3 Reasons Why Our Communities Shouldn’t Allow COVID to Destroy Arts Education in Schools

After decades of work by educators, arts organizations, advocates, policymakers, and families, universal access to arts instruction in public schools finally started to become a reality in 2020. With a recent (and highly appropriate) push for social emotional learning (SEL) to be weaved into the fabric of educating our young citizens, along with the fundamental belief in the importance of the arts as part of a well-rounded education for all, it felt as if arts instruction began to solidly find its place in our school curricula. The right to arts instruction for all even became embedded in legislation in some states, so it seemed that a well-balanced, whole child approach to education was finally on the horizon in our country.

Then COVID hit.

It’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since most schools in America retreated to the digital realm. While a handful of districts have adopted hybrid modalities, some have gone back-and-forth with in-person instruction, and many others decided to remain completely virtual the entire time. Regardless of the approach, it’s clear that one short-term patchwork educational solution after another has added up to what will probably be a year-and-a-half (or more) of unintended and possibly disastrous systemic change in many ways. Meanwhile, arts instruction looks to be bearing the full brunt of the assault.

All across our nation, school leaders have — unintentionally or otherwise — marginalized arts instruction or, in some awful cases, discontinued it completely during COVID. Clearly, this past year will have ramifications for many students: “learning loss”, mental health issues, an amplified digital divide, and an expansion of the achievement gap amongst racial and socio-economic lines, to name just a few. But the systemic changes that we are seeing in access to an education robust in the arts and creative subjects should scare us all on behalf of our children and our society as a whole.

While we all deal with a plethora of issues surrounding education during COVID, here are 3 things communities should pay close attention to in order to maintain a rich arts program in schools — both in the present and once we return to “normal”:

A pandemic does not give administrators license to re-define a “thorough and efficient education”. It’s true, unfortunately, that many musicians have high aerosol rates and can potentially transmit COVID easier, and that arts classes pose challenges with class sizes. We also know that online learning doesn’t come close to in-person with hands-on creative instruction. But this doesn’t mean arts subjects can’t or shouldn’t occur at all. It is imperative that all students have access to an equitable delivery of arts education that includes all art forms and that supports their educational, social, and emotional well-being — especially during a pandemic. The unique challenges with delivery of arts instruction during COVID requires creative thinking, budgeting, scheduling, and support. This is not the time for school leaders and boards of education to decide what is “essential” for our children and what is not — the states have already concluded that all of these subjects are essential for good reasons.

Districts can’t claim to support social emotional learning while marginalizing arts instruction at the same time. The irony is thick here — the arts have played a crucial role in these tumultuous times for all students, but especially for the traditionally underrepresented, those with special needs, and students from low-income families. Yet districts have abandoned or made these programs optional in order to decrease screen time (in the spirit of social-emotional health) or simply due to a lack of desire to think outside the box on behalf of our children. Arts education supports the social and emotional well-being of students in ways that no other subject can — the togetherness that the arts cultivates is exactly what our children need right now, whether through distance learning or moments of in-person instruction. Our school leaders must be reminded of this — the arts are a large part of the answer to our educational problems.

The long-term effects of a lack of arts instruction could be disastrous for a generation of students. Think about the millions of students who were supposed to begin musical instrument instruction in the earliest grades this year. Now think about our school programs which are built on a progressive sequence of instruction; choir, band, orchestra, visual art, dance, and other courses. What are the ramifications of this loss of instruction for the next many years if administrators don’t value a creative approach to fixing this issue immediately? What will happen to the support and the budget for programs that see an enormous dip in enrollment? How many children will be forever changed by not having that creative spark lit? These are questions worth asking, because schools killing creativity during COVID should be unacceptable to us all.

Clarence B. Jones, former advisor and speech writer to Martin Luther King Jr. recently gave an interview where he noted that his musical training as a young child allowed him to weave speeches for Dr. King with a unique rhythm and cadence. Without his musical education, he said, it would not have been possible for him to create such flowing prose.

This is what is at stake during this moment in our history.

