Art is Life
By Peter W. Cookson, Jr.

Sometimes it's said that the ideal person would have the eyes of an artist, the ears of a musician, the brain of a scientist and the heart of a poet; the well-balanced person is capable of all of these different ways of knowing. A central part of education is to enable students to develop these diverse aspects of their personalities. In an era of "standards," the development of an aesthetic sensibility is too often treated as if it were of secondary importance. From the beginning of time, human beings used art as a way of symbolically capturing that which is most important to them. The artistic impulse arises from our innate creativity and desire to shape a world of meaning that includes words, but also goes beyond words. When we look at a beautiful painting we use words to describe it, but generally we fall far short of capturing the mystery that moves us deeply.

A colorful classroom
In visiting classrooms around the country, I notice that many teachers, including new teachers, use children's art as a way of creating a living learning environment for the students. There's a world of difference between a classroom that is filled with colors and images and one that is stark and visually unappealing. Sometimes we get so focused on our lesson plans that we forget our classrooms either enhance students' sense of well-being or detract from it.

Tap into students' creativity
When I was a new teacher, I made all kinds of artistic materials available to my students. We had a good supply of paper of different colors, markers, pens, scissors, glue and water-based paint. In my first year of teaching, I was working with a group of fifth graders on a social studies project having to do with Eskimos. I allowed my students to paint the windows of the classroom and some of the walls with an Eskimo motif. A more experienced teacher in the building looked in the classroom and rushed into the principal's office to report me. Apparently, my classroom was no longer standard issue. Fortunately, the principal came to see my classroom and rather than being critical found it a lot of fun. We were allowed to keep our transformed space.

So, you can see that I'm of the mind that the more creativity we allow in school the better the learning environment. Here are a few suggestions about how you might use art as a way of tapping into students' creativity:

• If I were a new teacher today, I'd make sure that I had a collection of CDs of two sorts: classical music and international music. I'd have music as background during quiet reading times, I'd play international music as a way of introducing social studies and I'd certainly allow students to make music of their own. There's no quicker way to bring calmness and cohesion to a classroom than to play calm and reassuring music.
• I'd incorporate artistic opportunities into my lesson plans and make sure that every student had his or her work exhibited. If you create an open environment you'll see how many children have hidden talents when it comes to drawing and making things with their hands.
• Another forum of artistic expression is drama. Students love to act things out. Rather than simply read from a book, allow them to stand, move and to read and speak as though they were in a play. Any time you have the opportunity for students to take the active, positive voice in literature or even in mathematics or science, you'll have activated a strong current of cognition.
• I fear that with the increasing emphasis on test-taking, our image of real learning is filling out bubble sheets and completing work sheets. What about the questions the children have? Aren't they important, too? What about using students' native intelligence and energy to help them think in a more complex manner? In some ways I think we've taken a huge step backwards to a time when learning emphasized rote memory. This is a shame because it's creativity and imaginative problem-solving that students will need in the future.
• If your school has reduced the time spent on physical education and recess, I suggest that you as a group of teachers work with the school administration so that the entire community can understand that young people love to express themselves through sports, dance and play. The development of physical grace, the appreciation of team play and the exhilaration that young people feel from physical achievement should never be underemphasized. Aside from the aesthetic values, physical activity is also related to health values. In a world where so many of us spend so much time looking at our computer screens, the importance of physical activity is now even more apparent.

A learning revolution
I believe that art is our greatest vehicle for the expression of life and energy. If we turned our schools into creative laboratories where every child saw an expression of his or her inner self, we would then create a learning revolution, the results of which would be stronger learning communities and, ultimately, a stronger society.

Peter W. Cookson, Jr. is the founder of TCinnovations and the Dean of the Graduate School of Education of Lewis & Clark College. He is also founder of the Center for Educational Outreach & Innovation at Teachers College at Columbia University.

March, 2007, Vol.37, No.6