A Classroom Experiment In Starting Point Bias - Williams College: Fill & Download for Free

Your question is very, very, very broad. There are tens, if not maybe even hundreds of different fields that would be legitimate answers to your question - and within each field, there are tens or hundreds or thousands of books!Say Keng Lee below has already given a "narrow but deep" answer with books that mainly cover how people learn, and how to learn better. Complementing his answer, I will offer a "shallow but broad" answer by considering many different fields and giving you one or two suggestions in each one.Studies of outstanding teachers. Marva Collins' Way is probably the best here. She set up a small school taking all the elementary school dropouts from the worst part of Chicago in the 1970s. Most of these children were diagnosed as learning-disabled, had behaviour problems, and were illiterate (they were around 8 years old on average). Within a year or two, she had these children reading Shakespeare, Dante, and Tolstoy with glee. Also consider You Haven't Taught Until They've Learned (about John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach and English teacher whose team won 9 out of 11 years when he coached them) and Escalante by James Matthews (about Jaime Escalante, the teacher on whom the film Stand and Deliver is based).Child development. This is a big field, and I suggest you look at some general text which covers the many theorists in detail. One particular theorist you should definitely know about is Jean Piaget, but his books are quite old now and it might be better to read something a little more up-to-date. I found the first part of the book Young Children Reinvent Arithmetic, written by a former PhD student of Piaget's, to be a very interesting introduction to his theory of child development, and of constructivism. Also, John Holt's How Children Learn (mentioned by Say Keng Lee in his answer also) is a lighter, more discursive book looking at children's thought processes, behaviour, and learning.Adult development (that's also a thing). The Defining Decade by Meg Jay is about how important one's twenties are. For example, people's personalities change more int their twenties than at any time before or after in their lives. She describes how twenty-somethings in modern-day America often waste their time as they think that they're supposed to be on some sort of second adolescence or pre-adult holiday, when they're actually living through the most important part of their lives.Learning disorders. ADHD Does Not Exist is the best I've seen so far. It's mostly a catalogue of things people usually have when people think they have ADHD, such as poor eyesight, sleep disorders, or Asperger's syndrome. The book actually covers about 50+ things that are commonly misdiagnosed as ADHD.Psychology of motivation, habit, willpower, and curiosity. Drive by Daniel Pink and Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn are excellent books on intrinsic motivation. The former is a bit of a lighter read, the latter a more impressive, exhaustive, and deeply researched volume. For habit, try Habit by Charles Duhigg. For willpower, there's Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. I'm yet to find any good books on curiosity.Psychology - other. I don't know what to categorise these under, but they are such important publications that they have to be in here somewhere. One is Mindset by Carol Dweck, a total no-brainer in terms of what to read - if you haven't read it yet, then drop everything and read that first!! Another is "Picture yourself as a stereotypical male" by Michelle Goffreda, an article on stereotype threat available to read on the MIT Admission blog, a psychological effect that very few people have heard of that has a huge effect on performance.Memory. How We Learn by Benedict Carey covers many interesting memory-related topics. Memory is a topic covered quite extensively and quite well in most general educational psychology books, though those can sometimes be quite dry.Studies of expertise (i.e. how people become good at things). I wrote another answer relying heavily on the book Genius Explained by Michael Howe, which I strongly recommend. Other than that, take a look at Bounce by Matthew Syed, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.Criticisms of schooling in its current form. There are plenty of these. Try anything by John Holt, although How Children Fail is the best and most focussed on this issue in particular. You could also look at Wounded by School by Kirsten Olsen, which is about emotional damage caused by schools; or, for a completely different perspective, The Knowledge Deficit by E. D. Hirsch talks about schools are failing because of a lack of effective knowledge transmission, the basic goal of school. If you want to be taken on a really wild ride, John Taylor Gatto is somebody you might like to read. His book Weapons of Mass Instruction describes how he thinks the school system is a governmental conspiracy to keep people docile and stupid. He makes a similar point, though less coherently, in Dumbing Us Down.Criticisms of universities in their current form. There are plenty of these too! Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz is an interesting pick here. I found myself nodding along half the time, and looking at him funny as if he'd said something preposterous the other half. You might also want to look at Our Underachieving Colleges by Derek Bok.Manifestos or suggestions for how schools should be run. Three completely different points of view for you: The Schools our Children Deserve by Alfie Kohn; The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them by E. D. Hirsch; and World Class Learners by Yong Zhao. The first of these takes a classically "progressive" view; the second might be called "traditional"; and the third focusses on "entrepreneurial education".Manifestos or suggestions for how universities should be run. These are mostly packed together with criticisms of universities, so e.g. Excellent Sheep should be in this category too. However, Minds on Fire by Mark C. Carnes is a book with genuinely fresh ideas that totally blew me away.Homework. I've already written something on Quora about this issue. Basically, it appears that the effectiveness of homework is not very well supported by evidence. For more details, see The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn, The End of Homework by Etta Kralovec and John Buell, and The Case Against Homework by Sarah Bennett and Nancy Kalish. That said, I haven't found any books that support homework as an idea, and I am yet to comb through the academic papers themselves. If you are interested in alternative ways of managing homework (as a teacher), take a look at Mark Creasy's Unhomework.Discipline (or "behaviour management") in schools. Probably the best resource on this topic is the Wikibook Classroom Management Theorists and Theories, which gives you a look at all the major approaches. If you're in the mood for something unusual, try Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn.Philosophy of education. The most obvious person to point you to here is John Dewey, though "most obvious" doesn't mean "best" - I read a collection of his essays called On Education and it was a bit too, er, philosophical for me. Some people also like Paola Freire (The Pedagogy of the Oppressed) or Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society), both of whom I find to be unnecessarily verbose, and I'm never sure if their ideas stand up to reality. Well, that's philosophy for you... One author who I would like to read is Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist with what we would nowadays probably call "traditionalist" ideas about education - something you don't hear about much these days!History of education. Probably the best book I've seen in this field is Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon by Yong Zhao, which describes the history of China's education, in particular the examination system that they invented over 1,500 years ago. For more detail on the examination system itself, see China's Examination Hell by Ichisada Miyazaki.Economics of education. The Beautiful Tree by James Tooley is brain-exploding. Read it. Summary: private schools in poor countries around the world are doing more to help poor people than public schools. Then there's The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, which shows the correlation of inequality with all sorts of social ills. Strictly a book about sociology and economics, I think that it is quite revealing about some educational issues as well. Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities has something to say on this topic as well.Educational technology. A very exciting development here is the work of Sugata Mitra, with his famous "hole-in-the-wall" experiment, which you can find out more about in his TED talks or through his book Beyond the Hole in the Wall. Another book coming from a now-famous educational technology social entrepreneur is One World Schoolhouse by Salman Khan, the creator of Khan Academy. He basically talks about how he envisions that Khan Academy will shape education around the world in the near future.Pedagogy in general. Something that's become very popular recently is Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion, which shares the methods of the best teachers in the United States. There's now a new version, Teach Like a Champion 2.0. I was particularly inspired by what I read in Elizabeth Green's book Building a Better Teacher, which I highly recommend. There are also books that compare teaching practices in various countries, such as The Learning Gap by Stevenson and Stigler and West Meets East: Best Practices from Expert Teachers in the U.S. and China by Leslie Grant et al.Pedagogy of specific subjects. The school subject I've spent the most time reading about, as it's the closest to my heart, is mathematics. There are books which talk about how great and misunderstood maths is (e.g. Love and Math by Edward Frenkel); books that suggest better ways of teaching maths based on a better understanding of what it's really all about (e.g. Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free by Robert and Ellen Kaplan); and books that blend both topics into a searing rant (such as A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart). The latter was originally written as an essay, which you can read here, and only later expanded into book form. I highly, highly recommend reading it - I myself have read it about six or seven times because I find it so spirited and powerful.Types of school. For Montessori education, you can read the author herself (e.g. The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori), and/or get a partially biographical look at her works (like Maria Montessori by Marion O'Donnel). For Waldorf/Steiner schools, try An Introduction to Steiner Education by Francis Edmunds. You can get an introduction to Lancaster schools from somewhere in the middle of The Beautiful Tree by James Tooley, but if you're hardcore enough you can also get it from the horse's mouth in e.g. Mutual Tuition and Moral Discipline; Or, Manual of Instructions for Conducting Schools Through the Agency of the Scholars Themselves by Andrew Bell. (It's quite hard to get a copy of this last book, though, as it's over a hundred years old and out of print.) For more radical unschooling-like "schools", take a look at A. S. Neill's Summerhill School.Homeschooling and unschooling. John Holt is your man here. Teach your Own and Learning All the Time are both very good. Free to Learn by Peter Gray takes a look at how hunter-gatherers approach childrearing and education, and then compares this with modern "un-schools" like Sudbury Valley School and Summerhill School.Play and games. There is plenty to say here. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee more or less kicked off the discussion about the educational power of games, and How Computer Games Help Children Learn by David Williamson Shaffer is almost like a sequel to it, but with more practical, real-world examples. A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster is a book really written for game designers, but I learnt a lot about education and learning from it. Then Minds on Fire by Mark C. Carnes shows how gamelike classroom experiences are making their way into higher education in the US, to great effect (highly recommended). Finally, Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal explains a lot of the psychology of games (e.g. why they're fun, and why people are so motivated to play them), and makes a sort of manifesto for improving the real world based on the insights of game design and game psychology.Neurology. Some call "brain-based education" a fad, others say that it's the future. Say Keng Lee already mentioned Sousa's How the Brain Learns. For a bit of a quicker, lighter overview (without skimping on solid evidence), try Brain-Based Learning by Eric Jensen.Cognitive science. A book to get you up-to-date on the most important findings in cognitive science relating to education is Dan Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School? You'll probably also want to know a little about heuristics and biases, in which case Thinking, Fast and Slow is the go-to book. Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational may also be of interest.Language acquisition. How Children Learn Language by William O'Grady is a fantastic book on first language acquisition. A really great article on second language acquisition was published by the US Foreign Service Institute, but I read it a long time ago and now I'm having trouble finding it - if I do I will edit this answer and add it in.International comparisons of schools and educational systems. Giving you two from very different perspectives: Yong Zhao's World Class Learners and The Learning Gap by Harold Stevenson and James Stigler. The former is a Chinese author talking about how Chinese education is bad, and American education is better (though not ideal); the latter are American authors talking about how American education is bad and Chinese and Japanese education are much better. Another book that is very well-written and approachable is The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley (mentioned also by Allison Hiltz in her answer), which compares Poland, Finland, and South Korea with the United States."Myth-busters". There are a good few books that claim to be "busting myths" (and they're usually pretty good). Bad Education, edited by Phillip Adey and Justin Dillon, is a compendium of evidence-based essays by various authors about educational misconceptions. What if everything you knew about education was wrong? by David Didau and Seven Myths about Education by Daisy Christodoulou are books written by teachers that try to battle progressive ideological overstretch.As you can see, there is A LOT to read on this topic. I don't expect that most teachers or other people interested in education would realistically have the time and energy to read this many books. That's why I started my podcast, Education Bookcast. Apologies for shamelessly advertising myself, but I think that readers who are interested in books on education might also be interested in my podcast.

You’re asking a really broad question. All I can give you is what I experienced from a personal perspective, as a student in the U.S., particularly from someone who lived in CO throughout the ‘80s. I had what I consider to be an “okay” education. Not great, but not terrible.In summary, almost everything was analog. It was expected that some of the knowledge you would absorb was from the textbooks you were given, and some of it would come from lectures during class. Lectures included what the teacher wrote on a chalkboard, though if the teacher chose to write hardly anything on it, that was their option. They would just talk to us. Teachers had different styles they used for using the chalkboard. Some used it really well. Others used it hardly at all.Primary schoolMost subjects were taught in the same classroom in the primary grades. The exceptions were PE and music, and maybe an art class. Once I got into Jr. high and high school, we changed rooms to change classes.In the main classroom (in primary school) we’d learn English, history, geography (in the higher grades), arithmetic (practicing the algorithmic method), and we’d read about scientific subjects (no experiments), such as the formation of the Solar System, astronomy, and biological evolution.I started the 80s in 4th grade. Most of my memories about that are from a one-room schoolhouse I attended, in a small mountain town in CO. It was one of the last one-room schoolhouses in the country. Grades 3–6 were all in the same room, and were taught by the same teacher(s). Grades kindergarten through 2nd grade were in a separate room in the back of the same building. I’m not sure how they taught different subjects to us, because of course the different grades had different learning materials that we were assigned to work on, and we’d all be sitting in the same room at the same time.We moved out of the mountain town after about 6 months, and moved out of the mountains into a small city. I transferred to a different school, and finished 4th grade, and spent part of 5th grade there, before we moved again. I don’t remember much about my 4th grade experience.One thing in particular I remember about 5th grade is we were taught Greek and Latin roots to English words. We had some Earth science, learning about volcanoes, and faults, and the ecosystem (just reading/lecture, no lab).Every year, we were assigned some children’s novels to read. We would either write book reports on them, or take quizzes on their content. In other cases, we could choose short stories to read, and then write book reports on them.Everything we wrote was expected to be in cursive. In my earlier grades, in the late ‘70s, we had penmanship lessons.Beginning in 6th grade, we learned about writing short papers and fiction stories. We would write drafts, which would be graded, and then we’d write final drafts. This meant that we’d write the same paper completely two or three times (usually two). This continued when I got into 7th grade (Jr. high).In 6th grade, we had U.S. and Canadian geography, which consisted of memorizing the locations of states/provinces, and the names of their capitals.The most significant subject I remember from 6th grade was World History. This was epic in nature, though it was tedious. The epic nature of it was that we discussed how human communities began, in tribal groups, before civilization. We talked about how roles in such societies began, and what the historical consequences of those roles were (not always what was expected). We didn’t talk about a continuum from tribes to civilizations. Instead, we had sections on civilizations that were historically significant to the development of the West, and the other civilizations that allied or went to war with them. We talked about the reasons for the alliances, but not so much about the reasons for war. That frustrated me, because over and over again, I’d hear about some civilization that was not the main subject of study that went to war with the civilization being studied, but it was just talked about to mention that this happened. We never discussed who those people were, or why they went to war. It was perhaps taught to us to tell us about the effect that those wars had on the civilization that was the “main event” for the moment. Not to say that all wars were described in a one-sided fashion. Sometimes both sides of a conflict were described in more detail, though I had no understanding why some “outside” civilizations were given more coverage, and others were not.I mentioned that World History was tedious, because there was a lot of memorization of dates, and certain facts about the civilization and time period. The unfortunate consequence of this form of education was that I didn’t get a sense of relevance, for a long time, about why we were learning about this information. I don’t think it became apparent to me until years later. I can say that there were things about it that were still interesting, and some good memories of going through that experience of learning it stick with me to this day.In primary school, we had music classes. We’d leave the main classroom, and go to a special music room, and we’d have a different teacher. There, we would learn about singing, and playing the recorder. Part of the class was singing in choir, and once a year each grade would have a recital in front of our parents.We had recess, where we could play outside, and as I remember, it was more than once a day.In gym, we used to play dodgeball, baseball, what we called touch football (a touch from an opposing teammate, or pulling off a strap that was attached with velcro, when you had the ball, was considered a “tackle”, to avoid injuries), and basketball. That continued through Jr. high. In Jr. high, they added wrestling to the gym activities. Recess ended in Jr. high, though what I remember is sometimes we had free periods where we could do anything we wanted, so long as we either stayed on campus, or were within a few blocks of campus. It was the same policy in high school.Jr. highI entered Jr. high school in 7th grade. There were some required classes, because after all, there was a curriculum, but before the beginning of every year, students and parents went to school buildings around town to sign up for their course schedule. We had to come up with it ourselves. Prior to this, we’d get a catalog of courses, and what curriculum requirements we had. We’d decide which courses we wanted to take, taking requirements into account, maybe with certain teachers, or preferring certain times of day (whatever was our priority), and then we’d go around to tables at the school, and we’d try to get the classes at the times we wanted. If we didn’t succeed with some, we had to reconfigure our schedules so that everything we needed (and wanted) would fit into a school day.In Jr. high, there was continued training in arithmetic (larger problems), gradually moving into algebra. I got my first formal education in English literature. I had science courses in Earth science, chemistry, and physics (the latter two had lab experiments). Earth science was where I got my first exposure to scientific skepticism.Chemistry was a striking course to me, because it started off talking about atomic forces, the electrostatic force, for example, and talking about how much force the positive and negative forces inside of atoms exerted on each other, and the forces between atoms. I remember wondering if I was in the wrong class, physics instead of chemistry, because that’s really what it felt like. We had labs in the course, but the only one I remember was the final lab, which was about distillation, and using some simple detection methods (like sight and smell) as a method for finding out the components of a mixture of elements in a fluid.The way labs were conducted was we’d get a packet of instructions, and some chemical ingredients, and tools, like burners and test tubes, and we were supposed to follow the instructions, being careful not to contaminate what was put into the mixtures, and then carefully measure the results against some formula or table of numbers that was supposed represent the “correct” answer. There was always some difference between the two, and so we were expected to try to explain why the results weren’t the same, examining, basically, our own feebleness.I don’t remember Physics in detail. The thrust of the course was to learn Newtonian physics, things like velocity, acceleration, momentum, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, etc. We had labs in it, and it followed the same pedagogy as in chemistry.As I remember, Jr. high was the first time we had what was called “health class.” I think we had this once in Jr. high and once in high school. Mostly what I remember about it is it taught about nutrition, drugs, both legal and illegal (the clinical effects they had on the body), and sex ed. Sex ed. was something that was controversial, and so the school had to get parents’ permission to allow students to be part of it. My mom opted me out of it in Jr. high. An exercise I remember seeing sex ed. students do was to carry an egg around with them for a week or two. It was supposed to be a poor simulation of caring for a child, as a way of getting across the responsibility they would have if they were to be sexually active, and cause a pregnancy (and carry the child to term). If they damaged their egg, or lost it, they were docked for it. They were supposed to be seen carrying it around with them, because that was supposed to simulate them “caring” for it, but as I recall, some students just stowed it in their lockers, and left it there.Once we got into high school, the sex ed. became more detailed, talking about different kinds of sex, and more about contraceptives. There was some discussion about the emotions around romantic relationships. There was also a day where teen moms came in to talk about their experiences. They were all cautionary tales. A common thing they all said was that their social lives ended once they got pregnant. And they all said, “Don’t get married for the child. It never works out.”Most classes had periodic written tests. The only exceptions I can remember were in arts classes.Speaking of which, aside from Orchestra (which I get to later), I had a visual arts class that got into painting with tempera, sculpting with wire and plaster, and making clay pottery.The first time I’d seen a computer in a school that students could use was in Jr. high. When I first got there, they had one Apple II computer in the school library that students could sign up for time on. Two teachers in the school had Apple II’s in their offices, which were just for them. One of the math teachers started up a small computer club of about 4 students (including me). Once a week, we were allowed into his office to use his computer. He planned out activities on learning how to program