Not only are schools deeply affecting access to opportunity for all children to experience the arts in their unfettered form and allow them to potentially follow a creative career, we are actually sending an awful message to our society about our values and, in the process, denying pathways to dreams and accomplishments — that are an outgrowth of a balanced education steeped in the arts — for a generation of our youngest citizens. Arts education is not the problem right now during COVID — it is a huge part of the solution. Our students need social emotional learning and arts education now more than ever, and our families should demand as much from our school leaders.

3 Reasons Schools are Afraid of Expanding Arts Instruction

It’s been close to two decades since the Standards Movement swept our country; a major reform created and driven by non-educators.  In its wake, we have been left with a pervasive “achievement gap”, major teacher attrition, anxious and bored students, and — perhaps worst of all — a narrow, standardized, one-size-fits-all approach to educating all of our beautiful children that barely includes the arts and creative subjects.

Most people I speak with feel in their gut that our children need a different type of educational experience than they are currently receiving.  And most of the time, it is clear that the standards movement is at odds with this vision.  My neighbors and friends realize that our children have different abilities, personalities, and potential passions yet to be realized — yet there are several subjects that align to these interests which are not part of daily offerings in school.  However, when push comes to shove, these same people are scared to move away from the same quantifiable and standardized practices that they proport to loath so much.

Why is this?  What makes schools — and their leadership, especially — so afraid to embrace a rich and balanced curriculum that includes robust arts instruction after so many years of failure trying things “the other way”?

Here are three reasons I believe schools are afraid of expanding arts instruction:

  1.  We default to easy when it comes time to assess “learning”.  Metrics-driven leadership is now, and has been, the default for a long time — and it’s going to be hard to get everyone to think a little out of that box. Boards of Education — and therefore Superintendents, Principals, and down the line — set numerical goals in an attempt to solve every problem that ails our schools.  The sad result? We score teachers’ and students’ performance in school solely on “technical merit”. We default to the easy bar graphs to determine a “linear learning progression”, while completely ignoring the more nuanced and “messy” elements of what teaching and learning is actually about; elements like emotional engagement, passion, creativity, and purpose that are critical drivers of long-term success and satisfaction.  This is where the arts get short shrift in school scheduling, budgetary priorities, and even a place at the table when we are talking about school report cards and other metrics of success.
  2. Leaders don’t trust the managers, teachers, or even themselves, to make creative decisions.  Let’s face it: we live in an educational ecosystem where even our youngest pre-schoolers are not allowed to develop at their own pace; they are on a quantifiable metric track for their entire school lives.  Numbers feel safer and test scores for a narrow set of subjects are far more easier to measure.  This is high stakes stuff, after all, so where is the reward in the system for school leadership to rely heavily on arts and creative subjects to balance out our children’s lives?  School leaders feel that passion and emotional engagement is hard to measure — I argue it is not.  We know beautiful art and emotional engagement when we see it, and we know that process matters along the way.  Superintendents can tell when a principal cares about their school; students can tell when their teacher is passionate about a subject (and vice versa); the paid professionals in school districts need to be trusted to have some judgment in making creative decisions.
  3.  Developing a rich, broad set of curricular offerings is hard. Creativity, artistic expression, collaboration, and love of knowledge and learning are things we should teach and support with all our might.  It takes time, money, and courage.  It’s hard, and that’s exactly why we should do it instead of avoiding it.

There is no doubt that there are profound political pressures bearing down on education.  While the policies themselves must be challenged and changed, school leaders still have the latitude to embrace and create that change from below — not wait for non-educator legislators to do it from above.  The more we embrace creativity and the arts from within, the more likely the entire system is to change as a result.  We can no longer take the risk of devoting so much time to metrics that we lose sight of what we are really here to do: to create beautiful, life-changing moments when students light the spark of creativity and love of learning.  This can only be done if we shed our fear of expanding arts instruction in our school day and work together to ensure our children grow up not as plots on a line graph, but as balanced and fulfilled individuals.

 

 

 

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