Art Makes Students Smart 187
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.'"
Re: Well, yes ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Multi-Modal Education (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not buying it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Multi-Modal Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put, once the motivational trigger for the quest of knowledge has been trigged, it has been triggered. Providing the students with greater access to a wider range of educational interactions means that motivational trigger is far more likely to be triggered. So museums, zoos, high tech manufacturing plants, behind the scenes look at the infrastructure of major facilities, ports, major construction sites, airports, even visits to universities by primary school students basically any place the reflects the end use of the education they are participating in and the possible rewards they can expect. Most children have an motivational trigger for a desired range of knowledge, the more experiences the more likely it is to be triggered.
Field trip (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Exposure == Worldliness, who'd'a thunk (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Holy Crap!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to believe that this is true, but can we confirm that everyone who had their name picked out went, and everyone who didn't, didnt?
In a more general sense, it's clear around me that an appreciation of art develops thinking skills in unrelated fields. The dullest geeks I have the misfortune to associate with are those who think that nothing is important beyond their own tiny little corner of knowledge - it's not their ignorance which is grating, but their paucity of reasoning power.
Re:Holy Crap!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
you can't argue correlation-but-not-causation.
Sure you can. The fact that they went to an art museum may be completely irrelevant. It could be as simple as students being singled out for special, positive, attention. It puts me in mind of Mayo's Hawthorne experiments.
Causality is hard, particularly in social research. I haven't read the paper, though the abstract doesn't suggest any attempt to control for rather obvious confounders. Of course, the abstract doesn't mention a causal relationship at all, so this could just be another case of bad science reporting.
When I read "Further research is needed to determine what exactly about the museum-going experience determines the strength of the outcomes" in the summary, I cringe a bit -- it ought to read "Further research is needed to determine if it was the museum-going experience at all".
Re:Holy Crap!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
I should add, all sarcasm aside: I really do love museums and I really do think they're valuable and educational. But these claimed results are a little hard to swallow.
I have no doubt art is valuable. Just not to the folks who "win" something and then choose to not go to a field trip.
The kids who are smart, driven, and interested in stuff have.... wait for it... parents who are smart, driven, and interested in stuff. Those parents, are ALSO more likely to approve a field trip.
They need to be looking at the kids who "won" but didn't go. THOSE are going to be a pile of nigh-dregs of society, because their parents are, and the results of the study will be necessarily skewed the way they wanted, and found.