Education Special Section Arts Smart Educators Look at Cognitive Benefits of Arts Programs by Carolyn Cosmos The debate over the effectiveness of “Baby Einstein” videos and the “Mozart effect” — trying to make young children smarter through brain games, teaching videos, and hours of exposure to classical music — has been roiling parents and teachers alike for the past decade. These tools — or rather toys in some cases — have been both fervently supported and just as fervently opposed. One Stanford University headline blared: “Discredited Mozart Effect Remains Music to American Ears.” So what’s the truth? Can the arts make you smart? To find out, let’s start at an art museum. On Saturday mornings during the school year, about 20 teens from Maryland, Virginia and D.C. make their way to a class at the National Gallery of Art in downtown Washington. Students in this blandly titled “high school seminar” are usually a diverse lot, according to Elisa Patter-son, the gallery’s coordinator for high school programs. Some dress in casual clothes, while others come donning purple hair and painted jeans. Almost all of them though already identify themselves as artists. They arrive from public and private schools, large and small, spanning the suburbs to the inner city. Admission is competitive and only one student per school can be accepted, so these represent the winners. Even so, many tend to be shy at first. Perhaps it’s the austere galleries and eminent artwork. Perhaps it’s their own backgrounds as, in some cases, outsiders. “They may be an anomaly at their own schools,” Patterson said. So she and her fellow instructors work to create a community. “We have our own tables reserved for us at lunch,” Patterson noted. And as the lessons unfold and students present their own artwork, these young artists seem to unfold as well. “Parents tell us students gain confidence. It’s great to see them grow.” One surprising reason for this success is neuroscience research. Patterson and her colleagues, like an increasing number of arts educators nationwide, are incorporating lessons from cognitive science into their classrooms to connect the arts with learning in general. For instance, Patterson’s National Gallery seminar, which covers art history and potential museum careers, is designed to engage students so that they arrive at answers themselves — thereby also teaching them the art of deductive reasoning. “A lot of what the students do is of their choosing. We use strategies that facilitate an ability to think critically and experience new ideas,” Patterson explained. So if a student chooses a Renaissance portrait to research, the teen will be asked to compare it to a contemporary artwork and vice versa, and then present their findings to fellow students. Another teaching strategy addresses perception. “Really seeing a work of art is much harder than you might think,” Patterson said. So they developed an exercised called “I see, I think, I wonder,” in which students take a few minutes to look at a piece of art and quickly jot down their first impressions. Then they’re given more time to ponder the artwork, writing down and later discussing their thoughts. “They arrive at things themselves,” Patterson said. Cognitive Crossover Responding to the controversy over the “Mozart effect,” several Harvard researchers in the mid-1990s looked at existing educa-tion research to examine the impact that the arts had on specific learning skills. Among their many findings, published in 2000, was limited confirmation of the “Mozart effect,” along with evidence that chil-dren trained in playing music also showed improvements in spatial thinking. Critics cautioned though that such links, or correlations, cannot prove cause and effect because they could be accidental or the result of other factors. But other suggestive links did turn up between music and math, drama and verbal skills, and dance and certain reasoning skills. And yes, they did find that students with arts training did better in their other school subjects — but maybe bright kids just like to paint and make music. Who was to say? Five years later, the Dana Foundation — which studies brain science, immunology and arts education — tried to clarify the issue. Inspired by new findings and advanced imaging tools that let us peer directly into the brain, the foundation brought together a group of neuroscientists from seven universities to explore the effects of visual art, music, dance and drama on learning. The results of the Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition, released in 2008, confirmed in part what the 2000 study group had said, although it also supported the skeptics because there was still no definitive proof of cause and effect between arts learning and academic learning. “We’re working on it,” some of the scientists simply said. One consortium finding though did turn up a strong connection between music and reading. For four years, Brian Wandell and his group at Stanford University compared children who received arts training with those who hadn’t, uncovering a “strong cor-relation” between music training and better reading skills exhibited in school. People think reading is entirely visual, but it’s actually based on the child’s ability to hear the sounds of speech, Wandell said in the Dana Foundation report. His team is now trying to prove that “music training in early years helps you hear sounds better.” Similarly, neuropsychologist Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University looked how arts training might affect spatial thinking. She found that teenagers in art schools who practiced music 20 hours a week were better at geometric reasoning than students with training in other arts disciplines or no arts training at all. There were some signs, however, that the visual arts also had a positive effect on students, but geometric skill levels clearly correlated with the amount of music training a student had. Despite these discoveries suggesting the potential advantages of music, “there isn’t anything to suggest that exposing very young children to formal music training is of benefit,” Spelke cautioned in the Dana report, noting that the ideal time to start formal music lessons for children is in early grade school. But she added that young children tend to acquire the basic skills they need when adults play games with them or sing to them, and everyone is having fun together. Next Page

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