Join the conversation

On March 4th, the Dana Foundation published major new research on the link between the arts and learning.  (OK, so I've fallen a bit behind in my reading.) For the first time, the Dana report offers at least a partial answer to a question that has bedeviled researchers for a long time:  Does arts education make people smarter, or do smart people gravitate to the arts?

Oft-cited evidence that students involved in the arts tend to do better academically has provided little satisfaction on this point.  What makes the Dana study different is its ability to draw connections between participation in the arts and cognitive development.  As the study's authors conclude, "Children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also apply to other subject areas."

This is important news for arts education advocates and will, one hopes, bolster efforts to keep arts in the curriculum.