In September 2018, UCLA professor emeritus Pedro Noguera testified before the New Mexico Legislative Education Study Committee on Justice in Schools, noting that – as we all know – students who attend athletics or the performing arts in their schools get better results achieve as a student who does not.
Do we all know this? If we did, wouldn’t we fund performing arts programs in schools as we fund athletics? Based on national statistics, about half of high school students participate in school arts programs. Do we only sponsor half of our students?
James Catterall, also from UCLA, delved deep into a national study of 25,000 students and found concrete support for the benefits of participating in the performing arts. “Intense engagement in the arts during middle and high school with higher grades and college degrees,” he wrote.
Catterall published his research in two books on education. Perhaps most notable to us is Catterall’s statement that “this pattern applies to children of low socio-economic status”.
In particular, high school theater offers students benefits that cannot be found elsewhere. You can’t design sets or costumes without geometry. Without physics, you can neither design light nor sound. Almost every piece is a history project, and all the pieces are studies in language arts while students analyze the script to determine how to pronounce their lines. Catterall noted specific benefits of theater engagement – “gains in reading skills, gains in self-image and motivation, and a greater degree of empathy for others” – especially for students in the lower socio-economic classes.
Today educators are trying to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) into schools to develop the whole child and help each individual make better use of academic and extracurricular instruction throughout their life. SEL is in the DNA of the theater. The ancient Greeks staged plays in the hope that their citizens would learn from the actions of Oedipus or Medea. They did. The audience found these dramatized stories emotionally engaging and instructive: their word was cathartic.
Recently, scientists discovered mirror neurons in our brain. They enable us to learn actions by watching them perform. The same thing happens with emotions. Scientists have found that our mirror neurons model the victim’s emotions so well that we feel bullied ourselves when we watch a play about bullying.
Catterall found that student participation in arts and athletics had carryover effects after high school. Both groups reached colleges, although art students did so more often. Both groups participated in their communities as adults, although athletes often limited their volunteering to sport-related activities. Art graduates read more books and newspapers than athletes.
In our largest high schools, we offer football for three to four dozen boys for 16 weeks under the supervision of a coach and three or more assistants. Theater teachers often stage 100 students or more per semester in several plays. When they produce a musical, 75 or more students work on that one show. A music director or choreographer can do some rehearsals, but the director is often the only adult in charge. Often times, this director also spends a lot of time running fundraisers, as most high school drama programs have close to a third of their annual budget to come up with.
If we supported school arts programs the way we support athletics, how could we improve educational outcomes?
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