Introduction
In most elementary schools children have the opportunity to be in sync with art: finger painting, sculpting, or making postcards out of spaghetti. In most middle schools it is required for each student to enroll in an art-related elective such as theatre arts, crafts, visual arts, band, or the orchestra. In high school, however, students are not required to enroll in an art-related elective. Most students who were previously a part of an art-related elective join extracurricular activities or get enrolled in elective classes. Only a few students get the opportunity to fully access the school art-related facilities starting freshmen year. Each subject starting freshmen year should have some aspect of the art integrated into it so that students are familiarized or kept in touch with the wonders of art.
Body
In a public school system, freshmen year is when different students from different middle schools pour. It is the first time a student will be in class with people he or she has not known since childhood. If you ask any teenager or any adult for that matter high school is a time where everyone tries to fit in and find their place on the social ladder.
Cliques are the biggest disintegration phenomenon of high school. Cliques are either formed according to high school social status such as jocks, cheerleaders, and geeks, or they are based on the ethnicity of the group members such as Anglo- Saxon, African American, Asian, etc.
Social integration is a must and the arts “are languages that all people speak that cut across racial, cultural, social, educational, and economic barriers and enhance cultural appreciation and awareness.” (Dickinson) Henceforth, an annual freshman icebreaking ceremony should take place. Most people hate to get out of their comfort zones and interact with new people and that is a barrier that needs to be broken. Each English class should have an introductory assignment to work together as a class and write a play based on their life. Each student should be encouraged to share a story that has affected them and morph that into a play for the entire school to see.
Once the play is written each class should rehearse and work together as a team to and partake in costume design, the musical aspect, the actors on stage, and other backstage requirements. Each student must be required to participate in one way or the other and all the freshmen classes should then showcase their plays in the school auditorium to the entire high school as a fundraiser. Working together with classmates no matter who they are should start freshmen year and this activity will help everyone act as a team and not an elite or nonelite member of a specific clique. This would also help raise enough money to sponsor any class trips or art experiments.
“The arts help all students succeed in school and life by providing students with the opportunity to develop habits of mind such as critical and creative thinking, perseverance and dedication to the task.” (Why arts are important) Each class should incorporate some aspect of the arts to help the student learn better. Memorizing and reading out of a book can sometimes prove to be morose. In math, class formulas shouldn’t just be memorized they should be sung. I still remember my algebra teacher and how she made us remember the quadratic formula. I can still recite it like a favorite Rumi poem today: x is equal to negative b, plus and minus the square root, b squared minus 4 a-c, all over 2 a.
Also, the math shouldn’t be just a numbers game; the history of math should be taught by teaching students about DaVinci’s Vitruvian man and the phenomenon of PHI and not just PI. English class shouldn’t focus on painting pictures with words and teaching students the importance of words and language. Students’ level of creative writing should be enhanced by partaking in different activities such as writing a story based on a painting. As a social study, activity students should paint the parking lot with a map of the world or visit an anthropology museum using the funds collected by the icebreaker play. Teachers should be constantly looking for different forms of art or enhance the learning experience.
Conclusion
Imagine life without music. Without pictures. Without movies. Without dance. Imagine a life without the arts. There was never a DaVinci, a Beethoven, a Rembrandt, a Rumi, an Omar Khayam, or a Celine Dion. No one knew how to salsa, how to tango, or how to tap dance. No one ever heard of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, or Othello because there was no Shakespeare. That is what life would be without the arts – insipid and morbid. At each stage of life, it is every human being’s right to have the arts as a means to learning, self-expression, and creative expansion and it should start as early as school.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Dee. “Why Are the Arts Important?.” New Horizons for Learning. 1993. New Horizons for Learning. Web.
“Why Arts are Important.” Arts in Education. Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island. 2008. Web.