For some people, improving the curriculum in our schools means narrowing it. We'll produce better-educated students, they tell us -- students who will help us in our economic recovery -- if we drop arts programs and add more of the "basics." More reading, writing, and 'rithmetic and, of course, more science. What, they ask, does playing a trumpet or writing poetry have to do with making the United States competitive in world markets? The people I have in mind would probably go on to talk about tight money and educational frills, and they might suggest that arts programs are sissy -- even elitist.
I couldn't disagree more. The traditional basics are important; we just need to add arts to the list. It sounds practical and hard-nosed to talk about cutting arts programs, but the school district doing that impoverishes its curriculum and cuts students off from some important -- some basic -- kinds of learning. Unfortunately, this has already happened in too many places.
If intelligence were simple, just a matter of learning facts and doing computations, eliminating arts programs from the school curriculum might make sense. But human intelligence is diverse. Modern psychology tells us that; so does common sense. People learn - and express their smarts - in many different ways. In the past, schools often have ignored that fact and tried to teach students by calling only on their ability to sit still, listen and memorize. We know better now. And ifwe want to improve our educational system, we must encourage students to tap that diversity instead of limiting them to one kind of intellectual experience.
Elliot Eisner, a professor of education and art at Stanford University, says that successful arts education "help[s] students stretch their minds beyond the literal and rule-governed" ("Why Arts Are Basic," Council for Basic Education, 1987). As Eisner sees it, much of our education today is defined by the multiple-choice test. The arts, on the other hand, offer the stimulation of many choices: "In the arts, choice is always multiple; the difference, however, is that there is rarely a single certain answer. Hence, when well taught the arts free the mind from rigid certainty"; they accustom us to playing with many possibilities before we commit ourselves to one.
Of course, this habit of mind also applies outside the arts. People who think in terms of a single right answer will have trouble thinking themselves out of problems, whether these problems arise on the floor of a factory or the floor of a legislature. And scientists, like artists, also know they must be able to free themselves from rigid certainty. Otherwise they'll never recognize the path that might lead them to a revolutionary discovery.
We could also learn from the experiences of handicapped people with arts education. In fact, there we see one of the most dramatic and marvelous examples of how art enables people to move beyond their ordinary physical and intellectual boundaries.
Very Special Arts, an educational program of Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is a pioneer in this field. Founded by Jean Kennedy Smith in 1974, the program now involves a million people in 50 states and 51 countries. Its 1989 International Very Special Arts Festival, which took place in Washington D.C., this summer, gave 1,000 artists, most of them participants in local Very Special Arts Programs in the United States and abroad, a chance to show what they have been able to accomplish.
Some of it was dazzling -- like "Storm Reading," a play written and performed by Neil Marcus, a young man who has a neurological disorder that affects his muscular control and his ability to speak. All of it seemed to give participants the sense that Eisner talks about, the experience of being challenged and reaching places you never even thought about. And more.
People who lead these arts programs for disabled people talk about how they build autonomy: Art allows the artist to be in charge - forces the poet or the potter to make decisions -- and helps the artist develop independence. It's important that children and adults with handicaps learn these lessons; it's equally important that the ordinary children in our schools learn them - and what better place than an arts program?
The arts teach handicapped and ordinary children another lesson they both need - a respect for diversity. The arts permit - in fact they call for - diversity in the people who practice them and they teach a delight in diverse results. Two dancers may be different but equally good. And, as Eisner points out, this lesson is of particular importance to people growing up in a multicultural society like our own.