it.A year later, the school set aside a room as a computer lab. I had my first computer courses, one being a programming course, and one that was half about programming, and half about learning to use what would now be called office applications (word processing, spreadsheets, and databases). This was icing on the cake for me, since I’d already taught myself programming, starting when I was 12, but I wondered whether I’d learn anything more advanced in these classes. I was particularly interested in the applications course, since I had no idea how to use a word processor.I entered an orchestra course for the first time, in 2nd violins. My mom bought me a student violin. That was rather like being thrown into the deep end of the pool. Most of the other students in orchestra were a lot better prepared to play classical instruments. I came in green, and I struggled with it for a while. We played pieces by classical composers. I don’t remember most of them, but I remember we played:“Finlandia” by Sibelius (arranged for strings)“Air” by J.S. Bach“Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major” by J.S. Bachand “Canon in D Major” by PachelbelIn English Literature, I remember we read “Call Of The Wild,” by Jack London, “Lord Of The Flies,” by William Golding, and we recited some passages from Shakespeare from memory (I got the famous monologue in “Hamlet,” “To be, or not to be. That is the question. …”). I’d heard this phrase for years, always connected with the idea of great drama, but I had no idea until I read this passage what it was connected to. I wondered what the monologue meant for many years. I knew it was about a choice, but it wasn’t until I got into my twenties that I realized Hamlet was asking whether it was worth living the rest of his life, or whether he should commit suicide.One of my all-time favorite courses was the one I had on government in Jr. high. The teacher came out of the private sector. He was just teaching temporarily, but he believed in giving his students experiences in what he was teaching. When he taught about current events, he tried to bring in people who participated in those events to talk to us about them. When we talked about how the federal government worked, he devoted a section of the course to simulating the forming of a constitution. We started fresh, and debated what should be in it. For the most part, we adopted the U.S. Constitution as our model. It became an exercise in justifying the Constitution’s existence, for the most part. Then we simulated Congress, where we acted as legislators. We could champion for our pet causes, and experience trying to convince others to vote with us, and watching how factions and voting blocs developed. When we covered how the court system worked, we acted out a mock trial of an accused criminal, with some of us on the jury, voting on the accused’s fate, after hearing witness testimony from students in the class who acted their parts. In each of these exercises, the passions were real enough that we took them fairly seriously, as if what we were doing really mattered. As each exercise progressed, our teacher would point out some dynamics to us, “Notice what’s going on here.” He didn’t correct what we were doing. He just made a point of having us notice some things.What was great about the way he did it is everybody was interested in what was being taught, even the students who were usually troublemakers. They genuinely cared about what they were learning, which was something I had never seen in them before.He taught us a bit about political discernment, how to read political literature with a critical eye, to notice how it would slant arguments to favor a certain position, and against its opposition. He taught us about how to watch political speeches, to watch for rhetorical devices and themes that were used to persuade. He taught us about what were good outlets for viewing politics, and which were not, but he taught this from an analytical level, getting us to notice that the half-hour nightly news can only spend a few minutes on each topic, whereas C-SPAN, or the News Hour on PBS spends more time on them, and how that’s better, because you can take in the full breadth of what’s discussed, not just sound bites. We didn’t get into how the news is presented in a biased fashion. He was just talking about how length of coverage of the genuine subjects tends to translate into a higher quality understanding of those subjects. Once I experienced it, I agreed.All of us enjoyed the course immensely. We learned the sad news at the end of the year that our teacher was leaving. He would not be returning to teach the following year. Somehow some of the students got it in their heads that he was being forced out by the school, because his teaching methods were unconventional. So, a bunch of them decided to hold a protest with signs outside during lunch period. The whole thing reminds me a lot of the movie “Dead Poets Society,” that came out several years later. I had never seen such a thing in my life, kids actually taking an interest in their own education, and getting really passionate about it. It wasn’t even directly affecting them, because we weren’t going to have him again, even if he stayed.Before this, I’d seen kids resent school. They wanted little to do with it. They only attended school because that’s what adults expected them to do. Here, they were taking some part of their education into their hands, like they were owning it. It was gratifying to see.I can’t remember in what class this started, but I remember starting to do research papers. They could be on any historical topic we wanted. The idea was that we were to get at least a few different sources on a subject, and then compile the knowledge we’d gathered into a paper, with endnote citations. This continued into high school. Mine were history papers. I would talk about a technology, or someone I thought was an important scholar.I don’t know how this developed, but another thing I remember about Jr. high is right before PE class, we’d have a quiet period. Kids could lie on the benches that ringed the gym and take a short nap, or we could sit and read a book, or we could just sit silently. Whatever we did, we were not allowed to talk. Most of us opted to bring a novel to read.As I remember, Jr. high had what was called Home Economics (or “Home Ec”) and “shop” class, and I think a class called something like “cooking chemistry.” I don’t know much about what these classes were about, since I didn’t take them. I remember in the “cooking chemistry” course, the final project was making a pizza from scratch. As I remember, “shop” class was a sort of crafts class, where kids learned how to work with wood, and perhaps other materials to make simple furniture. Home Ec, as I recall, taught about making a home budget, and did some meal preparation. What I heard years later was that Home Ec tended to have mostly girls in it, and “shop” tended to have mostly boys. It wasn’t restricted by genders, but boys and girls tended to self-segregate into those classes.High schoolI talked quite a bit about my high school experience (starting in ‘85) at Mark Miller's answer to What was it like to go to high school in the 1980s?. I’ll add some more re. the coursework here.I had U.S. history and World History in high school. U.S. history covered the Revolutionary War period. That’s what I remember most from it. I’m sure it covered more, but I don’t remember that experience. I think the course that covered history from the Civil War to the middle of the 20th century was called Social Studies.World History was my most demanding course. It got into much greater detail than my world history in 6th grade. It still had the same issue where there were many instances where “one civilization went to war with another,” but our textbook didn’t talk about who the other civilization’s were, usually, just the one that was the “main event” for a section of history. As in 6th grade, there were exceptions, but this was the rule, and it continued to be frustrating. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it was in 6th grade. Some other non-Western civilizations were studied in pretty good detail, such as China, and Mongolia. It seemed like 6th grade world history only studied ancient history, whereas high school world history got into the Middle Ages, in addition to ancient history. There was so much reading in this course, and so much detail to keep track of, re. politics and economics of different periods, that I found it difficult to keep up. As I remember, our teacher was a former college professor, and in retrospect, he ran the course as if it was a college-level course.I had English Literature in high school, as part of its English course. What I remember is that we read a little science fiction, but mostly it was a few English classics: “Beowulf,” “The Canterbury Tales” by Chaucer (as I remember, they were translated to fairly modern English), and the Shakespearean play “Macbeth.” Some of it covered English composition, where we learned formally how to write an essay form. Teachers started demanding that papers be typed, rather than written in cursive. Papers from a word processor were fine, and the only option we had in that case was to print our papers using a dot matrix printer. In most cases, students used typewriters. In my last year of high school (‘87/’88), the English department got its own lab of Apple Macintosh Pluses, so that English students could write papers with a word processor.An odd thing I remember about English is we had a section on how to write checks, as in from a checking account. I guess they considered it a necessary life skill, and they couldn’t figure out where else to put it.I had Mythology, where we learned about ancient Greek and Roman myths. What we were told was it was a complementary course to English literature and the arts, because throughout those disciplines there are references to these myths, and you can understand those works better if you know these stories.I had Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. The main thing I remember about biology was that we dissected worms and frogs (they were dead before we got to them). An extra challenging part of the frog dissection was dissecting the cranium to look at the brain. Many students failed on that part.Our biology teacher had a bunch of animals in wood and glass cases around the classroom: a couple adult boa constrictors, at least one kind of viper, a rattlesnake, a gila monster, and more I can’t remember. There were times when I needed to come in after school to work on biology labs (the dissections), and our biology teacher would be feeding the boa constrictors with live rats while we worked. That was not a pleasant sound, though brief. We talked a little bit about the animals he had in the classroom, but mostly it seemed they were just there for display, so we could look at them in the flesh.In Chemistry, we had some book instruction on atomic weights, positive and negative charges, the Periodic Table, organic chemistry, and we did some labs. The labs operated the same way they did in Jr. high. I remember the final lab was creating aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). We did not ingest it to see if it worked. If we got a white powder, that was good enough.My memory of physics was that it was largely an applied math, and history course, with a little lab work thrown in, but my memory could be incorrect. One of the thought-questions I was asked, to illustrate what was actually happening with the air around us, was to figure out how much force something like 30,000 air molecules would exert on my head if all of them hit the same area, measured in square centimeters, at the same time, traveling at some fast speed (realistic to the speed they actually travel at, say, 1,000 m/s). Taking their mass into account, I calculated it, and was amazed. I said, “That would literally blow my head off!” My teacher said that the reason we weren’t hurt by air molecules, even when the wind is blowing, is that they bounce about randomly, so they don’t all hit us at once. That creates the air pressure our bodies experience.As in Jr. high, Physics was largely about Newtonian mechanics. One of the labs I remember was predicting where a ball would land, if it was launched laterally. We gave it a little acceleration by running it down a small ramp, which then let it roll along a bit of a flat countertop, where it then rolled off, and landed on the floor. We timed it from the time it landed on the countertop to when it went off the countertop. We got the velocity from that, and put that into a formula that incorporated the acceleration due to gravity (9.8 [math]m/s^2[/math]). We got the height of the countertop from the floor, and from that, we computed the distance where we predicted the ball would land. We got a Dixie cup to put on that spot, which was about the size of the ball. Then we rolled the ball again off the ramp, and the next thing we knew, the Dixie cup flipped around. Our teacher told us the ball went right in the cup. To me, that was the coolest thing, because in the past, I would’ve thought the only way I could have gotten the ball in the cup was by trial and error. The idea that I could get the ball in it on the first try was amazing.The math courses I had were Geometry, Algebra II, Algebra III (I would classify it as pre-calculus), and Trigonometry. It was an uncertain time for using calculators in class. Some math teachers didn’t believe in them, thinking they took students away from thinking about the math, and didn’t allow them in their classrooms. Others were fine with them. You had to ask the teacher.In addition to periodic tests, we had midterms and finals. As in Jr. high, the only exceptions were in arts classes.I continued on with orchestra in high school. I don’t remember much of what we played. All I remember is that we played “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” by Mozart, and “Spring” and “Summer” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” We had a concert maestro and mistress who were students at my high school for most of my time there. They were head and shoulders in ability above the rest of us!“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (“A little night music”)“Spring” (first movement)“Summer”I think a big difference between education in the ‘80s and what’s happened in schools since the ’90s is that there was a code of conduct for teachers, and within that conduct, anything the teacher said went. You were expected to sit attentively in class, and only talk with other students if you were in a group activity. If the teacher instructed you to do something, you were expected to do it. If you did something where the teacher considered you misbehaving, you might get a couple warnings, and if you kept it up, you’d be told to stand outside until you could control yourself. If you continued to act up, you’d be sent to the principal’s office. That wasn’t a frequent thing, but if someone got sent to the principal’s office, the attitude from the other kids would get serious, “Ooooh… You’re in trouble…” Usually being singled out, and told to stand outside was enough that it would get rowdy kids to behave. I went through that once myself.Sometimes detention was used to discipline kids. I also went through that once. Detention wasn’t so bad. You just had to report to a classroom after school, and sit quietly and read for a half-hour, or an hour, with a teacher watching over all of you. It was like the school version of being sent to time out.Another big difference between then and now is we had an English immersion policy. Everyone was expected to speak English in class at all times, even when talking to other students. The exception being, of course, in foreign language courses, such as Spanish, German, and French. That rule wasn’t for most of us, because we only knew English well, anyway. It was for ESL students. ESL students had a class they could go to during the day that was, as the label says, for people who had English as a Second Language. So, it was an extra, remedial course in English, to work on their oral and written vocabulary, and spelling. If a student had trouble reading or speaking English in a regular course, the teacher was patient with them. If anyone laughed at them, the teacher would stamp that out immediately, to encourage them to keep learning and practicing the language.There were AP classes, but I don’t remember what was offered. I didn’t take any of them. Some AP courses were independent study, which had a teacher to provide guidance, and, I assume, to administer the AP test, but it was up to the student to make their way through the material on their own time.CollegeI graduated high school in 1988, and we had planned for me to go to college (I took a college track in high school). I took the ACT, and applied to an in-state college, and got in. Before entry, we took an entrance exam from the university, though perhaps it was only in math and science. This was to ensure that we had sufficient background to handle the freshman-level courses we would be taking. If there were deficiencies in math (which I had a few), they required entering students to take math modules to get caught up. A math module was a packet of instructional material that we were expected to study, and then at scheduled times each week, fill-in-the-bubble tests for the module would be given. We would get our scores a day or so later, posted in the math department. If we passed a unit in the module, we could go on to the next one, and if we passed the final units of our required modules, we could go on to freshman math courses.I had one full math module I needed to to take, and a couple units of another module to pass, before I could be accepted into calculus. As I remember, I got through those within a week or two. At least I’d convinced myself of that… They allowed me in the calculus class along with the other calculus students, but I had to pass all of my prereq. modules by a deadline to stay in the class. That became a problem, because I forgot about the final unit in the full module I needed to take. I passed all the others. It was real embarrassing to hear my name called as being among those who was being ejected from my calculus class, because I hadn’t met all of my requirements. I needed to ask for a “gimme” from the head of the math department, apologizing profusely for my oversight. I took the final unit immediately, passed it, and was allowed to stay in calculus. Minor snafu.I pursued a Bachelor’s degree in computer science at a liberal arts school, so I had a mix of history, language, philosophy, science, math, and CS courses.The most disappointing thing for me was the math courses were all about memorization. In Jr. high and high school, some understanding of math was emphasized. Not in college. The science courses were much the same way, though the lab sections were usually a nice exception.As a lot of freshmen typically experience, my freshman year felt like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, and floundering to keep my head above water.The rules for classes were pretty strict. You were expected to attend every class. Most teachers didn’t take attendance, but they would not repeat material you missed. If you missed a day of class, you had to ask classmates for their notes. If you missed a test, you had to have a very good excuse, such as an illness or injury that required seeing a doctor, or a death in your immediate family. You had to have documentation of this, a note from a doctor, or a death certificate. Otherwise, you got a zero. No exceptions.You could repeat a class if you weren’t satisfied with your performance the first time through (or flunked it), but the credits for the first class through the class you repeated would be averaged. The best course of action if you were doing badly in a class was to drop it by the midterm, and sign up for it again in another semester. That would give you an Incomplete, which didn’t count against you. Some classes (like the math modules) were pass/fail. With the modules, you could only fail if you scored badly on the tests. If you didn’t take the tests, you would get an Incomplete.Since I took CS, I had access to the school’s computers, and the internet (starting in my 2nd year). I and my fellow CS students also had our own computers. It was the same story with some electrical engineering students I knew. My memory is most students didn’t have computers, unless they wanted them for word processing, writing their papers. If they did, they had desktop systems. I don’t remember anybody having a portable. They just weren’t practical for school yet. They were large (really desktop units, still, but lighter and compact), expensive, and their battery life was not very good. As I remember, portables required you to have them plugged in to use them for anything longer than 10 minutes. The school had a lab filled with Apple Macintoshes in which you could use a word processor.There was less use of chalkboards in college. They were still used, but my memory is most of my teachers ended up using whiteboards and markers. One reason for that was some of my courses were videotaped for distance learning students, and chalk didn’t show up well on video. A practice I found really annoying was that some professors did everything on transparencies on overhead projectors. Rather than write anything while they were lecturing, they’d slap up a transparency with prepared text, say what they had to say about it, remove it, and put the next one up. It was like a primitive version of PowerPoint. I found it really hard to take notes in that class format, because they’d run through the written material in a lecture too quickly. Having to write material on a board slowed the teacher down enough that there was a chance I could keep up.A couple of the non-CS courses I remember taking in the ’80s was Comparative Religious Studies, which exposed us to a bunch of different religious beliefs from around the world, and got us to examine our own faith backgrounds.I had a freshman English Composition course that was a requirement for all majors. It gave us practice with writing different kinds of documents, with an emphasis on clearly explaining our ideas, and backing up our assertions with sourced material.All papers had to be typed, either using a typewriter, or a word processor.As in Jr. high and high school, some classes, like in math, had weekly quizzes. All classes had tests. Midterms and finals were worth a significant part of our grades. On rare occasions, classes would have us do take-home tests. Those were much harder than in-class tests, because it was assumed that we would look up material to answer the questions.Dorms were segregated into a “male side” and a “female side.” Each gender had its own sections in the same dorm buildings. If you were a freshman, you were required to live in the dorms for at least one year. It was considered as part of in loco parentis (Latin for “in place of a parent”). Each dorm had a common area, and gaming area (with a pool table, and maybe an arcade game, or pinball machine), along with a common cafeteria.As you can guess, all of our books were physical books. The cool thing was even though publishers had the same sort of thing where they’d sell new editions every so often that had hardly anything new in them (but would make your older edition worth less), you could sell your old books, and get some money back for them. Some old editions were made obsolete, though, and so all you could do was either trash them, or donate them for…something. I never knew who used them. Maybe they were donated to non-profit reading programs. I always went for the used books, if they qualified for the courses I was taking, because they cost significantly less than the new editions, and they were usually not in bad shape.In retrospect…I notice as I look back that most of my teachers, from Jr. high through college, graded on a curve. I don’t know whether this was a good idea or not. It seemed like it was teachers acting out a guilt trip on themselves. They thought lower performance over a whole class was their fault. To assuage that, they would give out higher grades using a curve formula, but it didn’t reflect how much we had learned. It just reflected how well we did relative to each other, not to the knowledge base we were supposed to learn.

