Why Our High Schools Need the Arts

Abstract

The arts have always had a profound impact on our lives, whether it be to express an idea, emotion, or as a way to communicate. Our worldly artistic experiences and knowledge date as far back as the prehistoric period. So why is it that music, dance, drama, and visual arts, all cultural subjects so steeped in human history are, for the most part, always on the cutting block in the educational curriculum? Why is artistic importance in the curriculum always viewed as mundane and devalued by so many policy makers? Following her best selling book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts, author Jessica Hoffmann Davis brings us Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. In arguing for an increase in arts courses within the educational curriculum as a way to engage all students, and to alleviate the drop out rates of disenfranchised youth, Hoffmann Davis offers vivid accounts from her observations and interviews with students, teachers, and administrators in public and private American high schools, “to provide the reader . . . with the necessary information and perspective with which to argue for a prominent place for the arts in the reformation of high school curriculum” (p. 5). Why Our High Schools Need the Arts presents an excellent argument of why the arts are so integral to students’ lives and intellectual, social, and moral development. As policy makers cut back the arts in schools, at stake are children and their future endeavors. Hoffmann Davis notes startling statistics coming from the United States: “On average, one-fourth of the students who are currently enrolled in our high schools will not graduate. When it comes to minority students (African American, Latino, or Native American), that percentage reaches nearly one-half” (p. 3). Furthermore, some schools have been labeled as “dropout factories,” where the attrition rates are more than 60% (p. 3). Moreover, an analysis of 200 New York City schools over a 2-year period demonstrated that graduation rates were in the top third in those schools providing the most access to and the greatest resources for arts education, while those in the bottom third provided the least. The report concludes with the recommendation that an increase in students’ access to arts instruction and experience would improve school life and elevate graduation rates nationwide. (pp. 4-5) Outlining a more detailed account of the historical foundation of the arts in curriculum, Hoffmann Davis provides many strong accounts that the arts may in fact increase the test scores of non-arts standardized tests. The arts aid in child development, meaning specifically that when the arts are omitted from the high school curriculum, students are deprived “of learning that is well aligned with their personal needs and interests, learning that equips them with modes of self-discovery and expression, [and] learning that gives them a reason to attend and to stay in school” (p. 12). Hoffmann Davis posits five unique features of the arts and 10 specific spheres of learning that emerge and hence make the arts distinct from their non-arts counterparts. In chapter one,

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