Your child’s art class involves a lot more than just the Crayola marker scribble-scrabble that will end up hanging on your refrigerator.
“Good arts education is not about the product,” says Jamie Kasper, director of the Arts Education Partnership and a former music teacher. “It is about the process of learning.”
Policymakers, school administrators and parents alike may overlook the significance of arts education, but these programs can be a crucial component of your child’s school life. Whether they’re practicing lines for a school play or cutting up magazine scraps for a collage, children can use art to tap into their creative side and hone skills that might not be the focus of other content areas, including communication, fine motor skills and emotional intelligence.
“Sometimes folks who are not involved in the arts focus on the product without realizing that that is not the most important part of what we do,” Kasper says.
