Art is for everybody, even when students don’t intend to be professional artists.
As an arts educator, the most important lessons I see students learn have to do with imagination, collaboration, and finding a voice of their own. These tenets apply whether or not a student aspires to have a career in painting, theater, or design.
Most of the students I have taught over my 38-year career never became artists, and that’s perfectly fine. Art teaches students how to take risks, express big ideas, build the capacity to imagine, and think creatively. This is why art matters.
Still, many think of the arts as second-tier subject matter — nice to have, but not something that translates directly to achieving higher test scores or gaining admission to a prestigious college.
Indeed, while most Americans agree arts education is essential to a well-rounded education, there has been a persistent decline in support for it.
Not every school chooses to offer visual and performing arts classes for students, but they are just as important as math and English. Don’t we need to teach students how to think when there is no answer key or rubric for success?
In the art studios and on the stage, students learn how to begin projects without knowing the final answer. They revise their work, accept critiques, and try again.
This is not a public vs. private school argument — even as I teach at an independent school. Every educational setting should be leaning harder into art education.
An art class is not an escape from rigor. Students observe. They make choices. They expose those choices to criticism. They defend some, reconsider others, and discard the work they spent hours making only to begin again.
The teacher often cannot tell them what the right answer is, because there isn’t one.
Art is one of the places students learn tenacity best through observation, critique, revision, and persistence. Someone who is athletic can discover that they are also artistically inclined. A student can be academically strong, athletic, and artistically inclined at the same time. There is not an “either/or” choice to be made.
Indeed, one of our most accomplished alumni in the arts is now a curator at one of the most prestigious museums in the world, but he was better known for his success in athletics when he was a student.
Now, as someone who sees art through the lens of both practitioner and educator, the real reason I believe in arts education has nothing to do with whether a child identifies as an artist. I am totally satisfied if I have zero students who become professional artists.
My measure of success is that each person we teach develops the courage to imagine, experiment, collaborate, fail safely, and discover a voice that is fully their own.
In an era obsessed with efficiency and automation, the arts remind us what education is actually about: Helping students succeed as critical thinkers and impactful citizens.
Please appreciate art for what it is: something that helps students develop lifelong practices of creativity and expression.
It is for the future engineer, teacher, doctor, entrepreneur, parent and citizen. It is an investment in the future, as we share with younger generations the experience of going to concerts, visiting museums, attending plays, and understanding the creative disciplines and innovation that arts professionals contribute to our world.
Robinson is head of arts at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn.