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Art and Music ¤ It's not the quantity of textbook pages assigned that makes students smart. It's how they learn to think about their new learning. Can they analyze it, critique it, and place it in context? Students need to study bigger, more difficult questions and to take the time to ponder and reflect. The more challenging and ambiguous the problems, the better. The more disciplines learning involves, the better. The longer it takes students to explore a topic, the better. We need less trivia and more in-depth learning about the things that matter the most in our world: order, integrity, thinking skills, a sense of wonder, truth, flexibility, fairness, dignity, contribution, justice, creativity, and cooperation. Does that sound like a tall order? The arts can do all that. We need more of the arts because they can do more of that than any other discipline. Eric Jensen, Arts with the Brain in Mind, ASCD 2001, p10 |