AbstractArt is a subject that has no substitute, as the learning and production of art satisfies a uniquely human need to communicate and connect with other human beings. The marriage of art and society can (and should) be thought of as culture. This author intends to assert that the arts have a critical place in education and indeed human society itself, bringing ancillary benefits to bear on the subject without relying on them as the primary justification for the retention and even expansion of arts programs; education (which could in turn be thought of the dissemination of cultural knowledge) of art is its own merit and the arts themselves are the self-evident value and reward. Presented in this writing is an argument in defense of the presence of the arts in American K-12 and higher education curricula, advocacy for the expansion of such programs, and criticism of the contraction or removal of visual art programs from such curricula.Keywords: art, education, arts, culture, humanities, aesthetics, tolerance, divergent thinking, creativity, uniqueness, differences, tolerance, humanity, expressionTHE VALUE OF THE ARTS IN EDUCATIONTable of ContentsIntroductionLiterature ReviewWhy Our Schools Need the ArtsArt Education A Critical NecessityDoes Experience in the Arts Boost Academic Achievement?A History of Art EducationArt and CognitionArts and the Creation of the MindMethodologyFindings.ConclusionReferencesIntroductionOf what value is the education of art? This is a question that we can infer needs addressing, if the visual arts community and arts education community are any indication.“Contemporary society is interested in loftier, more elusive goals whose attainment is difficult to measure. Students must not only know the facts, but understand them and be able to think in imaginative, complex and critical ways. The world today requires people who can think on their own, who can raise telling questions and solve puzzling problems. The world outside school is riddled with unpredictable contingencies—there are no certainties. These conditions have implications for what and how we teach because that has something to do with the kind of minds children in the future will be able to create.” (Eisner, 1998).What are we teaching our children (explicitly and implicitly), why are we teaching it, and where are do the deficiencies lie? What roles can the arts play in this education? These questions will be explored in depth throughout the course of this thesis.Though politics are not central to the core concepts of this thesis, the No Child Left Behind Act nonetheless merits examination as it implicitly illustrates the urgent need to at last answer this question in a satisfying, resonant way that will take root in the nation’s collective consciousness and become part of Western humanity’s common sense: “Published in 2010, Sabol’s study, No Child Left Behind: A Study of Its Impact on Art Education, compiled data from more than 3,400 instructors, from preschool teachers to museum educators. Sabol found that No Child Left Behind’s policies influenced arts education in a variety of ways, although the negative effects outweighed many of the positive ones” (Herwees, 2014, p.1). This disconnect between leadership and the human learning needs of students is pervasive and persistent. We have not, in the year 2016, overcome the basic social attitudes that are retarding educators’ ability and desire to teach art: the fixation on “bottom-line” or “destination-oriented” (e.g. standards-based) education vs. focusing on individual learners or the actual journey of learning; and, insufficient value placed on the art product itself.The authors of a recent study, “Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It,” set out to study in what ways, and to what extent, exposure to the arts, culture, and aesthetics impacts the development of K-12 students. The methodology they used was to create a control group and a treatment group, a standard medical mode of operating, from a pool of nearly 11,000 students. Their findings on this exposure, which will be discussed in a later section of this thesis, were presented in Education Week with a high degree of confidence. This group of researchers feel they have successfully measured and quantifies this exposure’s effects on student empathy, critical thinking, and aesthetic sense (Greene, Jay P., Kisida, Brian, Bogulski, Cari A., Kraybill Anne, Hitt, Collin, Bowen, Daniel H., 2014).Somewhere in there, countless shop-talking hall conversations with colleagues and artists, fits. Feelings of uncertainty at the future and frustration for having to constantly justify one’s program pervades these conversations. The tone these conversations is so often worrisome.Indeed this topic has been addressed and continues to be rehashed, and likely will continue, until the arts community is satisfied that the arts are valued. Teachers of art, music, dance, theater, and literature remain under constant pressure to justify themselves and their programs, and theirs are often the first to be cut when an institution’s budget is tight. “[Educators] are not asked to transfer something that has sufficient value in itself. And therein lies the rub. The arts are not valued in their own right in our schools.” (Hoffman-Davis, 2008, 46).If arts education does indeed transfer to other disciplines, such as math, reading, and science, than this author will pursue and vigorously assert the benefits of such transference. Economic data relating directly to the arts, cultural activities, art sales, and other related marketplace activities will be examined. The positive effects the arts has on the mind is another area of interest, both from a psychological and neurological perspective.While such ancillary benefits of art education have value, and while this author has no intention of devaluing such benefits, the main focus shall be on the primary functions of art within society: to permanently record cultural narrative (even if the artwork is not necessarily documentary), and to express human thoughts, experiences, and emotion in a way that nothing else can. “...A well developed sense of art, which I take to be the overarching aim of art education [...] works of art at their best repay the attention paid to them.” (Levi & Smith, 1991, xvi).Generally speaking, most of the works of these authors, and most of the tone of conversations with colleagues, were in agreement that art’s own value should be enough to justify the existence of the arts, but there is always a sincere frustration that goes along with the idea of having to constantly justify the existence of the subject one teaches—which is not asked of teachers of any other discipline.This feeling I believe has led to an overeagerness for an art educator to “sell” his or her program based on “transfer,” the notion that the skills provided by artistic endeavors will transfer to other skills, improving performance in math, reading, and science. The overeagerness for art educators to trumpet ancillary benefits of art may be beneficial in the short term, but is detrimental in the long run—especially if the efficacy is oversold or overstated. Instead, educators finding themselves forced to justify their program’s existence might consider reframing their arguments on the core attributes of art and what it can provide students that other subjects cannot.A number of working titles for this work illuminate my evolution of thought on this topic: starting with “The Place of Art In American Education,” then “The Importance of Art In American Education.” I finally settled on “The Value of the Arts in Education”, as all research, reading, and talking with colleagues resonated with one unified tone: there is a critical conflict of social values in play in our world today. Values such as aesthetics, creativity, uniqueness, differences, tolerance, humanity, human expression are of key concern to this thesis. In the final arguments, this author intends to assert that art education is of value, because it fulfills a simple human need to express one’s self.MethodologyIn this thesis, I will use research by numerous sources including Albert William Levi, Ralph A. Smith, the NEA, Arthur Efland, Jessica Hoffman Davis, Elliot Eisner, and others. Weaving together established ideas published by authoritative authors on their subjects, I intend to present an apologist’s assertion of the importance of the arts in education. The foundation of my assertions will be provided by the intrinsic, self-evident value of art, the value of the activity of making art and meaning, not its fringe benefits.My primary mode of research was the procurement of information through Scholarly Books, Journals, and Web Sites. Some secondary sources, including articles and blogs, were used to illustrate key concepts in a clear and illuminating manner. Through these methods, I procured the necessary information that will validate my assertions.Literature ReviewIn “Why Our Schools Need the Arts,” Jessica Hoffman-Davis investigates the links between standardized testing and the decline of the arts in the classroom. She endeavors to arm educators and other advocates with an arsenal of language that will equip them to evangelize. She asserts that the arts in education can be the remedy to curricular and administrative malaise, as well as how the arts been proven to improve completion rates. She is also clearly appealing to society at large to place a higher value on art itself. This contrasts with the works of Efland and Levi/Smith to a degree. Its primary goal is advocacy, or, is an apologist viewpoint, and includes a call to action, whereas the others’ are not necessarily apologist viewpoints and do not include calls to action.She further asks the question why mistake-making needs to be so taboo in early education, pointing out that learning and growing occurs not only from success, but from failure as well. It is detrimental to young people’s self-image when educators fixate on outcome-based testing, as it devalues the process of questioning, divergent thinking, and making meaning.In “Art Education A Critical Necessity” (Levi, Smith), the authors present a discipline-based approach to education, asserting that the Arts should be taught as a humanity. The authors make the appeal that the value of high art in 18th century Europe was lost (or at least diminished) in the westward expansion of America. This book does not endeavor to prove that art promotes general welfare, rather, “...to indicate the way in which I think this promotion can best be accomplished and in so doing indirectly show why the issue is of the clearest relevance to a program of discipline-based art education in our schools.” (Levi, Smith, 1991, 9-10)Levi & Smith’s thesis revolves around the premise that we need fully functional communication to convey the human experience to one another, convey emotion and nuance, and these authors assert that these uniquely humanistic traits are examined, cultivated, and nurtured, exclusively within the realms of the arts. The arts can effectively promote these distinctly human values, whereas all other subjects fail to serve such humanistic values, or at least fail to serve them as effectively. (Levi, Smith, 1991, 1-244)Elliot Eisner wrote an article in 1998 called “Does Experience in the Arts Boost Academic Achievement?” in which he lamented regarding the misguided attempts to prove transference between arts and “more important” subjects such as reading, mathematics, and science. He starts with an excellent quote, “Have they ever thought about asking how reading and math courses contribute to higher performance in the arts?” (Eisner, 1998).Eisner’s article was researched by surveying 10 years worth of academic journals as well as research compendia. The link traced by neuroscience connecting the arts with higher academic achievement outside the arts (transfer) is actually examined, leading to the conclusion that the arts have demonstrable, measurable pay-offs in academic learning. But again Eisner views the primary goal as the restoration of arts-related objectives in education to preeminence.“A History of Art Education,” by Arthur Efland, offers a rich historical backdrop that will improve our understanding of today’s educational landscape, putting current events into a wider context. “The ways the visual arts are taught today were conditioned by the beliefs and values regarding art held by those who advocated its teaching in the past. [...] To find out why the arts are vulnerable, even today, is one of the functions of this book.” (Efland, 1990, 1-2). This book examines the historical development of visual art education in relation to that of general education. It reaches all the way back to the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, the printing press and the explosion of literacy, and into the 20th century.To better understand the plight of the Arts in education, one must take a look at its historical context. The original Puritan settlers enacted the first state-run, tax-sponsored education system in the new world colonies. Its sole purpose was expressly to enable all children to learn to read so they could learn the principles of the Christian Bible and the laws and regulations issued by the state. The law provided for levying of fines for those who failed to comply with this act.“Arguments for education in the visual arts as one part of a sound liberal education for all citizens of a democratic republic appeared several decades prior to the Civil War. In the years following that war, proponents of economic and industrial growth argued that art education should not be reserved for the wealthy, leisured class, but was a practical necessity in preparing working-class children for their roles as workers and preparing master workmen to supervise others.” (Stankiewicz, 1996, 50).There appear to have been times when the ability to communicate visually is valued, and times when that ability is not. The reasons have varied throughout history. The high value placed on self-expression and humanism in general is a relatively new kid on the block; its first mainstream appearance as romanticism was in the first half of the nineteenth century. Long before that, throughout Greek and Roman history, artists and art have had a high social value, but only inasmuch as they reflect and glorify religious ideals or accurately reproduce natural, observable reality. The need for the latter has certainly diminished in the 21st century with the digital camera becoming pervasive and ubiquitous throughout American culture: the ability to create a realistic snapshot of a moment of one’s life is no longer reserved for the wealthy or the elite, and this no longer needs to be the prime function of the artist.Returning to the dawn of the industrial revolution, there is an apparent blind faith in progress and laissez-faire economics. This led to a revival of a more industrial flavor of romanticism, for a time, as the belief that “all men are created equal” and that each has the right to the “pursuit of happiness,” and the individual has the capacity to attain said happiness.This climate led to a certain philosophy of educational reform, a kind of reshaping of American education. Here lies the birthplace of the American practice that education would be made available and free to all U.S. Citizens (indeed mandatory).It is also the beginning of the time that we see modern ideas about art ownership emerge. The buying, selling, auctioning, and trading of paintings and sculptures was not unheard of before the industrial revolution, but the practice was not common among the working class. By the 1900’s, art ownership was fairly common among the average person, and of course still is to this day.It is from this foundation we become a nation and begin our westward expansion, which took place throughout the 1800s. Millions of square miles of land was acquired by various means and methods ranging from the Louisiana Purchase to the War with Mexico in the 1840s, and anything else necessary. Native Americans and Mexicans were displaced by the millions. Land rushes and gold rushes dominated the conscience of many of these settlers.