Putting Arts Education Front and Center

By Rod Paige & Mike Huckabee

Since the time when humans drew figures on the walls of the caves of Lascaux, the arts have been our means of recording human experience and making meaning in the world. They are a sign of a thoughtful, inventive, and creative citizenry. As the global economy becomes faster and more competitive, these qualities are increasingly important. As such, the arts are an integral part of a complete, successful, and high-quality education.

Study of the arts enhances young people’s intellectual, personal, and social development. The arts provide a rich and engaging curriculum that develops students’ abilities to think, reason, and understand the world and its cultures. A comprehensive arts education encompasses such areas as the history of the arts, the honing of critical-analysis skills, the re-creation of classic as well as contemporary works of art, and the expression of students’ ideas and feelings through the creation of their own works. In other words, students should have opportunities to respond, perform, and create in the arts.

Research has shown that those who study the arts improve their achievement in other subjects, including mathematics, reading, and writing. In math, for example, studies point to a direct connection between music and spatial reasoning and spatial temporal skills, which are important to understanding and using mathematical concepts. For high school students, coursetaking data collected by the College Board indicate that students of the arts annually outperform their nonarts peers on the SAT. In 2004, for example, students who studied music scored 40 points higher on the math portion of the test than students reporting no arts coursework. Similarly, students who studied acting and play production outscored their nonarts peers on the verbal portion of the SAT by an...