Reason number three is this.  For more than a decade, studies have shown that having arts in the curriculum improves overall learning and academics. 

In research conducted by Dr. Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University, for Carnegie Foundation for The Advancement of Teaching between 1987 and 1998.  Young people working in the arts for at least three hours on three days of each week throughout one full school year, demonstrated the following:

4 times more likely to have been recognized for academic achievement

4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair

3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance

4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem

Need More Reasons?

As art educators, we know that art can stand on its own as a powerful stimulant of creativity.   Elliot Eisner, Art Education Researcher and Scholar says the Arts teach 10 important lessons to students. 

1.  The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail. 

2.  The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.  

3.  The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.  

4.  The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.  Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.  

5.  The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.  

6.  The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.  

7.  The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some

means through which images become real.

8.  The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose

what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to and the

words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such

experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10.  The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is

important  (NAEA brochure, 2014, www.arteducators.org)

In a rapidly changing society it is apparent that flexible, creative individuals will be highly valued, if not imperative. Did you know that…..The arts provide jobs. 1.25 million Americans currently work in the visual arts.  Jobs for artists and designers are predicted to increase by 43% by 2016. Research also indicates that high school art programs engage students and keep in school those at-risk of dropping out. (NAEA, 2014) So we think the message is clear. 

Art is important and vital in today’s world.

Why not get a head start on these skills by taking an Art class here at Blaine High School.  We have many fun, rewarding, and creative classes to choose from.  Click the links above to see what each of the art classes is about, as well as a few samples of the projects taught in the course.