
Studies indicate that humans learn better through movement. It is appalling that we still insist on students sitting passively in classrooms day after day, month after month, year after year. Parts of the cerebrum and the cerebellum are devoted to coordinating movement. But astonishingly, the cerebellum is also the area in the brain responsible for learning. A reason for this is that we need to learn to think about our movements before we move so that we control them better. So every time we decide to move, or take action, this decision is preceded by neural activity that sets goals and analyses outcomes. It is only then that a neural decision is taken to execute movements. It may well be that all these processes take place at a level beyond our conscious understanding. The bottom line remains that it is still the activity of the brain. And neurons that fire together wire together – resulting in a stronger more complex brain. Teaching dance in high school can help develop a learning brain.
And finally music: there are parts of the brain that respond only to music. If we desire a child with an active brain, we’d be well advised to incorporate music in our lessons and also include activities that develop musical abilities. Playing a guitar, for instance, is an incredibly complex action. It involves the visual part of the brain processing the notes, it involves the psychomotor parts of both hemispheres of the brain – with the right hand strumming the strings and the left hand changing chords, and finally it involves the parts of the cerebrum responsible for vocalizing the tune – and all the while the brain needs to be aware of what’s happening in the room and gauge the response of the listening audience.
Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence posits that there are many ways to be intelligent. David Sousa makes the argument that the arts engage a young brain and develop cognitive growth. And that participating in the arts can foster spontaneity, self-expression, and creativity. Elliot Eisner opines that the art develop mental competencies that benefit learners in every aspect of their education, including attention to nuance, multi-perspective problem solving, the ability to make decisions in the absence of a rule, a better use of the imagination, and the ability to see the world from an aesthetic perspective.
There is more future than there is past. If our species is to transcend itself and forge ahead into the expansive landscape that David Deutsch calls ‘infinite knowledge’ then it is imperative for teachers, parents, and education boards to endorse not only a teaching of the arts alongside the sciences but also a teaching of the sciences through the arts.
