“Earth without art is just “Eh”; child without art is not a child.

Art lessons at public Kazakhstan schools are usually held till seven-eight grades. Absence of them in higher forms is easily explained by overloading of Math, which is considered to be one of the most important subjects on UNT. However, being in primary and secondary school, children have an art lesson only once a week, which may be not sufficient for their development.

First of all, arts are better taught in childhood because children’s brain as distinct from adults’ is not bound “by established solutions to challenges” (Sylwester, 2010, p. 131) and that is why is more open for creativity (Sousa, 2009). Secondly, in order to enable their creative thinking from a very beginning children need to be involved “in alternate reality of arts” (Sylwester, 2010, p. 151). Finally, self-expression, provided by involving in making arts, assists a child to cognize world and him/herself (Potebnya, 1976).

Watching a child who is sitting at the table and drawing a giraffe with gusto and pleasure it is easy to understand why he/she is so open for creativity. This process has totally “swallowed” him/her up and now a child is in his bright cloud-cuckoo-land, not afraid of being mistaken with chosen paint. He is enjoying “now”. Becoming adults, most of us lose the childish spontaneity and think all the time how others will evaluate our work. Maybe, overestimating the meaning of a result, we forget about a process even in creating arts.

There are a plenty amount of studies, researching the importance and relevance of art for children’s development. Trying to find any correlation to their academic achievement, authors claim and prove that art lessons are crucial or vice versa that they are not so helpful and consequently don’t fit the curriculum. Regardless of the results, such evidence leads to misunderstanding of the role of art itself (Eisner, 1998). Never asking “does language proficiency help your child in painting?” we, nevertheless, continue to find influence of art lessons on academic achievement.

Art lessons can do more than this: to foster children’s aesthetic and cognitive skills; that is why they are worth to be placed in a curriculum more than once a week. To deduce, as Maria Montessori may say, this practice will provide a child with understanding that he/she “is not the son of a man, but the creator and father of man” (Martin, Jane, 2001).

References

Eisner, E. W. (1998). Does experience in the arts boost academic achievement?. Arts Education Policy Review, 100(1), 32-40.

Potebnya, A. A. (1976). Aesthetics and poetics, Moscow.

Martin, Jane R. (2001) Maria Montessori. In: A. Palmer, Fifty Major Thinkers on Education. London: Routledge, 224-228.

Sousa, D. A. (Ed.). (2009). How the gifted brain learns. Corwin Press.

Sylwester, R. (2010). A Child’s Brain: The Need for Nurture. Corwin Press.