Arts education gets – and begets – attention

The struggle to discover a causal relationship between arts-related learning and improvements in general cognition continues.

This may seem an abstruse issue, but it has all sorts of real-world ramifications: For decades, and especially for the most recent one, evidence for and against the arts’ effect on children’s brains, behavior, test scores, career potential and general happiness and fulfillment has swayed school systems, national agencies, foundations, state and local governments and the entire national economic Zeitgeist.

Creativity is the buzzword of the era in economic-development circles, thanks largely to Richard Florida and his “creative class” theory about what’s making some cities grow and others shrink. And what moves the economy these days is what moves the politicians, from your local councilman on up to the White House administration. So it may matter a lot that Michael I. Posner, a Dana Foundation grantee and a psychology professor at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, finds that arts training – not just exposure to arts, but actual practice of them – increases children’s ability to pay attention to  other subjects and tasks.

Hopefully, that will include picking up their dirty socks.

For more recent findings on arts’ influence on the brain and education, check out the Dana Foundation’s related news roundup.