The Dana Foundation’s Arts, Learning, and the Brain conference proceedings highlight both neurological and psychological reasons for inclusion of arts education in urban school curriculum. An excerpt from Jerome Kagan’s prepared remarks to the conference on the Dana Foundation site: “The first advantage is that it boosts the self confidence among the children who are behind in mastery of reading and arithmetic… (C)hildren live in an economy where a high school diploma is absolutely necessary and a college degree advantageous for successful adaptation to our technological economy. This was not the case a century or two earlier. Neither Benjamin Franklin nor Abraham Lincoln had more than two years of formal schooling. If we eliminate the estimated 5 to 8 percent of American children who have a serious compromise in their cognitive abilities, due either to genes, or damage to their brain before or during the birth process, a postnatal infection, or a pregnant mother who abused alcohol or drugs, the remaining 92 to 95 percent are psychologically able to obtain both degrees. Therefore, we have to ask why the high school dropout rate is excessively high among youth from poor and working class families, and why the average scores of all American youth on tests of academic skills are below those of many other developed nations. An important reason for this sad state of affairs is that children, like adults, are vulnerable to becoming discouraged when they sense that a goal they desire is probably unattainable.” Read his entire piece here.

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