Importance of Art Education

Art education is very important especially in case of children as art is among the highest expression of every culture and teaches all aspects of every historical period through its literature, visual arts, music, dance, and drama. It is not enough to just learn to appreciate the arts. It is important to must have various opportunities to actively participate in creative work of art. All forms of art are essential to human experience and help in discovering how human beings communicate not only with words, but through music, dance, and the visual arts. It involves visual and tangible arts like drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc and includes design applied to more practical fields like commercial graphics and home furnishings. A life without the arts is a life of seeing without feeling, hearing only what is offered to us secondhand, touching without real contact.

In children, early exposure to visual art, music, or drama encourages activity in the brain and helps children to comprehend other subjects including math, science, language arts and geography much more clearly. As there is a growing diversity of students with different cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, it results in diverse ways of thinking, learning, and behaving. Art nurtures creativity, imagination and ingenuity in children as it involves them in a process that helps in enhancing self-esteem, self-discipline, cooperation, and self-motivation. Art activities help children to understand human experience, tolerance to others' ways of working and thinking, developing creative and analytical skills, and communicating thoughts and ideas in a variety of ways.

Arts education involves imagination, agency, expression, empathy, interpretation, respect, inquiry, reflection, engagement, cognitive skills, fine motor skills, sense of time and place, focusing, listening and responsibility which are crucial to child development. It helps children to exercise their imaginations, think `outside of the box' and develop cognitive and physical skills. It helps children to make new connections through personal growth and cooperative learning experiences. It encourages students to develop self-discipline and social skills and strive for greater success. Participation in arts also helps children to enhance their creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities, as well as improve their performance in other core subject areas. This results in a decrease in negative behaviors in children and increase in attention span, commitment and tolerance. Arts education enables parents to get more involved in their children's schoolwork without being intimidated by their own lack of knowledge in subjects such as math and science. The motivation that is created in the art classroom can be carried over to other subjects as well.