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Art Makes Students Smart
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "For many education advocates, the arts supposedly increase test scores, generate social responsibility and turn around failing schools but research that demonstrates a causal relationship has been virtually nonexistent. Now the NY Times reports that with the opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a large-scale, random-assignment study (abstract) of school tours to the museum has determined that a strong causal relationship does in fact exist between arts education and a range of desirable outcomes. Students who, by lottery, were selected to visit the museum on a field trip demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions. Moreover, most of the benefits are significantly larger for minority students, low-income students and students from rural schools — typically two to three times larger than for white, middle-class, suburban students — owing perhaps to the fact that the tour was the first time they had visited an art museum. Further research is needed to determine what exactly about the museum-going experience determines the strength of the outcomes. How important is the structure of the tour? The size of the group? The type of art presented? 'Clearly, however, we can conclude that visiting an art museum exposes students to a diversity of ideas that challenge them with different perspectives on the human condition,' write the authors. 'Expanding access to art, whether through programs in schools or through visits to area museums and galleries, should be a central part of any school's curriculum.'"
THIS much difference from ONE field trip to a museum? Why, by all that is correlated, we MUST start opening up museums like 7-11s! There should be one on every streetcorner!
I thought someone would say this, even though the story doesn't mention that these were art students. Looks like someone could use some art in their lives.
"Researchers" were contacted by.. uh.. well.. the Museum... developed a "methodology" for the "experiment" after the fact, then based their definitions and metrics on an assessment program developed in conjunction with ... another museum.
Solid!. No way this is just another case of confirmation bias.
very simply: 99% of classroom education isn't actually visual, tactile, nor aural. Math is numbers, graphs are relationships, algebra is logic, english is literary, poetry is aural, and plays are visual but how many poetry readings and plays are in classrooms these days?
The museum is 90% visual and 80% tactile (even when you aren't permitted to touch it, you can still see the texture and infer the tactile). Welcome the part of the brain that's bored in the classroom.
More parts of the brain being engaged, more to knowledge to associate with other knowledge, less being bored and blinder-focussed, better learning.
A random sample of tens of thousands of students, controlling for education level, income level, gender, and other factors, showed a small but statistically significant increase in critical thinking, social tolerance, and historical empathy. What part sounds like BS to you? Is it the part where the conclusion doesn't fit your preconceived notions, and therefore must be false?
That's not true at all. The study was conducted by education policy researchers from the University of Arkansas. They posted their methods here. Did you read them?
It seems like you, any many others, just made a snap judgement based on a misinterpretation of the summary.
Perhaps if museums for kids were better tailored for interactive education instead of going through and being told to read each sign and label students would care. Maybe times have changed and that's how it generally is today, I hope that's true.
If you are in Munich, try the Deutsches Museum. No museum in Germany gets visited more. And it's darned educational. I spent a week in it as a child, and now I am Anonymous Coward, the most prolific poster on Slashdot.
How do we know it was a museum that produced the effect, and not field trips in general?
Could be the Hawthorne effect: The students who believe the school cares enough to send them on an 'intellectual' field trip will study harder. Those who believe the school views them as battery hens won't bother.
Who could imagine that increased exposure to different thought patterns (art is/was materialized thought) would increase their ability to think?
Who could imagine that Europeans, with vastly greater exposure to varying cultures than Americans, would be comparatively more tolerant and creative? Who would have guessed that Americans, with more exposure to other cultures than Asians (East and South, who are all fairly secluded for the most part), would exhibit the same trend? Who could imagine that being able to experience more ideas means being able to incorporate those ideas into everyday problems?
Studying art through a textbook is meaningless though. Who'd'a thunk?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Belial6 never visited a museum when attending school and his/her mind has not fully developed as a result.
Basically the study seems to claim that teaching kids makes them smarter. Who knew! Is going to a museum that unusual in the US?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...and 'critical thinking skills' (which, without context, means nothing).
I'm not sure what kind of detail you read the article in then, because it describes the students being given an essay-question test. And if you read the links given you'll find out how the test was blindly scored looking for certain specific techniques as evidence of critical thinking: “observing, interpreting, evaluating, associating, problem finding, comparing, and flexible thinking”. They even built in a test for their system, having separate researchers score overlapping samples so that they could make sure they were producing consistent results.
And here's a little bonus:
I'm not sure why the summary doesn't include a direct link to the study, as is present in the NYT article, but there you go. There's more detail in there about what they mean by empathy and tolerance (specifically including a measurable decrease in the student's support for government censorship).
People who aren't sociopaths, that's who!
I recommend that everyone read How To Be Rich by J. Paul Getty. He was the richest person in the world in his day, and yet he had some enlightened things to say. For instance, he advocated cooperating with labor unions (when have you ever heard a billionaire do that?). From this book, I received the best management advice ever - praise in public, punish in private. He also thought that spectator sports were a waste of time. But what Getty was most passionate about was art. He amassed an amazing collection, and then made it available to the public for free. If you're ever in Los Angeles, if at all possible, set aside a day or two to visit The Getty - it will make you smarter. And I encourage you to visit museums whenever and wherever you travel - you'll see some amazing things.