Why Do Children Need Art?

 

 

“The art teacher has a large contribution to make, for art as well as language

is a necessary means of expressing feelings and ideas. Written records at best

are sometimes inconvenient or inadequate tools. Because art is graphic and can

be seen at a glance, it is many times the more vivid way of conveying feelings and

ideas to others. Art is never separated from life because the moment one expresses

themself in any visible way, the expression has to do with choices and arrangement.”

Jane Betsey Welling, Art Educator, Wayne State University 1927-1950

 

 

            The arts have been marginalized in our country's educational history from the academic curriculum in many of our schools, both private and public. Unlike pens, paper, books and computers, some educators think art materials are messy and unmanageable. Other beliefs our society has about the arts is that they are not serious academic pursuits, that they are emotional and easily regarded as an extra that can be dismissed without loss. In the system of cognitive processes, intuitive and sensory artwork is thought to be a lower level of intelligence. Even though art educators such as Elliot Eisner and Judith Burton have demonstrated the intellectual progression in children’s art, and have written extensively on the arts as in the domain of higher levels of cognition, along with scientific, linguistic and logical thought processes, this bias remains.

            John Dewey, a major voice in progressive education wrote in 1934, “Science states meanings; art expresses them.” As a scientific thinker that also understood the place of aesthetics in education he felt every student ought to have a place in school to make expressions of their own experiences or observations through the visual arts—not just for the sake of the product but for the meaning that such creative expressions would have for them. The veracity of children’s ideas and communications are fundamental to every aspect of the learning environment, and art that is based on personal experiences can enable children to become deeply involved in their curriculum studies. Making an image is a way of depicting thought and it is a powerful way for feeling and thought to be integrated. Children’s artwork discloses what they know and have experienced in the world, what we see being communicated are their innermost feelings and ideas.

            In the early years of a child’s education, an art educator helps children to become more conscious of their intuitive actions and gives them opportunities to develop their interests along side their needs. Paint and clay for instance given in an open-ended manner are materials equivalent to textbooks in an early childhood curriculum.  Art is the universal mode of expression regardless of culture, especially during early childhood.

            An art educator, in each stage of a child's development views children as originators of their own process, actively influenced by natural, dynamic, self-righting forces within that open toward growth and learning. Guiding the expressive capacity, an art educator uses a child's frame of reference and interests, through a gradual development of open experimentation to the technical mastery of line, shape and space giving a way for another language to form.

             Children as they grow older and have ever-expanding experiences continue this need to relate to their personal thoughts and feelings within a larger and more complex cognitive and social framework. Art invites us as a way of connecting with who we are and what we are- our inner self- with the world outside. Curriculum studies need this inclusion of art as a way of understanding ideas from this side of the intellect while experiencing what comes from a shared contribution that benefits a developing study and progression of living and working.  Creativity is part of this incorporation of intellectual growth and represents why the need for art and the habits of mind it brings is a necessary and integral part of a child’s education.