“Art is necessity-an essential part of our enlightenment process. We cannot, as civilized society, regard ourselves as being enlightened without the arts”: a divine thought by Ken Danby clearly expresses the importance of arts in an individual’s life. Art teaches an individual to express himself. It allows the amalgamation of thoughts with imagination to reveal the actual desire of a being and allows oneto portrayhis/her emotions. It allows one to bring down his each expression on a 12x12 canvas simply with a brush in his hand.
However, Academic knowledge imbibed in school has its own importance in a student’s life but arts’ having a huge positive impact on an individual justifies its inclusion in student’s curriculum. Art education helps the student to develop higher level skills that would help him/her later in his/her life, to judge the situations and to take better decisions. It nurtures the creativity of a child that helps him/her to come out with innovative ideas. It develops problem-solving skills and a unique ability to communicate in different ways. Arts’ being the reflection of one’s enthusiasm if taught in an appealing manner brings a revolutionary change in one’s thinking and inclines it towards, somewhat critical thinking.
Moreover, art education doesn’t have its confinement to only one field. Interestingly, it can be used to make other subjects easy to understand and grasp and make learning a lot of fun. Picturing the topic can make them catchy and easy to learn and understand. Studies reveal that pictured things stay in our memory for a longer duration. Hence, art education can help to transform a difficult subject into a simpler one and a dull subject into more appealing one for the students.
A case study would make the point clearer. A group of 615 elementary school students in Ohio participated in an evaluation of SPECTRA+, an art education program that gives students one hour of art instructions daily. Based on several tests, SPECTRA+ students gains in creativity, self-esteem, various aspects of Maths and reading and art appreciation which the children in the control group did not achieve. This case study of SPECTRA+ uncovers the fact that students who were trained in art education were also showing signs of development in several other areas. Hence, justifying the importance of such education in student’s life.
Education, in actual sense, is not only limited to academics and art education. It rather deals with complete personality development of an individual and here comes the role of extra-curricular activities in a student’s life. Often it is seen people who do not show interest in extra-curricular activities tend to get nervous in difficult situations and end up making hasty decisions. Extra-curricular activities not only involve sports but also debates, extempore public speaking, quiz, interactive sessions, music and dance. Extra-curricular activities give students a platform to open up in front of the audience along with moulding his personality into a stronger one. Good orators aren’t the ones who never participated in debates and discussions rather they are the ones whohave grabbed each opportunity to sharpen their skills.
A famous quote says “Personality development isn’t a product; it’s a process.”well, it surely is! The product will be a more confident individual. Although, the end product won’t be seen right away, but an enhancement can surely be noticed every time one participates in an extra-curricular activity. Extra-curricular activities hence shall not be compromised for art education, and it’s a good policy to give priority to extra-curricular activities in place of art education if there are some issues of budget.
However, unlike art education extra-curricular activities will not directly help to make other subjects easier by picturing but it has numerous other benefits which cannot be neglected.Extra-curricular activitieshelp an individual to cope up with rapid changing world.From the social point of view extra-curricular activities helps an individual to interact to various people with easeand helps him to fit himself in the society. It teaches one to work in a team, helps him to remain strong and fit. Psychologically, it makes person more confident to take his stand according to his opinion and helps him to survive in adverse conditions. Ethically, it develops moral values and self-discipline in a person. For instance, deontological ethics i.e. duty based ethics can only be followed by one is disciplined and this discipline cannot be developed in a day or two rather it needs to be nurtured consistently over a longer period of time and the tool that helps is extra-curricular activities. It awakens the conscience so one can make correct choices. Arts education, on the other hand, is a bit on the costlier side too. The teacher needed to teach the art education are a little bit much expensive than those compared to teachers for extra-curricular activities. So in a given budget where there is a single teacher for art education, there could be a number of teachers for various extra-curricular activities.
Hence, increases the overall cost associated, whereas an interactive session or a debate doesn't require much money to be invested and hence, can be managed in lessbudget too.
Another major issue is the vision of teacher.If an art’s teacher is a person carrying pessimistic vision, he will spread negative thoughts in the students resulting into erosion of the creativity of students, which could otherwise have been utilized for the betterment. But the case isn't same with Extra Curricular Activities as they are the ones requiring a lot of participation from the student themselves. So, the teacher cannot make a huge impact.Although if he guides and motivates the students in the correct way and carries an optimistic vision, he can surely make a great positive impact on their mentality.
Importance of Extra Curricular Activities can be more clearly judged by looking at the schedule of different schools that have successfully implemented it and the importance they give to Extra-curricular activities. An example of Ridgewood High School can be quoted. Extracurricular activities areimportant part the school and are treated form every dimension possible. There are a lot of benefits for both students and teachers. School offers students a wide range of choice of Extra Curricular Activities to students so almost everyone can opt for one they wish to. If students are not able to find a suitable activity they can start their own club by finding a mentor within the school staff, finding a preferred location and finally presenting their club suggestion to the principal. New club suggestions are rarely ever declined. This encourages other students to involve in this activity and set up a club that would suit them best. This too widens the range of activities offered to students.The school believes that students get benefited from it in numerous ways.
They think extracurricular activities as students do not remain confined to their social groups and get to know new people in the school. Students can too benefit from this even outside of workplace while socializing with other people. Students feel a responsibility on their shoulders after starting such clubs which greatly improves self-confidence as well as learning in extracurricular activities.Through extracurricular activities, students explore numerous activities and learn a lot of new skills.They believe that extracurricular activities are still a great example of Personalized Learning because students get to choose what suits them best and that is one of the most important aspects of Personalized Learning. Although academics, arts education and extracurricular activities all have their own importance but if there emerges a budget issue the extracurricular activities should be given priority over arts education as the benefits from extracurricular activities successfully overshadow that of arts education.
WORKS CITED
Wisco, Albert. "The Benefits of Extracurricular Activities." TVO. Tvoparents.tvo.org, 23 Mar. 2011. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.
Matthews, Graham. "Disadvantages of Art Schools-Why They Can Be Bad!"Http://www.artpromotivate.com/. Http://www.artpromotivate.com/, 09 Aug. 2013. Web. 10 Oct. 2014
Nun.i. "Extracurricular Activities Case Study." Http://www.wikispaces.com/. Http://www.wikispaces.com/, 07 May 2012. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.
