Arts Smarts

We hate to say "I told you so," but it turns out the arts do play a vital role in education. According to a three-year study by the Dana Foundation, participating in the arts helps children learn.

The study, Learning, the Arts, and the Brain (PDF 2mg), was conducted by cognitive neuroscientists from seven universities who sought to answer a fundamental question that might help educators shape curriculum -- are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?

According to their preliminary research, the arts makes people smarter. Here's how:

• Children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also apply to other subject areas.
  

• There's a connection between musical training and the ability to manipulate information in both short-term and long-term memory.
  

• Music training also appears to improve kids' reading skills.
  

• Acting classes lead to better memory and better language skills.
  

• Dance learning, acquired through observation and mimicry, appears to improve cognitive skills.
  

"There is still a lot of work to be done," says led researcher Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California at Santa Barbara. "But we now have further reasons to believe that training in the arts has positive benefits for more general cognitive mechanisms."

Well, maybe we don't hate to say we told you so. Actually, we're delighted.

--Cindy Long