EDUCATION
REPORT - Experts Calls for More Arts Training in U.S. Schools
By Jerilyn Watson
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English
Education Report.
Many groups are working to widen and improve teaching
of the arts in American schools. A current national campaign urges Americans
to demand and support more such teaching.
Americans for the Arts and other activist organizations
developed television messages as part of the campaign. One shows a child
lacking in arts training. She asks her father to read to her. But she
cannot understand or enjoy creative stories. Instead, she chooses an
extremely dull book. It contains lists of legal requirements for buildings.
Then an announcer says, "Art. Ask for More."
Many American school officials and community leaders
strongly support arts training as necessary for children. They said
so in a study published in two-thousand. The study examined ninety-one
school systems in the United States. Schools in these districts had
earned recognition for effective teaching of dance, music, drama and
visual arts, like painting.
Two groups were responsible for this study: the President's
Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and the Arts Education Partnership.
The committee advises the White House about arts policy. The Arts Education
Partnership is a national coalition of more than one-hundred groups.
The coalition is trying to widen the influence of the arts in American
life and in schools.
In the nineteen-nineties, less than half of middle
school students studied the arts in school. And the programs they did
have were not all very good. The United States Department of Education
noted this in nineteen-ninety-seven. One of its programs, the National
Assessment of Education Progress, studied eighth graders across the
country. The study involved more than six-thousand students in almost
two-hundred-seventy schools. The assessment said they were not as well
trained in the arts as they should have been.
Educational experts have good things to say about
students who study the arts. They say these students are more likely
to do well in other subjects than other students. They are more likely
to become school leaders. In addition, they do more community service.
And, they are less likely to get into trouble.
This VOA Special English Education Report was written
by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Steve Ember.
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