“What could be the attitude toward art and culture of the rancher, the cowboy, and the prospector for gold? In this second period of our national history, there is nothing of the cultivated aristocracy or urbanity of the first. [...] The aesthetic tragedy of America’s westward expansion consists in the infinite distance that separates the social climate of the dust-blown western town and its rowdy saloon culture from the admirable elegance and taste of eighteenth century Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.” (Levi, Smith, 1991, 6-7).During this time, the philosophy of “Manifest Destiny” conveniently took root in the collective conscious of the nation. As time went on, reintroduction of art into school curricula was attempted, but at this point art, and the education of art, was seen as having less value than it once did. The desire to acquire wealth and property seem to have overtaken the desire to nurture a sensitive and wise culture around this era.“With the rise of universal literacy in the nineteenth century, the first tentative efforts to introduce music into public education began in spite of objections from segments of the public. The introduction of these arts was often described as educational reform, as a privilege bestowed by the school on the young as a part of a free public education; but having a privileged status exacts its social costs. It removed the arts from the realm of necessities.” (Efland, 1990, 2, 42-44).For reasons that were primarily economical at the time, the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the art institutions, and art departments within universities, with which we are familiar today. Factory work could be done untrained, but industrial designers who were able to communicate visually quickly became crucial to the economic success of a 19th century industrial society.These industrial art programs were not widely expanded into modern art programs until after World War 2, when the G.I. Bill brought flocks of new students to study, among other things, art.Progressing through the 1960s, the “general belief [arose] that education is a force that can transform society. [...] Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s this stream surfaced as an arts-in-education movement that saw art as a tool to enliven the school climate by its vitality.” (Efland, 1990, 261) However, at the same time, as the nation progressed into what we would now call modern life, and America enjoys economic success,“the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embraced a conservative ideology that channeled the school curriculum [of all subjects of education] in directions favored by the businessman. [...] The discipline-oriented movement had a conservative impact in narrowing the styles of educational reform and applying that style to subjects for which it may have been inappropriate.” (Efland, 1990, 261).That brings us to today, though it merits mention that some genuinely new ideas in education, primarily through innovative use of modern technology, such as flipped classrooms, MOOCs, and student-driven Wikis of course content, are arising in the 21st century. The longterm fruit of these genuinely new ideas remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the century-and-a-half old driving beliefs that education has been conditioned to ascribe to still hold. Educators remain servants to their masters, the almighty free market.“Art and Cognition,” another Efland book, explores the effect of learning the arts on the brain. The brain can be thought of as being like a muscle, which, like all others, must be exercised to function at peak performance. The arts stimulate parts of the brain that no other discipline can. The arts exclusively stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain—in other words math, science, english, history, and sports are all incapable of working this region of the brain. This gives us a clear illustration of how a brain is made deficient through deprivation of creative thought. As such, without it, our education can be called deficient. Efland in this book (and many of his writings) builds the case that arts are not a frivolous expenditure of classroom time, they are a necessary human function. His thought process leads into the degree of academic rigor required to make meaningful sense of the arts, and how disciplined study of the arts facilitate one’s ability to interconnect existing information with one’s own ideas and, at last, construct social and personal meaning.I think we can see one of Efland’s primary departures from the older view of the mind as a “memory bank” or “repository” of information and symbols. Efland believes, as does this author, that the human mind is capable of synthesizing existing elements into their own meaning—and that activity is a necessity in a complete education. “I seek to nullify a long-standing tradition in art education of discussing artistic activity apart from cognition as a whole and favor the idea that such activities are an integral part of such discourse. [...] The time has come to undo the damage caused by the biases of the past, and to look at more recent understandings of the mind and the nature of human intelligence.” (Efland, 2002, 6, 14).Typically, most Western people think in terms of right brain vs. left brain, as though they were in competition. Contrast that with most Eastern philosophies, which believe that both aspects are critical in human development. Rather than thinking of “Right Brained” people vs. “Left Brained” people, we could think of brains becoming minds, and exercise both sides. Ask a gym teacher what happens if you do only curls with no extensions. It didn’t take culture long to accept the research of kinesthesiologists, pointing us to a more holistic physical education. Why should arts education be so different when the research is clear? The answer to that questions is, simply, “values.”Dovetailing from Art and Cognition, Elliot Eisner’s “Arts and the Creation of the Mind” discusses similar ideas. Where Efland was more inclined toward empirical and neurological data, Eisner approaches the problem from a more humanistic standpoint. What kind of educational environment are we cultivating that favors standardized outcomes at the expense of personal development? What will this do to our children’s sense of self-worth and ability to communicate and relate to other human beings?It appears that we run up against the edge of what science understands when chasing down the topic of neuroscience as it relates to the creative process. Most scientific research on creativity halted rather suddenly by about the 1980’s—this is due to the fact that researchers had reached the limits of what science could discover about it. (Cleese, 1991)The actual act of processing visual aesthetics is something that has attained recent attention and scientists are now attempting to measure the scope and intensity of its effects. Neuroaesthetics is the study of the neuroscience of the aesthetic experience, and is a branch of science that came into being in 2002. Relying heavily on visual centers in the brain, signals are distributed to various specialized areas of the brain. The prefrontal cortex has been linked to the conscious aesthetic experience, the actual promotion of stimuli into what the person considers a “signal.” It was found that subjects in a heightened emotional state had an amplified response in this region, too. (Kawabata, Zeki, 2004). The study of the brain’s ability to recognize patterns is referred to as “Signal Detection Theory,” which quantifies and measures the brain’s ability to discern between information-bearing patterns and noise. (Macmillan, 2002).The exact centers processing these stimuli were mapped by Semir Zeki and Hideaki Kawabata. It is believed that the part of the brain that judges whether something is beautiful or not has been isolated. (Kawabata, Zeki, 2004).I would be remiss not to state that many within the arts community (who are aware) are quick to damn the study of neuroscience as reductionist. Its inclusion is merely intended to provide a possible representation of what neurological effects the arts have on the brain. It should not be construed as a final authority, especially given the newness of this branch of science. As more is discovered about the effects of aesthetics on the brain, this information can be used as part of the ammunition for those endless tired arguments educators always seem to be engaged in: the arts exclusively are stimulating these regions of the brain.Culturally we seem to be in agreement that schools are floundering if not failing. We know we are behind most of the developed world in science and math skills. Standardizing school outcomes does have a certain appeal. Homogeneity seems like an attractive option. But the cost will be great, argues Eisner.Arts programs have historically been contracted or cut in similar cultural climates, and indeed many arts programs that continue to survive can still feel the effects of this climate. Sometimes, school administrators are paying mere lip service to the arts. How do we change students’ brains into minds in this climate? What kinds of life experiences and potential for meaning making are we providing students at this level? Literacy itself is so obsessively tied to the reading of words, but the actual making of meaning, a key component of a healthy mind, is often neglected or even entirely absent from students’ learning experiences. This brings into question established thoughts about “hard” subjects like math, science... what application could art have to those subjects? (Eisner, 2003).This idea is of critical importance. Looking at the widespread contraction of art programs that have pervaded the last decade-plus illustrates just how much of society has failed to usurp antiquated and largely debunked ideas of how the human mind functions. As a result, students skills involving such activities as thinking divergently, seeing from multiple perspectives, and the self-actualization and confidence that comes with expressing one’s self, are crippled. To this day, it’s common sense that everyone needs to learn how to read and write, but not draw or make mistakes (or even use their imagination in any way whatsoever, attempting to solve problems with more than one answer or no answer at all).“In my view, complex or ill-structured knowledge is not only found in fields like medicine and art criticism but is also applicable to fields like law, literary criticism, history, and philosophy, to name a few. In short, ill-structuredness is likely to be evident in most one-of-a-kind learning situations, that is, whenever judgements must be made in the absence of rules or generalizations that apply to numerous cases, and this includes most situations in life. The capacity for making effective judgements, given the ill-structured character of life itself, is a major intellectual accomplishment.” (Efland, 2002, 84).Through learning to draw, or work in any medium, students necessarily learn to cope with their mistakes. Through any subject that involves mistake-making as a regular part of the process, the act of learning becomes a whole, contiguous experience, rather than a mere goal or product at the end of that experience, which reduces or eliminates altogether the importance of the steps taken to get there.Clearly, a change is coming in this mindset, the mindset that the human brain is a passive receiver of information.