Argumentative essay




Music and art are how a culture expresses its creativity. Creativity is the base of learning. In the past years neuroscientists have explored the way our brains perceive, and react to music and art, including studies of the relationship between musical experience and emotion, and between our auditory and visual systems. Public schools should provide music and art education because their students gain great benefits from it. They prepare students for success in school, work and life, by helping them to know themselves, and the world in general. Art and music education are essential to a well-rounded education. Its prepare students for success in school, work, and life. Art and music can increase student motivation, because students tend to enjoy them and feel the sense of accomplishment. Having the arts in schools has been found to improve students morale, satisfaction, and attendance. Furthermore, the arts teach children to make good judgements about qualitative relationships. The arts inspire interpretation, which further develops critical thinking. Involvement in the arts can improve the cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skills. For example, the research involving exposing college students to listen Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, or relaxation tape, followed by test on spatial reasoning, showed a rise in scores from the student listening Mozart sonata ( Rauscher,1). Arts learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork. The statistics ( Catterall,18) shown that children who had higher arts involvement show better academic outcome, earn better grades and demonstrate higher rates of college enrollment. Children can express themselves when they can not find the right words that convey their emotion. Young children are often not able to express, or discuss their thought and feelings because they are limited with vocabularies and language skills, so they express themselves by drawing, music, and dance. For example, if the child has a phobia about animals, they will appear much larger in the picture. With music and art, a student who struggles in more traditional classes can excel. The arts gives them a voice, ways to express themselves, and a chance to be successful. Art and music education can help students to know themselves, and to understand the world around them. Eliot Eisner wrote that the arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution, and that the questions can have more than one answer. The arts enable us to have experiences we can have from no other source, and through such experience to discover what we are capable of feeling. All art forms employ some means through which images became real. They learn how music is made, to try to make music themselves, to learn about the infinitive ways that music comes to us, and to learn about music connections to event and eras of our history. Through the arts students express themselves, but also learn valuable information about other people, their ideas, values, and cultures. They learn why art is so important, and the impact it has on us, and our world today. Schools are the places to provide such activities, where students want to learn and teachers want to teach. Schools have specially equipped spaces for art and music education, classrooms, labs, studios, and practice rooms. In rural areas, schools are the only place where students can learn to play an instrument, or to paint a picture. Also, schools can further provide avenues for display, performance, and publication of students art work. In addition, they are providing field trips to art museums, galleries, and theaters, because these institutions are valuable for shaping the young individual. Some higher-income, and higher educated families, may take their children to these cultural institutions outside of school hours, while the students that come from the lower socioeconomic status backgrounds are less likely to have these experiences if school do not provide them. Public schools are the only place that some children can afford music and art classes. Schools exist not only to provide mathematic and literature skills, but also to produce young men and women who would appreciated the arts and culture. Although these programs are valuable in developing well-rounded people, there are some people that say that it is not essential for public schools to provide them, and that can be extra curriculum activities provided and founded by individuals, community organization, and private sector. It is true that music and art instruction can be obtained in the private market by those who can afford private lessons. However, the students from low-income families often cannot afford private lessons. But the public schools have proven themselves to be an effective and efficient way to teach student of music and art skills. In conclusion, all public schools should provide music and art education for their students, because they are essential to a well-rounded education, help students to know themselves, and schools are the best place where students want to learn. Students gain great benefits from it that can help them further in their lives. Tom Horne, pianist and founder of the Phoenix Baroque Ensemble, said, “When you think about the purposes of education, there are three. We’re preparing kids for jobs. We’re preparing them to be citizens. And we’re teaching them to be human beings who can enjoy the deeper forms of beauty. The third is as important as the other two.” Works Cited
Baker,Beth. “Art Education” CQ Researcher 16 March 2012:253-76
Catterall, James S., and Arts National Endowment for the, “Arts and Achievement in At-risk Youth: Findings From Four Longitudinal Studies Research Report #55. “National Endowment For The Arts (2012): ERIC. Web. 22 July 2014
Rauscher,FH, shaw GL, Ky, KH. “ Music and spatial task performance”. Nature. 14 Oct. 1993.16 July 2014.
National center for Education Statistics 1995 “ Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools”.
Smith,Fran. “Why Arts Education is curtail and Who’s Doing It Best”. 28 January 2009. 16 July 2014.