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In the current constricted agenda of education due to budget and standards concerns, the
rounded education that values critical thinking and creative problem solving. As states trickle
federal budget cuts down to districts and schools in a myriad of ways, teachers are left with
varying degrees of funding, time, and priorities to manage arts education. While many places
thankfully continue to value arts education enough to devote committed arts specialist teachers to
share their expertise, in my experience these teachers are frequently itinerant and offer students
too small a taste of true arts education to suffice. One suggested answer to this shortcoming has
been the integration of the arts into core curriculum. Although I think arts integration is a useful
venue for offering students alternative modes and methods for understanding content, I believe in
the empowering experiences of a stand-alone arts curriculum that cannot be replaced with
integration of art concepts into the academic work of core curriculum. Arts Integration attempts
attempt to weave this valuable creative time into other subject areas and dilute the artistic
experience with academic concerns. I did, however, infuse contextual key concepts into the
lesson, including the history of collage, the background of a particular artist, and the societal and
financial implications of the art nested in its’ timeframe. These contextual considerations did
nothing to diminish the essence of the art elements of line, shape, color, and perspective. In fact,
integrating academic concepts into lessons that focus on artistry adds to the relevance and
interest of the art. But relegating art to limited integration into core subjects is not equitable nor
LaJevic (2013) studied and wrote extensively about Arts Integration as it was intended to
concentrate “on the ability of the arts to teach across/through the curriculum and transcend the
school subject boundaries” (pg 2). She claims that, however, the realities of how and why the arts
are incorporated and implemented into the general classroom are frequently flawed. Often, the
arts are not treated as importantly as other subjects, and connections to student learning are often
more a way of doing than a way of knowing or thinking through concepts. The focus of many art
lessons tend to value the product and dismiss the learning that happened through the planning
and creation of that product. In my lesson on collage, I urged students to reflect upon the creation
process as they shared their finished pieces. They were asked to talk about a challenge they
encountered while making their collage and solutions they found. Although their individual
collages were celebrated and admired, the lesson closure focused on effort, creative problem
In a recent study conducted in Houston, Texas, Bowen and Kisinda (2019) found that
schools that received substantial increases in arts education experiences significantly reduced the
compassion for one another, and enhanced school engagement and college aspirations. Their
investigation is the first large-scale randomized control trial of an arts education program
implemented in an authentic educational setting. They concluded that the benefits of an arts
thinking, and that the narrowing of educational offerings and objectives to align with
accountability assessments has adverse affects on students in terms of social, emotional, and
academic outcomes.
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difficult to refute, there still exists the dichotomy of an academic-centered education versus a
more liberal arts focus in education. Patston, Cropley, Marrone, and Kaufman (2018) explore the
assumption that creativity in education is associated with the arts, and question whether the value
characterized by endowed talent, misfit individualism, and dysfunctional behavior. They found
that although these stereotypes of art still exist, teachers are increasingly more aware of the role
that creativity plays in academics overall. It was suggested, however, that correcting
misconceptions about creativity, and enhancing the understanding of its role in solving scientific
and technological problems should continue to be a priority as teachers and policy makers make
The arts are as important as academics, and should be treated that way in school
curriculum. Learning about art and learning to think in creative ways goes beyond creating
students who perform well. Art engenders more successful human beings. A contributing writer
for Edutopia, Swapp (2016) expounds on many of the benefits of arts education that contribute to
overall school achievement. These benefits include reliance on intrinsic motivation, self-
deepening of self-understanding. These characteristics are uniquely obtained through art in ways
Although the desire to integrate arts education into the academic curriculum is
applaudable, teachers who lack experience or education in the arts tend to harbor feelings of
uncertainty about teaching the arts, often resulting in poorly incorporated lessons and
devaluation of art and creativity as mere decoration (LaJevic, 2013). Art lessons in an
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integration attempt typically dilute the art component in favor of the more academic concerns of
the lesson. Art objectives are frequently not addressed in lesson plans or assessed. Consequently,
a great number of students who receive an arts integration approach to learning artistic concepts
and fundamentals are not really learning the creative thinking and complex cognitive connections
that creativity in art fosters. The characteristics of an arts education that we value: those that
subjects, engagement, and good behavior, would appear to not be addressed by most integrated
arts programs.
Providing our students opportunities to experience art in ways most beneficial to their
development as critically thinking and conscientious humans depends on quality art lessons that
address and assess creative ways of approaching problems and inquiries. Strong arts
programming in schools helps close gaps inflicted by diversity in economic status, race,
language, and culture. Maintaining and prioritizing art education’s status as an incomparable and
distinctive mode of acquiring unique and overarching understandings of the human experience
requires the belief that creative ways of knowing are equally as important as empirical. It means
References
Bowen, D.H. and Kisida, B. (2019). Investigating causal effects of arts education experiences:
7(4).
LaJevic, L. (2013). Arts integration: What is really happening in the elementary classroom?
Patston, T.J., Cropley, D.H., Marrone, R.L., and Kaufman, J.C. (2018). Teacher implicit beliefs
of creativity: Is there an art bias? Teaching and Teacher Education 75 (2018), 366-374.
Smith, F. (2009). Why arts education is crucial, and who’s doing it best. Edutopia. Retrieved
2019.
Swapp, N. (2016). Creativity and academics: The power of an arts education. Edutopia.