1 The arts teach children to make good judgments
about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of
the curriculum in which correct answers and
rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather
than rules that prevail.
2 The arts teach children that problems can have
more than one solution and that questions can
have more than one answer.
3 The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of
their large lessons is that there are many ways to
see and interpret the world.
4 The arts teach children that in complex forms of
problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but
change with circumstance and opportunity.
Learning in the arts requires the ability and a
willingness to surrender to the unanticipated
possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5 The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in
their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we
can know. The limits of our language do not
define the limits of our cognition.
6 The arts teach students that small differences
can have large effects. The arts traffic in
subtleties.
7 The arts teach students to think through and
within a material. All art forms employ some
means through which images become real.
8 The arts help children learn to say what cannot
be said. When children are invited to disclose
what a work of art helps them feel, they must
reach into their poetic capacities to find the
words that will do the job.
9 The arts enable us to have experience we can
have from no other source and through such
experience to discover the range and variety of
what we are capable of feeling.
10 The arts' position in the school curriculum
symbolizes to the young what adults believe is
important.
