At the 2009 Neuroeducation Summit hosted by Johns Hopkins University, “several roundtable participants pointed out that art is no longer taught in their schools. According to the Alliance for Childhood’s Crisis in the Kindergarten report, 48 percent of kindergarten classrooms in New York and 64 percent in Los Angeles have decided there’s no time for art activities; 60 percent in New York and 67 percent in Los Angeles reported not enough time for dramatic play.* The larger question is inherently economic: Can the United States afford to abandon the training of creative ways of thinking and learning in the hope that these skills will come from some source other than specific training in the arts?”
Has modern American education become so driven by test scores and public policies that we’ve lost what it means to holistically educate? If so, maybe it’s time for a renaissance of sorts. The question, then, is What would a true renaissance in education look like? Add your two cents in the comments.
*Miller, E. & J. Almon. (2009). Crisis in the kindergarten: Why children need to play in school, p. 31. College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood. Retrieved from http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/kindergarten_report.pdf
Image Source: Neurodegeneration by Sophie Blows, Impington Village College. Various manifestations of life in the brain from DNA to an MRI scan.