“There’s hope that the Common Core State Standards might provide an opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration that could strengthen all sectors of the educational system. Language arts instructors should be able to coordinate with their visual arts colleagues to find opportunities for visual arts teaching during literary instruction. Math teachers could also improve the instruction of visual learners through implementation of visual arts strategies. That change could fuel a creativity renaissance in our schools.” (Herwees, 2014)Rote memorization is no longer seen as a necessity by society at large (it’s been said that Google is our “collective memory”). What, then, should we do with our brains, if not stuff them with facts and information? What direction culture will go, what form this change will take, remains to be seen. We will probably eventually remove rote memorization from curricula and replace it with... what, exactly?“A preoccupation with outcome-based testing threatens a student’s crucial conception of his or her own life as a work in progress. [...] A celebration of agreed-upon standards may negatively impact a student’s incentive to explore personal educational values and goals.” (Hoffman-Davis, 2008, 84).FindingsThe consensus overall seems to be that society at large does not place the value on the arts and education of the arts that educators and artists feel is appropriate or merited. The reasons for this are complex and nuanced, involving many different interested parties and groups of people from many different backgrounds, interests, and spheres of influence. Students, teachers, artists, curators, public servants, and buyers and sellers of art products all play a role in this climate.The development of the human mind in the American student can justifiably be called deficient, as overemphasis is placed on left-brain activities and standards-based testing. This irrational fixation is cultivating deficient minds and moreover deficient human beings in today’s society by devaluing other brain functions. The king of the hill at the moment is the businessman, and his philosophy currently prevails. It appears to be by no measurable merit beyond mere conditioning and complacency.America tends to be a bottom line oriented society, which values amassing wealth above amassing knowledge or culture. In the opinion of Ken Busby, “‘The arts are under attack!’ We hear this cry on a consistent basis as state and local governments wrestle with priorities to balance budgets. The arts always seem to be the first on the chopping block.” (Busby, 2014). There are those who believe that a skill that doesn’t translate “School-to-Work” has no place in education—but then again, art skills do.“The issue of transfer is at the crux of my concern in regard to school-to-work transition. Virtually every report, article, or conference presentation asserts that knowledge, skills, and dispositions developed through arts education will and do transfer to the workplace. [...] While all of this research has critics, art educators should consider its implications for the role of the arts in school-to-work transition. After all, business has long placed a greater premium on accountability than has education. If art education does not deliver as promised, we may find ourselves friendless again.” (Stankiewicz, 1996, 53).To further that end, recent NEA findings show that “Teenagers and young adults of low socioeconomic status (SES) who have a history of in-depth arts involvement show better academic outcomes than do low-SES youth who have less arts involvement. They earn better grades and demonstrate higher rates of college enrollment and attainment.” (Catterall, James S., Dumais, Susan A., Hampden-Thompson, Gillian, 2012, 12).There as an economy to the arts, which naturally flows through and with the economy surrounding it. This is not often measured or examined closely—it is most often lumped in with Entertainment or Tourism, but isolating the economy of the fine arts can be illuminating and provide another rhetorical argument to justify art programs. Busby goes on to state that,“The arts ARE all about the economy. Cultural tourism is a $400 billion industry in this country. Visitors travel to Detroit to visit the DIA—they stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, visit [museums] and other cultural attractions, purchase gifts, etc. All of this economic activity brings money into the Detroit economy—it creates jobs, both directly arts related and ancillary. Sales tax, and hotel and motel taxes are generated. These funds support the infrastructure of the city. Without this activity, there is no city.” (Busby, 2014).And indeed these same things could be said of the Heidelberg Project, Detroit Film Theater, Detroit’s vibrant music scene, and the city’s numerous festivals. In FY2010, financial and labor data from 346 creative and cultural organizations throughout Michigan was tracked. It was found that, through the arts exclusively, half a billion dollars were generated in salaries, services, and materials, 22,335 jobs were created including 3,068 full time jobs and over 1,000 interns. In FY2011, over $2 billion tourism dollars were generated directly from the arts community, accounting for 19% of Michigan’s overall tourist revenue. (Vartanian, 2013).In 2010 nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generated $135bn, adding 4+ million jobs. What’s more, these industries yielded $22bn worth of yearly revenue to the same federal, state, and local governments that are so often slashing their relatively paltry $4bn in government arts subsidies and provisions (Americans for the Arts, 2011).Financial justifications for the contraction or removal of arts education may be a fact of life, but examining the wider picture reveals a major collective delusion. The arts are clearly not a waste of money, they are in fact an investment with a measureable return. Nonetheless, leaders continue to cling to this superstition that the arts aren’t worth the investment—a belief that is informed solely by conditioning which came about only because of the circumstances of the day. There is nothing special, sacred, or precious about these delusions, and there is no rational reason to continue to cling to them. The facts actually suggest the opposite, perhaps spending more money on the arts at the expense of other budgetary concerns might not be such a bad idea!At the beginning, I mentioned a Study carried out by a group of researchers entitled, “Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It.” The problem they were facing was that few or none had at least attempted to measure, in an empirical way, the exact nature and scope of impact the arts have on a student’s development. Using a sample population of almost 11,000 students, with a “control” and a “treatment” group, they achieved consistent results in their experiments and felt confident to make the following assertions.Exposure to the arts improve students’ cultural and artistic knowledge. Clearly, this can be called a self-evident benefit of an arts education.Exposure to the arts improve students’ empathy skills. Credit goes to the arts ability to present many cultural experiences from a plurality of viewpoints. This increases student awareness of and ability to engage with “otherness,” from other cultures, other thought processes, and other ideas.Exposure to the arts improves students’ critical thinking skills. Stemming from its unique ability to free all students from the constraints of right and wrong answers gives peers an opportunity to start seeing problems from multiple angles, rather than just going from “point A” (the “problem”) to point B (the “answer”). No other subject has a spectrum of possibility with the width and breadth of the arts. Most of the time (especially in early education), problems from non-arts subjects have only one correct answer.Exposure to the arts improves students’ attention to detail. Learning in the arts is unique in that once you attain “correctness” (whatever that may be) in your piece or performance, you’re not necessarily done. Many times, refinement or practice is needed to actually perfect the work.“These improved outcomes may not boost scores on math and reading tests, but most parents, communities, and educators care about them. We don't just want our students to learn vocationally useful skills in math and reading. We also want them to be knowledgeable and frequent patrons of the arts. We want them to be tolerant and empathetic human beings. And we want them to be astute observers of their surroundings. Some of these qualities may help students earn a living, but their importance has more to do with students' development into cultured and humane people.” (Greene, Jay P., Kisida, Brian, Bogulski, Cari A., Kraybill Anne, Hitt, Collin, Bowen, Daniel H., 2014).The researches of this study conceded that more rigorous research is necessary, but it cannot happen until apologists can agree that there is a need for it. The causal effects must be isolated and irrefutably quantified. The skeptics of older model studies that just compare any arts student with any non-arts student will no longer be able to legitimately question whether the arts attract or generate excellent students.[One form of] drawing has been redefined in recent years as an empirical activity which involves seeing, interpreting, and discovering appropriate marks to reproduce an observable phenomenon. Again, activities that cannot be reproduced in any other class. Efland offers us an historic perspective on this artistic idiom: “Plato’s view of imitation is an extreme version of a realist theory of art, yet after a period of relative neglect during the Middle Ages, a variant of it was revived in the Italian Renaissance. The renewed emphasis on the imitative capacities of art was an effect of the period’s intense interest in the study of nature and in scientific investigation.” (Efland, 1990, 131)In no way however should any of that be construed as a detraction from the finer “art for art’s sake” type of approach some artists take. While many can accept the thought of working to accurately reproduce one’s visual environment on paper or a three dimensional medium as having at least some value, somehow making that leap to accept the notion that the activity of making art bears its own merit, regardless of the final product or outcome, becomes difficult or impossible. “Studio learning is very much a discovery process, where students will begin work and revise it, edit, change it, based on things they’ve learned.” (Herwees, 2014).The learning of art should be something that is pursued and desired by educators, by students, by parents, and by administrators, not because the skills transfer to other areas, but because self-expression and nonlinear thinking are necessary components of a complete education. That education’s goal is to cultivate great and brilliant minds of all types, and to help each individual student attain their maximum potential. Assembly line style education, the approach we ascribe to now, all to often overlooks or at least downplays these aspects of education, merely because they are not valued factory floor worker characteristics.Also, consider the appeal of Jessica Hoffman-Davis:“The notion of transfer looms heavy as a desperate and perhaps viable justification for arts learning. Don’t worry if the children look like they’re learning how to make and appreciate art; those abilities will transfer to the more important skills of reading words and counting numbers or thinking critically in any academic situation they may ever encounter. Why must we justify arts learning in terms of other disciplines?” (Hoffman-Davis, 2008, 46)But what might happen if we reframed these questions in contexts such as, “What does art have to say about social issues that affect K-12 children, such as bullying, drugs, or even simple everyday life stuff?” Whether or not the arts make students better at other subjects is the wrong question to pursue or put any more energy into.One cannot ask the question of why art education matters without asking why art itself is of any more value than so much flim flam. How do we valuate the art product, individually and collectively? There are interests at play in this market that have a deeply vested interest in the valuation of art.