Brian Crosby believes science education may soon be removed from the endangered curriculum list.
To me this is shocking news. I remember having some of the most fun times of elementary school in science class doing experiments and other fun labs with other classmates.
High-poverty schools across the nation have been forced to narrow the curriculum much more drastically than wealthier schools
For me, this doesn't make any sense. No matter the financial state of the school, it should have the same curriculum as any other school.
In a 2011 national survey, two-thirds of teachers said many academic subjects had been crowded out by an increased focus on math and language arts. About half said art and music were being marginalized, while 40 percent said the same for foreign languages; 36 percent for social studies; and 27 percent for science. The results were particularly striking at the elementary level, where 81 percent of teachers reported that extra time devoted to math or language arts meant less time for other subjects. Over 60 percent of middle school teachers and 54 percent of high school teachers reported the same in their schools.
These statistics are very important for my research. This is actual proof that there is a lack of art, music, language arts, social studies, and science. Extra time is being devoted to math and english, so the teachers are saying that there is not enough time for the arts.
“Every time we profess that students should have access to music so that their brains become better wired to solve math equations,
I really love music and what it does for the brain. For me, it relaxes me and I always listen to it when I am doing homework, in the shower, or even cooking dinner.
Our schools, once vigorous and dynamic centers for learning, have been reduced to mere test prep factories, where teachers and students act out a script written by someone who has never visited their classroom and where “achievement” means nothing more than scoring well on a bubble test.
This is one of the biggest problems that I think there is in the school systems now. For example, yes it is impressive to have AP classes on your records, but the only thing that you learn in those classes is how to take the test at the end of the year. There is not real learning that you will remember for the rest of your life.
But I guess that doesn’t fit into our testing obsession.”
This is a very good point that I find very interesting. In the last years that I went to school, it was all about training or preparing for a test. Yes, of course I wanted to do well on the test, but I don't think that should have been all we did all year.
Not that long ago, elementary schools were places where students could discover what they were good at, explore the subjects that appealed to them,
This is how I remember elementary school. The school that I went to allowed us to try every language, every art form, and see what we liked best. We even had tae kwon do classes and yoga classes to explore all of our options.
Children need not to be afraid making mistakes as art promotes creativity, imagination and expressions.
This is a very important lesson to get through life. Making mistakes can be a very good thing and it is essential to learn from your mistakes to become a better and smarter person.
Another form of art is drawing. Drawing from observation still represents a key component of statutory art education for children aged 5 to 14 years of age.
Personally, I have always loved to draw. There is something very freeing about drawing. However, this does not mean I am good at it, I am quite terrible at drawing but I still enjoy it.
Dancing is an activity that needs time to work on and gain wide experience.
This is very true. I am a dancer myself and I know very well that it takes a lot of practice to get where you want to be. I have been dancing for 12 years and I still have to dance 8 hours a day to be able to achieve what I want someday.
At times while working with each other to produce an art piece also needs problem solving, contributing ideas and respecting each other.
This is also a very good point. It is so important to be good at working with a team. If you can not collaborate with other people, you won't get far with creating or making something your own. Granted it is harder to work with some individuals than others, but it is all part of the learning experience.
Knowing and understanding of the arts may also help children to express themselves in different creative art forms in which they are comfortable in.
I really believe that if children are exposed to music, performances, drawing, and other types of art when they are young, they will grow up to be very creative and perceptive adults.
The role of the visual arts in early childhood education has long been recognised and valued as an essential component of the curriculum.
This is precisely one of my main points. Art is so important to introduce to children at a very early age because it is an "essential component of the curriculum."
Art is the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
This topic sentence is so intriguing and it reminds me why I love the arts so much.
f you want your work to be of high quality, then you certainly need to gather information from genuine and reliable sources. The sources mentioned above can be of great help to you in making your research powerful.
This article was very helpful to me because it gives a lot of useful resources to help make our research easier and more effective.
Microsoft Academic Search is a great search engine from the software giant Microsoft.
I used this resource a lot in middle school as well and I find it very useful because when you research a topic you don't get all of the unnecessary information, you only get the educated ones that help you more with your research topic.
Virtual LRC or The Virtual Learning Resources Centre allows you to explore educational sites with high-quality information.
I have never used this resource, but it sounds very useful because it filters the normal google searches into more refined sources which makes it easier to find what you need faster.
Academic Info contains an in-depth directory of the most useful links and resources within a specific subject area.
I used this resource a lot when I was in middle school. It is very helpful in finding useful sources that provide accurate information.
You just cannot ignore the fact that when you think about searching online for your assignments and projects, the first name that comes to your mind is Google.
This is very true. Sometimes, instead of saying "search something on the internet," I often say "Google it." It has become the easiest and fastest way of searching the web.
Most search engines do not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase, even within quotation marks.
This makes it easier to search something really fast so that you don't have to worry if you are getting the most accurate response just because you didn't use a capital first letter.
Using quotation marks around a phrase will return only those exact words in that order.
This is good to remember because sometimes you accidentally include other words in the quotation marks, but then it is no longer a quote that someone else has said because you changed it.
How many times have you searched for a term and had the search engine return something totally unexpected?
This doesn't happen too often to me. However, sometimes when I search something on the internet I end up learning about something that I wasn't looking for but the information helps me.
you just have to remove the irrelevant pages and the unhelpful/incorrect results to find that needle in the haystack
This is something that can be tricky. If you are looking up a question you have, a lot of different answers could come up, so you have to look carefully which one is the most reliable.
Did you hate memorizing seemingly insignificant facts for tests at school?
Yes I did! A lot of the times I would ask myself the question, when will I ever use this information in daily life?
are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to participate in a math and science fair or to win an award for writing an essay or poem than children who do not participate.
This is a very helpful statistic that actually proves my theory of children excelling in school from the arts. It is amazing that kids can subconsciously grow from being involved in an aspect of the arts.
“The kind of people society needs to make it move forward are thinking, inventive people who seek new ways and improvements, not people who can only follow directions,” says Kohl.
In someways it is good to know how to follow directions, but you also need to know how to learn in your own way and really be creative about how you take notes, write something like an essay, or even just doing an easy assignment for school. You should always put a part of your personality into everything you do.
“If they are exploring and thinking and experimenting and trying new ideas, then creativity has a chance to blossom,” says MaryAnn Kohl, an arts educator and author of numerous books about children’s art education.
I think that this quote is very true because it explains the importance of art and creativity in just one sentence. If children are exposed to art and their imagination when they are young, than I believe that they will grow up to be much more creative.
Learning to create and appreciate visual aesthetics may be more important than ever to the development of the next generation of children as they grow up.
I could not agree more. If I did not grow up with the arts, I would be a completely different person today. I appreciate music, dance, and pretty much every form of art very much and that comes from my education and the school I went to when I was growing up.