Arts Education Empowers Learning

Arts education helps with problem solving as one as to think outside of the box

Arts is a very powerful medium. Many may not realize how arts education empowers learning in general. Whether it be science, math, engineering, architecture, geography, philosophy, etc., the arts has a huge impact on every subject. Art is multi-cultural and subjective. It gives people a place to share their feelings in a way they’ve never thought before, especially kids. Many places throughout the world, especially in the United States, are cutting funding for arts education in order to save money. What these educators don’t realize is that they’re hurting education in general by cutting funding of the arts.

“In order to really succeed in whatever — math and the sciences and engineering, like that — you have to be able to think outside of the box and you have you to be creative problem solving,” musician David Byrne tells National Geographic TV StarTalk host Neil deGrasse Tyson. “And the way those disciplines are taught, is not totally creative — the creative thinking is in the arts. A certain amount of arts education doesn’t mean that your ambition is to grow up and be a painter, but you can use that kind of thinking and apply it to anything else — business, engineering, science, and you’re better at that. You succeed more and you bring more to the world because you have these abilities that came from outside of your discipline. So bringing different worlds together has definite tangible benefits and to kind of cut one or separate them is to injure them and to cripple them.”

Art is very inspiring and gives kids and adults a place to unwind. For example, people visit cities to see architecture, museums, live music, workshops, and more. If we take away the arts, we lose inspiration, creativity, freedom of expression and even tourism. Each one hurts every economy in the world. Arts education is very fundamental to a thriving economy because the kids of today won’t have the same opportunities tomorrow if arts education keeps getting defunded.

See the entire StarTalk segment where host Neil deGrasse Tyson and musician David Byrne discuss the importance of art education.