Oct 26 2008
The importance of an arts education
When I was asked why music and arts programs are a vital part of our children’s education, I remembered a video I recently saw of Barack Obama speaking to a school group in Wallingford, PA:
Obama summed up my feelings quite nicely:
Part of what arts education does is it teaches people to see through each other’s eyes. It teaches us to respect and understand people who are not like us. That makes us better citizens and makes our democracy work better.
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?
He’s talking about empathy, and Obama’s not the only one advocating using art education programs to do this. In a 2006 Lancet essay, Development of children’s creativity to foster peace, Dr. Ashfaq Ishaq wrote:
The arts can aid a child’s holistic development, especially empathy… A RAND study noted that the communicative and personal nature of creative expression, accentuated through collective arts activities, can forge social bonds while supporting identity formation and cultural transmission.
By teaching empathy through music and art programs, we give our children the skills to succeed and live peacefully in a diverse world.
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is a groundbreaking new anthology of rhymes and rhythms that places an emphasis on the art forms that led up to the development of hip hop.
, the classic book and CD that started it all, this anthology is meant to be a journey of discovery. Readers can immerse themselves in 51 beautifully animated poetry and hip hop selections, 30 of which are performed by well known poets and artists on the accompanying audio CD including:
features his interpretation of 13 traditional songs associated with American folk music icon, 
. It’s an album that both parents and children can enjoy, even if they aren’t Springsteen fans.
Frog Went A-Courtin’
– For ages 4 to 8, this Caldecott Medal winner in 1955, this book beautifully illustrates the courtship and marriage of the frog and the mouse. The song has its origins in England and Scotland with the music having its origins in the southern Appalachian mountains. Author John Langstaff makes one story from the different versions sung around the U.S.
– (Grades 2 to 6) This gorgeous book by Cheryl Harness discusses the need for the canal, the politics of its planning and building, the workings of the locks and canals, and the pride people took in the accomplishment of this engineering feat including the celebration that marked the completion of the canal in 1825.
– (preschool through grade 1) – The traditional American song “Buffalo Gals” is adapted into book form with cut-paper illustrations. A little gal invites her favorite redheaded dolly “the one with the hole in her stockin” to dance, and the two friends leap and frolic till the moon comes up. This is a great book to bring the Buffalo Gals song from the Springsteen album to younger children.
– For ages 4 to 8, this charmingly illustrated tome by Bill Balcziak retells the tale of John Henry, the African American railroad legend known as the Steel Driving Man. The story of John Henry goes back more than 130 years and originated with the miners drilling the Big Bend Tunnel of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia.
