What is the relationship between art and education?

Education is one of the major pillars of modern civilisation. It is our most significant channel of propagating past inventions and ensuring future generations don’t repeat past mistakes. Frankly, it has played a significant role in making our civilisation bloom in the past few millennia.

However, many people still put more weight into specific disciplines they think are more growth-centred than others. For instance, it isn’t unheard of to see parents, teachers, and students emphasise maths and science since they think it will directly impact society. They forget unsung heroes like art that support the creativity and innovation that fuels the world.

Art opens up the mind to creativity
Art taps directly into the human experience. It lets learners and professionals alike express themselves eloquently and in a colourful, attention-grabbing fashion. It heightens your brain’s ability to imagine and conceptualise. It is crucial when coming up with new inventions, no matter the field. A creative mind isn’t afraid to play around with known facts or rules to develop an invention that helps society.

Great minds like Da Vinci tapped into their artistic prowess to come up with amazing inventions. Some of them were pure imagination, but a great deal were workable projects that manipulated existing laws of physics and nature to come up with practical solutions society would love.

It makes students more engaged
Most art lessons put learners in a very involved position, forcing them to try on concepts and interpret them in their own way. In other cases, they have to work on team projects that improve their interpersonal skills by letting them figure out collaboration on their own. This newfound knowledge shines through everything and can be seen in how their custom writing reports will look after the experience.

The fact that all art projects culminate in something visible means that students can gauge themselves throughout the way and establish how well they are doing even if they are not examined. It creates a different medium of learning that is a bit more analogous and rewards based. Someone can easily connect with their inner self and explore a section of them they would otherwise neglect if they stuck to other disciplines.

Art can make learning other disciplines easier
While art might seem like a psychomotor skill, studies have shown that learners can easily create a correlation between art and other disciplines, making it easier to grasp new concepts. For instance, a student who loves wind instruments will have an easier time understanding fluid dynamics in a physics lecture if they can relate to how their flute works.

Rhythm and even dance patterns, on the other hand, are geometrical, sequence, and series manipulations. The same applies to other arts like woodwork and clay work. Anything that involves measuring and conversions will have the student doing mathematics in a different setting. Since most take art with a passion, it will be like taking on remedial math classes without really noticing.

It is a good way to groom leaders
Sports and performing arts are great places to groom leaders. They put students in teams where one or more influential people have to take charge of the entire team to yield results. Performing arts are an excellent way to grow students into leaders by giving them a chance to practice in a stress-free environment.

The capable will step up and start motivating the team to reach higher heights. Sooner, they will be focused on solving problems that could limit their team from delivering the best results. With time, they will be exercising leadership skills like:
• Crucial decision-making
• Team motivation
• Problem-solving
• Inter-person mediation

Why is art no longer as common in the classroom as before?
Despite the apparent benefits of art to our students, the modern education system seems to have relegated it to extra-curricular standards. While there is a renaissance in progress, many students aren’t exploring their artistic side as much as they should.

The most significant cause of this shift is the emphasis on test-driven education programmes. Many institutions worldwide want you to excel in specific tests before moving on to the next level in your education. Art and sports play a secondary role unless you are going to a particular school of art.

Shifting this school of thought and giving some value to how artistic our students can be should even out the table. It will provide students with the time they need to explore their creative side without worrying about missing out on preparing for tests with more perceived value than art.