“The arts are not autonomous realms of activity, uninfluenced by the social context. They are supported by patronage, controlled by censorship, and disseminated by education; and the character of these systems reveals a great deal about the society of which they are a part.” (Efland, 1990, 4)Consider that most high-end ($10k+) “primary” art sales—art sales between the artist of a fresh, original work, and a buyer—occur through galleries. The lucky few artists that get market representation here are subject to the galleries. Galleries set tastes and manipulate prices in ways that would be illegal in any other billion+ dollar industry. High end galleries want to keep track of a work after its sale, too—coming back on the market outside of their control is not preferable. Sending “sock puppets” to auctions to drive up prices and other marketplace treachery is not unheard of. (Schrager, 2013).Clearly, there is a power structure at play, indeed a power struggle at play. The value of art goes beyond money. Art is a critical form of human communication which represents human thought in ways no other medium is capable of, enabling humanity to communicate more nuanced subtleties in a work—granting human beings the power to construct meaning about what reality is and is not, individually and collectively. The purpose of a work of art is not just to convey mere information. The arts have repeatedly and consistently demonstrated a unique ability to address social issues from an emotional, human point of view and in some cases to spur society to action. They “satisfy a vital human hunger, a hunger for personal meaning and identity [...] Art education is a critical necessity, then, because art is.” (Smith, xvii).The economics matter but the real value of art goes so far beyond that—reaching all the way to future civilizations after our own is gone.As time marches on, it becomes, and is becoming, progressively more difficult to affect change as generation after generation of art budget-slashing leaders comes and goes through America’s governmental halls and learning institutions with Arts programs implicitly or explicitly in their crosshairs. Leaders, who are, increasingly, themselves products of a deficient arts education, feel pressure to cut already overstretched budgets. They take the easy way out and stick to the status quo. Underlying this behavior is the notion that the arts are for entertainment purposes only, and represent an ultimately frivolous expenditure of time and resources. Today, the power structure favors business.“As cognitive development theories became more inclusive, they should be able to account for the development of graphic ability as well, suggesting that graphic development is explained by cognitive development or, better yet, that it is evidence of such development! Unfortunately, this correlation was neither studied nor voiced by researchers.” (Efland, 2001, 48-51)Necessarily, this established leadership pattern officially sidelines aesthetic and visual aspects of human communication, devalues the art product as pretentious, demotes the process of the activity to leisure or even waste, and relegates the education of art to optional. Aesthetic values, and the humanistic values that go along with the arts, have failed to take root in America, at least on the same level that they have in most other developed nations.The situation we are in came to be through a history of conditioning, cultural strife, and economics. Education again becomes very much a double-edged sword in the wrong hands.“The greatest intruder on the messy, intertwined artist-like understandings of very young children is that glistening bright doorway to their future as grown-ups: school. It is school that introduces the precise language of numbers and words—although educational media now does a very good job of that even before children go off to school. [...] The child hears clearly that [their artwork] on its own says nothing, even as it may represent something other than or beyond words. Spoken words are needed to clarify the image.” (Hoffman-Davis, 2008, 63-64).This attitude persists into college, and equipping students with verbal language is of primary concern in the Design and Communication class I teach. All students are encouraged to talk about their art (and in the end give mandatory formal presentations), because they’ll need these communication skills to work.I submit for further consideration the phenomenon of the A- or better student who can’t succeed in an art class. These students are a minority, but merit representation as they illustrate a spectacularly important concept that will further strengthen my core axiom: she or he is too innurred in the convergent mode of linear thinking and has had no exposure to anything else. The muscle has atrophied. Her or his brain has rarely if ever been used in this way; the student has never been asked to solve a problem that doesn’t have just one solution or has no solution at all, e.g. a problem that requires divergent thinking.ConclusionThis deficiency in cognitive ability should be regarded as a form of illiteracy, and is a prime failure of the modern education system. Efland points out that the goals of the education system are deeply influenced by a “[...] serious lack of awareness of the substantive roles the arts can play in overall cognitive development.” That the tendency is to think of them as, “modes of entertainment, frivolous expenditures, and elective options—‘Nice’ culture experiences to have if time and resources permit” (Efland, 2002, 6-7), but certainly not core attributes of an educated, healthy, active mind.“Arts encounters with mistake making, with facing and building on what’s wrong, have tremendous implications for learning in other disciplines. But they are uniquely accessed in the safety of arts classrooms where risk-taking and failure fruitfully abound. Safe from the hard edges of right and wrong answers, safe from agendas that exclude multiple perspectives, safe from assessments that are full of themselves, arts classrooms provide opportunities for students to explore the messy, uncertain realities that preoccupy their lived lives within and beyond the world of school.” (Hoffman-Davis, 2008, 82-83).The process of making meaning can be so crucial to young people’s development and self-esteem, and this process is safely explored in depth through the study of the arts. When we are able to create a work of art in and share it with others, we find a whole new mode of thinking and of communication.The final takeaway I believe is that art can be justifiably called undervalued in a student’s education, leading to the reality that American education as it stands now is demonstrably deficient, lacking in aesthetic values, judgement skills in unique or unpredictable situations, imagination, the ability to think critically, attention to detail, and the ability to synthesize meaning.“What is at stake here is a critical conflict of values. What counts in an acquisitive society like our own are “prosperity” and “security”; what counts much less are moral and spiritual values, education for wisdom, and, of course, aesthetic perception and artistic taste. It is my contention that the entire problem of the subordination of aesthetic claims and the sorry plight of arts education in the United States today [...] is obvious from the flavor of our current political debate. In fact our politicians are almost hysterically obsessed with the issues of ‘economic growth’ and ‘national defense.’ But who among them is concerned with encouraging of our ‘cultural growth’ and the measures that are needed for the production of a cultivated society worth defending?” (Levi, Smith, 1991, 7-8)As the great juggernaut of culture pushes forward into the 21st Century, the Arts retreat, leaving people with weak or useless right hemispheres. With underdeveloped brains, our cognitive and communication abilities are compromised. With compromised cognitive and communication abilities comes underdeveloped culture and insensitive or incorrect public policy. America has appears to have been conditioned to devalue what is unmeasurable (or unmeasurable by any known method). This can be regarded as an educational failure.“This shift to preestablished instructional objectives changed the view of knowledge. Knowledge became something already known by the teacher rather than something that can be the result of the student's own intellectual activity. Educational success was defined by how much of the teacher’s knowledge was passed on to the student, not by the insights, inventions, or discoveries of the student. [...] since the intellectual freedom of the learner is not trusted to achieve socially valued results.” (Efland, 1990, 262).Sound fiscal justifications exist to retain or expand arts programs in America’s educational institutions. The arts, when isolated, represent a $500bn dollar industry in Michigan alone, and a $135bn nationwide. According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Arts, design, and media occupations are fields that will grow by 7% from 2012 to 2022.Moreover, we must think of the legacy we are leaving behind, not only for future generations but future civilizations. The people of the future will not only want to know what we did but who we were. You can’t convey things like character, integrity, emotions, humanity, and aesthetics with mere information.Without the power to make meaning, we are expressionless, mere passive receivers of information. Without the power to apply critical thought to the unique situations of life, we are mere automatons. The primary justification for the expansion of the Arts programs, then, need only be that we are not fully functional human beings without the Arts.ReferencesLevi, Albert William and Smith, Ralph A. (1991). Art Education: A Critical NecessityCatterall, James S., Dumais, Susan A., Hampden-Thompson, Gillian (2012). The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies, National Endowment for the ArtsEfland, A. (1990). A History of Art Education : Intellectual and Social Currents in Teaching the Visual Arts. New York: Teachers College Press, i-xi, 1-272.Efland, A. (2002). Art and Cognition: Integrating the Visual Arts in the Curriculum, 1-201.Davis, Jessica Hoffman. (2008). Why Our Schools Need the Arts, 1-150.Berndt, T. J. (2002). Friendship quality and social development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 7-10.Greene, Jay P., Kisida, Brian, Bogulski, Cari A., Kraybill Anne, Hitt, Collin, Bowen, Daniel H. (2014), Arts Education Matters: We Know, We Measured It, Education Week December 3, 2014, Education Week American Education News Site of RecordBusby, Ken. (2014). Is There a Future for Arts Education?, Retreived from Is there a future for arts education?Herwees, Tasby (2014). After Draconian Cuts to Arts Education, Is a Creativity Renaissance Coming to America’s Classrooms?, TakePartStankiewicz, Mary Ann. (1996). Questioning the School-to-Work Rhetoric, Studies in Art Education, Vol. 38, No. 1, (50-54)Eisner, E. W. (2004). What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education? International Journal of Education & the Arts, 5(4)Eisner, E. W. (2003). The Arts and the Creation of the Mind. Language Arts, Vol. 80 No. 5, 340-344Eisner, E. W. (2013). 10 Lessons the Arts Teach. Retreived from National Art Education AssociationSchrager, Allison. (2013). High-end art is one of the most manipulated markets in the world. Retreieved from High-end art is one of the most manipulated markets in the worldCleese, John. (1991). Lecture on Creativity. Video Arts. Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qby0ed4aVpo, Transcript retreived from John Cleese – Lecture On CreativityKawabata, Hideaki and Semir Zeki. (2004). Neural Correlates of Beauty. Journal of Neurophysiology, 91 (1), 1699-1705Macmillan, Neil A. (2002). Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology, Third Edition. Volume 4: Methodology in Experimental Psychology, 43-90Vartanian, Hrag. (2013). Michigan Is Finding That the Arts Is a Growth Industry, Even During the Recession, retreived from Michigan Is Finding That the Arts Is a Growth Industry, Even During the RecessionBureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Department of Labo. (2014–2015) Occupational Outlook Handbook, accessed 2015-11-22, retreieved from U.S. Bureau of Labor StatisticsThe U.S. Bureau of labor Statistics. (2010). Employment situation summary. Retrieved from Employment Situation SummaryAmericans for the Arts. (2011). Arts & Economic Prosperity IV National Statistical Report, The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences.Completed in Partial Fulfillment of the Masters of Art Degree in Art Education Frostic School of Art, Western Michigan UniversityThesis Committee:William Charland, Ph. D., ChairChristina Chin, Ph.D.AcknowledgementsFirst and foremost I would like to thank my wife Jean, for giving me my first daughter while I was pursuing my Master’s at Western. She has always been my biggest cheerleader. Her support has given me the confidence to succeed at completing my education and final thesis.Thank you to my parents and step-parents for encouraging me as well as providing my daughter with plenty of attention. The support of my family has been instrumental to my thesis, my education, and indeed my whole life.Thank you to my committee of reviewers, William Charland and Christina Chin, for their mentorship and guidance. In terms of hours and effort, I would be remiss not to specifically thank professor William Charland, both for his patience, his willingness, and his keen, critical eye. Indeed, professor Charland has provided close guidance throughout my education here at Western Michigan University.This thesis is built upon the works of many prominent and authoritative authors who I feel compelled to thank for the groundwork they’ve laid in regards to this topic. They include, Dr. Jessica Hoffman Davis, Arthur D. Efland, Albert William Levi, Ralph A. Smith, and Elliot Eisner.Thank you for reading this, and my hope is you find it educational and enlightening. This thesis does not include a call to action, but if you learn anything that compels you to act, then do so.